The game of Golf is something I can't quite put my finger on. It's a sport (is it called a sport?) where a bunch of people with too much time on their hands chase a little white ball around a pasture. The landscape is completely man made with little beaches and some oddly shaped ponds to add a “natural” look. It's a true gentleman's activity where you have a dress code, and when someone else is swinging at their ball (that they place on a little pedestal so it's easier to hit) everyone has to be quiet. Winning the game is determined by who gets the lowest score.
The game itself is pretty anti American if you think about it. A bunch of rich guys driving SUVs around what used to be a perfectly good wildlife sanctuary. The greens keeper uses enough chemicals on the grass to turn the water in the ponds a nice shade of swimming pool blue. There's no heckling allowed, and if someone messes up you give them a mulligan. Where's the outcry from the envirowhackos and the bunny huggers? On top of all that who can get behind a game where if you run the score up you lose.
Compare that to the other sports played in this great country, and you'll see fans hollering and waiving distracting objects while a player is shooting a free throw, or attempting to make the game winning field goal. We even teach little leaguers to call out “hey batter batter SWING!!” while the other teams batter is attempting to hit the ball. In America we're pretty much about providing some opposition to our competition, we like our fans loud, and our scores high.
....BUT the blue bloods have some competition. No more goofy plaid pants, funny looking bags and little white balls (no pun intended). Nope, the new snob sport is Disc Golf. The only correlation between the new game and the old is that the goal is still to get the lowest score. The game is played at your public park, instead of a private club. They use Frisbees instead of balls, and instead of the goal being to “get it in the hole”, they throw at some kind of modern art masterpiece made of chain that looks somewhat like an industrial trash can without the can.
Not only is there no dress code in disc golf, but if you're wearing anything more than a wife beater, some cut off jeans, and flip-flops they must not let you on the course. There are no special motorized carts, or tee times, instead you're required to carry around some discs, a cooler full of beer, the makings for a good joint and a couple extra packs of smokes. The best part of the sport is that you don't even have to be a good Frisbee thrower to do well. You get a stroke deducted from your score for every beer you drink, and two for every bong hit. There is a two stroke deduction for hitting someone with a disc, and another if you get other park goers to yell at you for interrupting their activities. Hitting a parked car subtracts one, but if you hit a moving car it gets you two. You get to deduct five strokes if you bring a dog and let him run free, and there's a bonus five stroke deduction if he starts a fight with another dog or pees on someone else's property, but they add a stroke if the dog is current on his vaccinations.
The sport is such a hit, that our local parks department have dedicated 200 of the 230 acres of the park to the activity. They've put up steel cables up just a few feet from the road all through the park, and left the only parking places near the soccer fields and a the start of the three disc golf courses to discourage any of the other citizens from interfering with the play. I'm pretty sure they even signed an agreement that for every tree that's killed by urine, they'd add another hole.
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