Comment - When it’s all over, you can only laugh

With few exceptions when we are matched with other players, it’s a good experience. By and large golfers are a pretty decent group of people that share a common interest, courtesies and respect for the game. In more than 40 years playing golf, I can literally count the bad experiences on one hand. Unfortunately, one of the worse occurrences happened just a few weeks ago.

I was playing on an absolutely gorgeous spring Sunday afternoon with two of my favorite ladies. Our friend’s husband and my grandson were paired with two young men from Western North Carolina and the ladies and I welcomed a local to our group. I should have sensed trouble when our player dropped a few not so choice words on the practice putting green!

As the round progressed it was apparent our addition (I choose not to use Will’s name.) had a very inflated opinion of his game. The F-bomb laced with other profanity was dropped on virtually every hole. Through the 14^th hole it got continuously worse, but by some miracle the ladies had only witnessed a few of his milder outbursts.

However, on No. 15 we observed a major meltdown. His pull hook drive hit a tree and clearly bounced out of bounds. “Turnip Head” with all his local knowledge was adamant he was not out of bounds and could find his ball. After the ladies and I hit our approach shots, we joined the search and I quickly showed him his ball – out of bounds. The profanity explosion was immediate followed by more bad shots. It only got worse.

A chunked tee shot on the Par 3 16^th brought vulgarity that surpassed all previous episodes. Suddenly a club went flying as the ladies were proceeding to their tees. It startled us. We had been patient, but confronted him with his behavior. To our shock he justified his actions by stating, “the club hadn’t hit anyone and his language was his business.” I quietly asked him to please play on without us and he arrogantly was on his way. Yes, I reported his behavior to the pro shop.

This was by far the worse experience I have ever had being paired with another golfer. However, we could barely stop laughing on the final few holes. When I pushed a drive well into the rough on No. 17, the ladies made a point of telling me, “Now, don’t go all Will on us!”