GEEZER GOLF
O.G.B.
Okay, if you have never watched golf on TV, then I am not speaking to you. However, if you have chanced to put on the Golf Channel or happened upon Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo calling the shots during the final Sunday stages of a golf tournament while you were hoping to catch 60 Minutes then you might have seen one of the myriad series of golf ball commercials.
Golf is one game that can be played, not necessarily well, by all ages. For many of geezers, like me it is the one sport where I can get outside for a few hours to avoid the rocking chair. Watching the pros on TV is another kind of sport, overshadowed by the schadenfreude that makes a duffer feel good when one of the millionaire pros screws up and puts the ball in the water while going for the pin.
The manufacturers of golf equipment spend boat loads of money to sponsor these events on TV. They need to flog their newest and best drivers, irons, clothing, and golf balls. Their promise, although not really stated in so many words, is that if any player, even duffers like me would only shell out the cash for the latest and greatest, then we could “hit’em like Rory, or DJ, or Bryson”.
Ah, fantasy. First off, no seventy-plus golfer is going to hit the ball with the accuracy and distance of a pro. Six-hundred-dollar drivers and specially shafted irons aside, the other item that the pros endorse is the ubiquitous golf ball.
A golf ball is a golf ball, you say. Nay, nay. According to one line of commercials, if you want to play like a pro, you must use the golf ball that they use. Each manufacturer has a line of Pro and Tour labeled balls that they tell us will give us the same edge as Jason, Justin, or Jordan.
Then, with the speed to make you head spin, come ads for balls that are designed for us slow swing speed players. Don’t we want to play like the pros? What gives? If we buy these balls, what are we giving up?
Which brings me to the real question – buy golf balls? Who actually does that? Because one of the oldest tenets of Geezer Golf is that one never buys new golf balls, one only plays the balls that are found on the course. Of those there are many.
The brand that most geezers use is O.G.B. – Other Guy’s Balls. Look in a geezer’s bag and you will find a collection of brands of balls. There you will find an assortment of neon-colored balls, some with corporate and collegiate logos, some with various personal marks, even some with the name of the golfer who lost the ball.
You see, if you are a true geezer golfer, after you purchase your first dozen balls, or better yet, have someone gift you the balls for your birthday, Christmas, or Father’s Day, you won’t need to buy any more. The only thing you need add to your bag is an extendable ball retriever. Now, as you wend your way along the fairways, you can thrash the rough for lost balls.
A year ago, I was sharing a cart with Nate, the king of the lost ball brigade. My ball was in the fairway, but his was some way off, nestled in knee-deep tick-infested weeds. As I went to the rear of the cart to take out a five iron that I thought best for the situation. I had just put my hand on the club head when he floored the gas and sped away. Luckily, I had a firm grasp the club as my bag attached to the rear of the cart raced toward the high rough.
Given that the rest of my equipment was some fifty yards away and vanishing into the weeds, I did my best with the five and got onto the green. I now looked anxiously toward the rough where my putter was lodged in its place in my bag. I had no choice but to walk over to the rough to retrieve it.
As I approached the cart, Nate, no small man, was up to his elbows in the weeds and thrashing away with his ball retriever. I called out to him, but he was head down looking at the ground and muttering to himself.
Since I was wearing golf shorts, I thought it the better part of valor not to step into the rough lest ticks, or worse, a copperhead might decide to take a nip of my ripe flesh. I called out to Nate, twice, before he emerged with a smile. In his fleshy palm were three golf balls. He was elated at his find. Of course, none of the three was the one he had errantly hit out of bounds. That was of no matter to him. The one he had hit, was one that he had fished out of a green side pond several holes before. As far as he was concerned the TV ads be damned.
There have been instances when play has come to a complete stop mid-fairway as the lure for OGBs has possessed members of a foursome. Wands in hand, they rapidly abandon a good lie while delving into the entrances to fox dens and snake pits in hopes of a find.
One must applaud their zeal and some of them have amassed an entire season’s worth of golf balls. But guys, these are just golf balls. If you don’t want to pay $9 a sleeve, go to any good golf shop and buy a bag of reconditioned balls. After all, you are never going to hit any ball like Rory or Jordan or Bryson.
Now, truth be told, I have collected several OGBs while playing a round. I just don’t go looking for them. If I am hunting an errant shot, sometimes one finds another ball. In fact, on a recent par-three I hit a Bridgestone yellow ball (bought online, I might add) just right of the green in an area of dense rough. I had seen where it went and walked from the tee right to the spot where it had vanished into the grass. Well, vanished it did.
I looked but couldn’t find it. For God’s sake it was bright yellow. It should have stood out like a whore in church. But no, it had been swallowed by the golf gods. But…but there nestled like a hen’s egg was a bright red Titleist. So, what is a geezer to do? I picked it up and played it. Of course, a week later I used it on the 18thwhere it bounced from the fairway and into the left rough. I looked for it but did not venture into that arm of the Okefenokee. But then what the golf gods take they often give back. There at my feet was a new Titleist Pro V One.
To finish the round, I used a brand new, recently purchased Srixon Divide. With pleasure I watched the bi-color ball spin through the air and land on the green where its red and yellow hemispheres spun ever so gently toward the cup.
Just try doing that with some mud-stained orphan ball fished from the depths of the slime of the pond guarding the fifth hole.
