by Bill Giest
But none said they would stoop to cheating to be the worst. “That won’t be necessary,” McMeel says.
One woman says she’s played all her life and still shoots in the 120s and 130s. “I have high hopes in this tournament,” she says. “I expect to be really, really bad.” And you know something, she was. She visualized it, then went out and did it.
“I’ve improved,” says a 125-er from Cleveland, “in that I’ve stopped throwing my clubs—because they’re too expensive these days.”
Some of the golfers even have physical handicaps, yet remain undeterred. “My instructor said I’m just the wrong size to play,” says a burly fella. “He said that at my height and weight he could give me a hundred lessons and I’d never be any good.” What an inspiring teacher. So the brawny lad says he saved his money and shoots the same 115 (“not counting all the strokes,” and who among us really does?) he would have if he’d spent $10,000 on lessons.
But how do they feel about sucking at golf? “It’s embarrassing,” says one man. “Guys will call and ask my wife to play and say I can come along and carry the bags.”
McMeel tells a comforting tale: “I was invited to play at Augusta, where they play the Masters. I was going to rent clubs, but they don’t rent [apparently Palmer, Nicklaus, and Woods all have their own]. We played for three days—three of the longest days of my life. At the end of the third day, my host says, ‘John, look around, because you’re never gonna see this place ever again.’ And he meant it. I notice that whenever I’m invited to play golf by someone, they only ask once.”
The impressive thing about almost all of these bad golfers is that they aren’t just inexperienced golfers. These are golfers who play quite a bit and are still just god-awful. Never get any better. McMeel is like this, a president who leads by example, consistently and earnestly playing really bad golf that is, frankly, horrifying at times.
In a Bad Golfers Association tournament, is it the low scorer or high scorer who wins? Or is it like high-low poker, where they split the pot. And what is the pot?
On the eve of their national tournament, McMeel and Oliphant seem taken aback by this question. They really haven’t thought about it, which seems unusual, since they’ve thought about everything else—except, the BGA isn’t big on score-keeping.
This becomes obvious when one reads “The Rules of Golf—According to the Bad Golfers Association,” rules that are rather at odds with the Rules of Golf as written by the USGA.
Take the BGA’s definition of par, for example: “Par: The BGA rejects this as an elitist definition which may force BGA members to attempt emulation of ego-driven over-achievers with whom they would never normally or willingly associate. Par, the BGA defines as being whatever you say it is.”
Or their definition of “Strokes Taken: The number of strokes a player has taken shall not necessarily include any penalty strokes incurred. In fact, the final score taken should not necessarily include some of the actual strokes taken.”
The tournament is to be played in accordance with the BGA rules, so I boned up on the idiosyncrasies the night before. One of the cardinal rules of the BGA is that taking golf lessons is anathema and if you take them you’re out. My lessons in the grade school gym, then, would seem to disqualify me! Have I made this pilgrimage to Kansas City in vain? Not necessarily, since the one BGA rule that seems to override all others is that none of these rules apply unless you’re caught. It seems to be the ol’ “don’t ask—don’t tell” rule that Bill Clinton put into effect to cover gays in the military and interns under his desk.
Although it remains unclear whether high or low score will win the tournament, I opt to try to beat this gathering of golf klutzes, to try to be best of the worst (the tallest dwarf in the circus), to try to win something, to best somebody, in this god-forsaken sportlike leisure time activity.
And I am leaving nothing to chance. I procure a secret weapon that I believe will ensure victory: the Ballistic Driver.
Now, Ballistic Driver is more than just a name, more than just another new miracle club fashioned from some revolutionary new super-turbo-titanium amalgamation, more than a driver with a head bigger than Bertha’s.
This son-of-a-bitch uses real bullets! Explosives! The clubhead opens up like a rifle chamber, which it is, then a .27 caliber bullet is loaded, and the chamber locked. Then the weapon is placed two inches behind the ball, a trigger on the club grip is pulled, and BLAM! the bullet fires, and the spring-loaded face of the driver shoots forward at two hundred miles per hour, blasting the ball 250 yards! Every time. Without even swinging. Seriously. All you do is line it up.
I talked with the developer of the club, Jim Duncalf, who told me it doesn’t leave a big hole in the ground when it explodes, and isn’t even all that loud because it’s equipped with a silencer. He agreed to ship one to my hotel in Kansas City, because, after all, you couldn’t very well carry the damned thing on an airplane, now could you? Those little security personnel stationed at the airport metal detectors would go … ballistic.
Will I need a firearms license to play golf with this contraption? Would there be a three-day waiting period? Background checks? Would they find out about my toll evasion charge on the Tri-State Tollway in Chicago?
“The Ballistic Driver is not a joke,” answered Duncalf. “Think how they could help handicapped golfers. Would you like to invest $100,000?” I told him no, and that I really didn’t even want to send him $800 for the Driver, so he let me use it free just this one time.
I assured him it was no joke to me either. Anything that would remove my unsightly swing from my golf game was a serious improvement. It sort of reminded me of dynamite fishing in Texas, which consists of lighting a stick of dynamite, tossing it into a lake or stream, and harvesting stunned fish and fish particles. I “caught” some little sun-fish once as a kid utilizing this same technique and waterproof cherry bombs. Like dynamite fishing, the Ballistic Driver also bypasses the need for expensive equipment, knowledge, and skill. No permit is needed, since it is not permitted.
Think Chuck Connors meets John Daly. We figured out the little honey in our hotel room, then carried it under wraps to the practice range at the tournament, where I loaded it, cocked it, put it behind the ball, pulled the trigger, and winced.
There was a harmless “click,” followed by another and another and another. New bullets didn’t help. Rereading the directions didn’t help. All it would do was misfire.
(After the tournament I sent the Driver back to the manufacturers. I tried to call them to discuss another try sometime, but the phone was disconnected. Their fax no longer worked. My letters went unanswered. I did some research and read that this was not the first time the Ballistic Driver had failed during a public demonstration.)
I was crushed. I would have to try to win this thing “legitimately,” if you will.
The Ballistic Driver was just like everything else I tried to improve my golf game: It didn’t work.
I am placed in an esteemed (here, at least) foursome, with President McMeel, titular vice president Oliphant, and their buddy, John O’Day, who is a complete gentleman and a good golfer, all of which means he has absolutely no business being in this tournament. If he wins the tournament with low score I’ll be filing a protest with the commissioner. How can they allow this … golfer! … into this tournament.
Luckily, a tournament sponsor provides golf shoes to every contestant, because I don’t have mine. I really like the clicking sound the spikes make as I tread the walkways. Feel like a real golfer. I have worn them once since, and had to take them to the pro shop to be refitted with the mandatory, new soft rubber spikes that make no racket and are no fun at all.
Luckily, they’re renting clubs, because I don’t have any of those either. Probably I would do a lot better if I had a $2,000 set of custom-made clubs, but it is still unclear to me whether I want to hit the ball farther or not until I get the whole directional thing worked out.
The “golfers�
�� board their carts, Indy 500–style, and hear a man with a bullhorn bellow: “Good luck and bad golf to all!” There is a little bumper cart action as sixty-six carts scatter to their assigned tees.
John McMeel drives me to the first tee, where he pencils in our names on the scorecard. Everyone else has short little golf pencils, but his is long, with an eraser. “All the better to make necessary adjustments,” he explained. So … he will be scoring—a potentially decisive advantage.
Pat and John O’Day arrive, and it’s time to tee off. They’re suspicious of me. I talk a bad game, sure, but you know it’s not enough to simply talk a bad game—there comes a moment in time when you have to tee it up and prove yourself on the field of play. And I will, time and time again, in the sands, the groves, and the ravines here at this country club.
We go over a mental checklist, like pilots readying for takeoff:
“Plenty of paramedics on hand?” I ask.
“Check,” replies McMeel.
“Chainsaws, shovels, machetes?” queries Oliphant.
Check.
“Trailerful of balls?”
Check.
“Scorecard already filled out for all 18 holes?” Oliphant asks McMeel.
Suspiciously, no answer.
“Beverage cart operational?” Oliphant asks with a serious note of concern.
Check.
They want me to tee off first, but we have to wait for a foursome ahead of us, which is taking a little of the pressure off me by hitting some astonishingly ghastly drives.
“Wait for the laughter to die down,” McMeel advises, “then you can go.” Say what you will, McMeel knows bad golf etiquette.
And, of course, bad golf etiquette requires your partners not to be quiet when you’re lining up a shot, but rather to advise and encourage you. As I stand over my first drive, McMeel compliments me on my “matching outfit,” clearly just trying to distract me because my outfit is purposely mismatched owing to my complete disdain for those cute cabana sets some golfers wear.
“Don’t think about the trees,” Oliphant says helpfully.
“Could you guys be quiet for a second?” I plead.
“Bill, Bill, Bill,” chides McMeel, walking over and opening the BGA rule book. “This is covered right here in the BGA rule book.”
And, indeed, there it is, right there on page 5, Section 1–2: “Consideration for Other Players: When a player is addressing the ball or making a stroke, the general atmosphere of camaraderie is enhanced when other players stand close behind and talk to each other, and make disparaging remarks concerning that player’s ability.”
I should have remembered my Walkman. I swing away, hitting the ball rather nicely, except for the sharp right it seems to be taking.
“Do you see it?” I ask. I never see where my drives go. I think it’s because I really don’t want to know.
“Yes,” answers McMeel.
“It’s on the fairway,” says Oliphant.
“Just not our fairway,” adds O’Day. “Please try again.”
Now here is a group of good Christian athletes, who will give a guy a little down on his luck a second chance—unlike most of the uncharitable bastards who play this game.
My second drive is better: shorter, in the rough, next to a stand of trees and probably even findable.
“You’re in the shade,” cheers McMeel, “which is good. It’s a hot one today.”
I step back, standing ready now myself to helpfully offer advice and encouragement to my golfing partners.
“Don’t even think about the crowd of people watching, here, Johnny,” Oliphant says, as McMeel steps to the tee. His first two tee shots go … somewhere. His third lands near mine.
Pat hits his drive farther than we did, right in the center of the fairway, but not this fairway. He decides to play it from there, however, as it is not all that far—as the crow flies—from the intended green.
O’Day hits a painfully beautiful drive, but it hits a rock or sprinkler head or something and bounces almost sideways into the rough.
To speed things up—can you even imagine how long it would take the 132 worst golfers in America to play 18 holes?—this is a “best ball” tournament, which means the four of us each take our second shots from wherever the best of our four first shots landed. However, on the opening drive, none of us had hit even a good shot, let alone a best shot, so maybe we should be playing “better ball” or “least bad ball” or maybe here in the BGA tournament we should be playing “worst ball.” Best ball for our foursome meant that in almost every case we’d be hitting our next shots from wherever O’Day’s previous shot landed.
McMeel hits his second shot. Five feet. He hits his third shot. Ten feet. I figured everyone had just been giving him a hard time about his game, but you know something? John McMeel is every bit as bad as people say he is.
In keeping with BGA etiquette, McMeel’s lame shots are met with Oliphant’s loud guffaws. “It’s the ground crew’s fault,” McMeel snaps. “If they’d mown the rough instead of the fairways, we’d be fine.”
To fit in, I hit my second shot ten feet. I seem to be playing down to the level of the competition, and they like that.
“Beautiful form though, Bill,” McMeel comments, at once politely and impolitely.
Pat is over on the other fairway behind the trees having his way with his ball, as O’Day hits his second shot distressingly well. It rolls to the edge of the green, but then somehow rolls back into the sand trap. Tough luck.
There is a sponsor sign on the sand trap. Unlike other tournaments, the holes are not sponsored here, the hazards are. Because that’s where most of the action takes place. By the 18th hole the sand traps should have been sponsored by Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
O’Day blasts out of the sand—on his first try!—to within five feet of the pin. Then McMeel takes his S wedge and begins flailing away at the sand, like a dog going after a buried T-bone or perhaps a cat trying to cover up something in a litter box. After his fourth whack at it, he picks up his ball and carries it out of the sand.
With scores already soaring, my partners are beginning to take things into their own hands.
“Let me show you the art of bunker play,” Pat says to me, as he steps into the sand: “First of all, you wait till everyone else is up on the green, so all they can see is the top of your head, then you take the ball and some sand in your left hand, swing your club, and release the ball and the sand during your swing, letting the ball and the sand fly onto the green.”
He demonstrates as I watch from the green. He makes a perfect toss that rolls within inches of the hole, and from my vantage point it looks like Tiger himself has stroked it.
“Good out!” yells McMeel.
“But isn’t that, you know … cheating?” I ask.
“No, no, no, Bill, please,” says McMeel. “We don’t like to call it ‘cheating.’ Our creed or credo or whatever, is that if you can get away with it you can do anything: We don’t like to call it cheating—a compromise, maybe, or self-help. Anyway that shot is covered in the rule book.”
And, indeed, there it is, right on page 29: “Relief Situations: The ball may be lifted and resituated. … When the player has been unable to hit the ball over the overhanging rim of a sand trap, the player may pick up the ball and a handful of sand and launch both as far as possible toward the pin. The sand lends authenticity and should head off imprudent questions.”
Okay, so I try it. But my shot isn’t nearly as graceful or believable or close to the hole. In golf, even cheating well takes practice.
John O’Day sinks his putt, so our team takes a 4 on the first hole. “Couldn’t the other three of us just head on back to the clubhouse?” I ask. “I’m not sure I understand our function out here playing ‘best ball’? Can’t O’Day just do this himself?” Yet we play on.
On the second tee, I fail to hit the ball as far as the ladies’ tee and Oliphant immediately whips out the rule book. He turns to page 17, and tries t
o invoke the rule whereby “a male player having not, on his initial drive, hit his ball beyond the ladies’ tee shall complete that hole with his ‘membership’ hanging out.” Fortunately, mulligans were on sale at the tournament for $25 and McMeel buys me one, explaining: “Nobody wants to see that.” I tell him I haven’t seen it for a while myself without the aid of a dental mirror. Not that I need it, it’s just nice to know it’s still there.
After the second shot on the second hole, we three dingbats are wandering the woods on the right side of the fairway—slicers, all—in search of our (golf) balls. Oliphant shows me the rule book’s definition of: “Lost Ball: A ball is ‘lost’ if you have decided the terrain does not warrant screwing with it. If the ball is actually found in such terrain it can be quietly booted into the next county and another put down without penalty in more hospitable surroundings. If the ball is actually lost … the same solution applies.”
There are nuances: “It is sometimes profitable for a player to assist another player in the search for his or her ball. If the assisting player should find the ball first, that player may find it possible to pocket the ball without attracting undue attention and … the [other] player will then have to put down another ball for a one-stroke penalty.”
“Here’s your ball,” he says, handing me my ball. “I’ll give you a break this time, since you’re a novice.” Truly a babe in the woods. So much to learn from these masters. I notice that Oliphant always speeds ahead in his golf cart to take command of the situation, and I start riding with him. My scores improve immediately. He has found ways to improve his game without costly equipment and lessons.
“Found mine!” he yells, discreetly dropping a new ball on the edge of the fairway.
“Me, too!” calls out McMeel, whose ball, believe it or not, is also on the fairway. How fortunate.
Pat instructs me that when playing with straight-arrow sticklers it’s sometimes necessary to be deft of hand to disguise the fact that you are dropping another ball. He’s the one who advises cutting a hole in my right front pants pocket and dropping the ball down through it rather than tossing a ball or stooping over to put one down—both of which arouse suspicion.