Watching Golf

by Jack Cashill

I had once thought that watching golf on TV was a preparatory step for death, a uniquely American purgatory for bloated men in white shoes and plaid sans-a-belt pants who had no other life interests, not even the playing of golf.

I had once thought that the only way I would ever watch golf on TV was if I were comatose or close to it, and I could not get my fingers to work the channel changer.

And then, alas, against my better judgment I began my own slow slide into purgatory--a couple holes here, a couple there, lots of denial in between. I told myself that I liked the free enterprise spirit of it all, all these mini-corporations competing in a perfectly laissez-faire environment without coaches, managers, teammates, referees, or even scorekeepers really and no one to blame but themselves if they did not succeed.

But there was no denying the reality of my descent. A few Sundays back I passed on going to see "The Battle of Algiers" at the local art house, a French classic that I had always wanted to see, and indulged myself instead in all 18, mother-loving holes of the U.S. Open. Then I knew that I had, alas, become Rogerfied.

In the way of explanation, one of the very few things I have in common with former President Clinton other than cheating at golf is a stepfather named Roger. With his curly red hair and beefy grin my Roger even looked like a Clinton. And who knows, given that family's spotty legacy, he may have been one.

It was Roger who introduced me to watching golf. Watching Roger watch golf--beer in one hand, barbecued potato chips in the other, belch at the ready--quickly became a form of aversion therapy.

Roger came into my family's life about five years after my father's death. A classic good time Charlie, he kept my mother entertained, and we were all the happier for it. Still, even as a widow with four kids living in a Newark, New Jersey housing project, my mother knew she was about to marry down.

In her view, an astute one despite her 8th grade education, there were only two classes of people in the world: those who planned for the future and those who didn't. If my mother belonged to class A--all four of her children would graduate from college, three with advanced degrees--Roger belonged so squarely to class B they could have produced telethons around him.

When Roger came into our lives he had little more than his underwear--some 150 sets thereof as he preferred to buy rather than to wash--and his golf clubs. At that time, and in that place, a bag of golf clubs was as exotic as a Lamborghini or an ocelot on a leash. No one I knew had ever played a round of golf. Indeed, we had scarcely even heard of the game. And yet here was Roger, the assistant manager of the local supermarket's deli section, with his own sparkling set of golf clubs.

Roger told us about the clubs long before we saw them. Fearing theft or tampering, he kept them in the trunk of a ten year-old Chevy Impala large enough to hold an electric golf cart let alone a set of gulf clubs. In fact, we did not actually see the clubs until shortly before the wedding when Roger decided it was time to show his soon-to-be stepsons the basics of the game.

To that point, my two brothers and I hadn't played more than five rounds of pitch-and-putt among us. Given the newness of the experience, we showed up at the course on game day in sneakers and cut-offs and proceeded to rent clubs. Soon after, Roger pulled up ceremoniously in his Impala and emerged from the car in his canary yellow golf regalia so radiant it could sear the eyeballs.

Sniffing at our sneakers, Roger proceeded to lace up his matching yellow golf shoes and clunk noisily around the parking lot like an Aztec Sun God vexed to be in the presence of mere mortals. He then went to the trunk and pulled out the clubs--the clubs into which he had invested most of his discretionary income and just about all of his illusions for the last decade or so.

As soon as my brothers and I saw the bulging bag of them we started whittling those illusions away. "Roger," said my oldest brother cutting right to the chase, "your clubs all have little pink booties on them." And sure enough they did, little--knitted pink covers on each and every one of them.

"Does Arnold Palmer have pink booties on his clubs?" asked my other brother. Roger just sneered. Explaining the value of golf covers to us would be as unprofitable as explaining the value of ice to a pygmy. The Sun God clattered off to the first tee, and we followed dutifully behind.

Being the youngest, I got to tee off first. I hit a hard, bounding ground ball about 100 years down the right side of the fairway. By my lights this wasn't a half-bad shot at all, but Roger quickly disabused me of any unwarranted self-esteem.

"That's the best you can do?" he laughed dismissively. As you can imagine, in the world of Newark golf not a lot of emphasis was placed on etiquette.

As it happened, I out-drove my brothers, my oldest brother squirting a wounded 25-yarder straight into the trees. By the time it was Roger's turn to tee up, he was guffawing so mightily he could barely catch his breath. Still, he calmed himself, lined up over the ball as he had seen all the pros do on TV, wiggled his ample butt a few times, pulled the club back with brio, and swung vigorously.

What happened next is still a celebrated and oft told tale in our family lore. Had Roger merely swung and missed, the result would not have been a fraction as memorable. Knowing Roger he would have passed the whiff off as a practice swing.

But Roger did not miss. We knew he did not miss because we all heard the tick, the tiniest possible contact between club and ball, a nicking so infinitesimal that the ball rocked on the tee for what seemed like minutes before falling off and plopping ignominiously onto the turf.

Ah, Roger, maybe we should not have laughed so hard or told the story so often or dismissed your dreams--and your booties--so out of hand. Then maybe you would have seen past our quiet condescension and stuck around for more than a few years, and maybe I would have reconciled myself to watching golf on TV a whole lot sooner.

Jack Cashill is Ingram's Executive Editor and has affiliated with the magazine for 25 years. He can be reached at jackcashill@yahoo.com. The views expressed in this column are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Ingram's Magazine.