Tuesday, September 25, 2018

You have to put the ball in the hole







I've been watching recreational golfers again, or maybe they're amateur golfers. I guess it depends whether they're having any fun or not. I saw a woman with a four foot putt to make. She took five tries to get it in. But try is the operative word here. She tried with the first shot and missed. Then the next shot was a lazy gimme, just a de facto knocking the ball in, only it didn't, go in, I mean. So she did another one of those "putts" casually and one-handed and it didn't go in again. In fact it was speeding past the hole so she sort of stopped it as it was going by and scraped it into the hole. Except she somehow missed that too, largely from a surfeit of casualness. So then finally she dragged the ball crudely and forcefully to the hole with her putter and got the ball somehow stuffed into it like she was drowning a bag of kittens.

I'm just saying it was horrible what I witnessed. I should have turned away.

I assume she counted those five putts as two; one for the missed putt and then the gimme. In watching amateur golf I generally feel that most people take any putt at about one foot or less to be a done deal no matter what happens. But I also feel that if that's how it is they shouldn't hit the ball in the hole. Just pick it up! If they want the satisfaction of completing the great 380 yard journey with their ball to the hole then they have to finish properly, with respect, and with all their shots counting. If a mere six inch putt is beneath you, fine, prove it. Pick up your ball there. I've got better things to do than watch you fudge things around unscrupulously on the green.

Although I often can't quite think of what any of those things are.









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