It was a relief to be back within the warm confines of Andalusia last week.
I ate enough barbecue to choke a goat and all I drank was sweet tea and gravy.
Praise the Lord, I even had real cornbread made in bacon grease by my mama. Life seldom gets any better than that.
On Saturday, my father and I decided to do something that doesn’t come easy to the Murphy clan. We played golf.
Alabamians, as a rule, love golf. We’ve built championship courses. We’ve invested in Robert Trent Jones. We’ve even got some tackle stores that double as caddie shops (not to mention beauty parlors, ammo depots and gas stations).
And while my mother’s side of the family is full of splendid golfers, my father’s side has a bit of a problem with the sport. This probably has something to do with our genes – but whatever the case, watching a Murphy play golf can prove to be a high impact pastime.
In the past few months, my mama has really gotten the knack for hitting that white dimpled ball into the various holes. She has bought the equipment. She has practiced. She wears spiked shoes and one glove. The woman is serious; she even has some sort of contraption called a “ball retriever.” Note that amateurs never
seem to have “ball retrievers,” although we’re the ones that need them most.
Mother encouraged my non-golfing father to get in the act. This is not to say that she wants to actually play the game with him that would take all day. Thus, I came into the picture. Mama thought that a round of golf might be a nice father-son experience.
Yeah, right. First off, I should tell you that after having worked in the fashion business here in New York City. you golfers need to get with the program. Perhaps the multiple plaids, bright pastels, and weird visors serve as a way to silently distract the competition – I don’t know. One thing is for certain, old men should never wear knickers.
Immediately, I realized my father and I didn’t quite fit in. Perhaps it was because we
couldn’t get the cart out of reverse until the third green and were having to drive back while the cart kept making that annoying “beep, beep, beep.”
Nor could we figure out our handicaps. I suggested to my father that he was getting old and that he should give himself a handicap for senility. He responded that we wanted to handicap him with his putter. So much for bonding.
The Murphy family has a less-than-illustrious golfing career. My great-grandfather, the lawyer Murphy, couldn’t hit the ball 20 yards according to eyewitnesses. It took him all day to play nine holes.
My grandmother Murphy gave up golf when, on hole number 14, she teed off and hit the pond’s duck — killing it.
So it should come as no surprise I shot a 78 on Saturday … on the first nine holes.
My score on the first nine doesn’t count the “whiffs” or all the balls lost to the woods. ponds, creeks, and fairways.
Dad beat me by about 20 strokes, which when you have scored as high as ours were, is not a substantial margin. Luckily, there weren’t any golfers behind us — or perhaps they “snuck” by while my father and I were rooting around in the woods looking for our balls.
On hole number six, my father and I both sent up huge prayers that nobody we knew would see us. “Please, oh please, God, just let me actually make contact with the ball.” was my prayer. By some miracle, I actually hit the sucker after only three whiffs (there is fine art to making a whiff seem like a practice swing). Dad, too, managed to pound his ball out onto the fairway. Around hole number 10, Dad and I were developing a sense of comradeship. We developed the Murphy rules of golf:
(1) If after nine or ten swings the ball has not moved more than five feet, one stroke is recorded:
(2) If on the first swing contact with the ball is made but it is hurled into some sort of hazard, the players should shout “do over!” and the person not up to bat should chuck another bail onto the green in a sportsmanlike manner;
(3) If the player should actually get the ball up in the air, the other players should make suitable encouraging remarks, such as “How’d you to that, Dad?”;
(4) If a piece of the golf course (turf) should fly farther than the ball itself, the mall may be repositioned where the turf landed;
(5) If other golfers are spotted behind a Murphy golf party, Murphy golfers may either simply pick up their balls and throw them, or, be awarded a one-stroke “gimme” if they are less than 350 yards from the hole;
(6) Four strokes may be subtracted for producing a neat trick shot (i.e., your bali hitting a tree and bouncing back onto the fairway, hitting the golf cart, hitting the ball and having it fly behind you, etc. …);
(7) Putters should be employed to pitch a ball that is less than 20 yards from the hole … Murphy golfers are by no means encouraged to use a “chipper”;
(8) Once at the green, a sportsman in the Murphy way will stand behind the flag for the express purpose of stopping puts that careen past the hole at undesirable speeds.
This is best accomplished with a quick “shoe stop” as opposed to bending over to grab the ball.
Grabbing the ball might attract scores from golfers who haven’t been educated in the Murphy way.
Towards the end of the course, it really looked like Dad was the winner. At that point, he was beating me by about 40 strokes.
I decided to unnerve him by asking “Say. that Mama, Grandfather Wiggins, and his golf-pro buddies coming up behind us?” as he was putting. That usually added an extra four or five strokes to his score.
Also, I found that if I dove the golf cart, it for some reason added strokes to his score.
He seemed to be upset that I took the turns “flat-out” as we say in Andalusia. So what if we lost a few clubs in the process? He couldn’t use them anyway.
Actually, I’ve sort of gotten attached to golf. It’s good exercise when you have to swing as many times as I did.
So keep swinging Andalusia, and watch out for those ducks.