The monkey on my back!

Hello Blogosphere,

My name is Howard, and I am a golfaholic.

I have a mild addiction to golf, I love to play golf, watch golf, read about golf, talk about golf, tweet about golf and now, I will be blogging about golf. I even dream about golf, mostly I dream that one day, I will actually be good at it. It doesn’t sound like a mild addiction, does it?

I played my first game of golf in the summer of 1987 and while it wasn’t exactly love at first flight, the lure of the game slowly tugged at those places in the brain where our addictions lay dormant, waiting for that first taste of the succulent sweet nectar of whatever forbidden fruit caresses the spot that awakens the inner voice that softly and seductively whispers, “resistance is futile!”

I guess it could be worse, the addiction could be crack cocaine or meth, but then again, both combined would probably be cheaper than a golf addiction. It didn’t take long to realize that the green left over from my paychecks was slowly being chipped away until my take home pay was literally sliced in half. Life got rough for awhile as food, clothing and shelter took a back seat to my addiction and I fell deeper and deeper into the trap. Be fore I knew it, I had puttered away most of my life’s savings to feed my growing and out of control addiction.

Oh, I looked at the Canadian Tire and Kmart starter sets with their enticing $249.00 price tags, I even scanned the classifieds for used sets, but in my drive to be the best that I could possibly be, I bought the best that I could possibly buy. Power Built TPC irons, Taylor Made driver and woods, Bag Boy folding golf cart, Wilson golf bag, Pinnacle golf balls, FootJoy golf shoes, gloves, tees, markers, divot repair tools, doodads, thig-a-ma-jigs, widgets, gizmos and a myriad of training devices whose makers faithfully promised would miraculously mold me into the next Arnold Palmer.

Then of course, I had to look like a golfer and since tee shirts and jeans are not appropriate attire on most golf courses, I had to buy a whole new wardrobe. Golf pants, golf shorts, golf shirts, socks, belts and hats, I was going in the hole fast and the crazy thing was, I hadn’t even broken 120 yet.

Then came green fees, the one dollar bets for longest drives and closest to the pin, and the beers and lunches at the 19th hole where our fearless foursome of friends would sit and regale each other with recaps of the shots that would keep us coming back for more; that drive on the fourth hole that found the middle of the fairway, or that long putt on seven that rimmed the cup and dropped to save double bogey, rare occurrences for our rookie group.

You would think by now the hazard lights and red flags would have gone off in my head and I would have clued into the fact that I was hopelessly hooked but, like most addicts I lived in denial. Luckily, I was single at the time and did not have to watch my marriage go down in flames because of my addiction. Draw your own conclusions, but at least I didn’t have to deliver a pitch every weekend to an angry wife as to why I deserved to be allowed to play, or find a fair way to compensate her for my habitual weekend absence from our marriage. Better yet, I never had to worry about getting a hot iron delivered in angry spousal frustration to the side of the head, or a club from a piece of wood to the side of the head without the imprint of an iron on it because I got caught in a bad lie about where I was. As any married man will attest, wives everywhere seem to always have a little birdie that tells them what is really going on.

In 1992, I bought my first house and the money and time available for golf became a rare commodity. Our foursome was starting to drift apart and what would turn out to be an eleven year break from my addiction began. I had broken a hundred the year before for the first time and was starting to post consistent scores in the high nineties and with great reluctance, I relegated my clubs to the storage room. What seemed like hundreds of games, millions of cuss words, dozens upon dozens of lost balls and a steady drain of money from the pocket book finally rolled to a stop.

There were good times to lament as well, long walks over beautifully manicured courses on hot summer days. The comaraderie, jokes and quick wit shared by four friends loyal to the tee times, even if it meant getting up at the ungodly hour of 4:00 am to make it to a booked tee time of 5:00 am . The beers and banter shared on the 19th hole where bragging right were harder to come by because we had all improved; someone always had a longer drive or more dramatic putt.

There was the thrill and personal pride of watching the flight of a perfect drive and its soft landing 250 yards away in the middle of the fairway. The graceful beauty of an approach shot with a seven iron to within four feet of the pin. The exhilaration and excitement of draining a 50 foot putt for birdie as you pumped your fist in victory, because for that one brief moment in time, you felt like Tiger Woods. Those moments were few and far between but were starting to happen more often.

As the memories of those first five fabulous years of my foray into golf faded from my mind like the graceful flight of an eagle gliding slowly away, I settled into my new life as the keeper of my castle. Probably because I had more time to devote to other areas of my life, I found a girlfriend to spend time with as well. It would be eleven long years before I would feel the urge to pull my clubs out of retirement and find my way back to the game I loved, but when that finally happened, I swore on my ex girlfriends new boyfriends future grave that; as long as my body was capable of swinging the club with some degree of efficiency, I would never, ever give up the game again.

Did I mention I have a mild addiction to golf?

To be continued………..

Tagged as: golf, golfing