 How
to Quit Golf:
It's Easy if You Try
By Kiel Christianson,
Senior Writer
LANSING, MI (Dec. 17, 2001) - Do you own more golf shoes than
dress shoes? Have you ever decided to quit golf for a week, only
to find yourself on a practice range two days later, rationalizing
that if you’re not on a course, it’s not really golf?
These are but two of the tough, soul-wrenching diagnostic questions
posed by Michigan-based writer Craig Brass in his new book How
to Quit Golf (224pp, Dutton, $19.95, or $13.96 on Amazon.com).
In it, Brass tailors a typical 12-step program into a side-splitting
guide to help problem golfers divorce themselves from the game
they so hate. Or love. Or love to hate. Or hate to love.
So why would you want to quit golf? Or even read a humorous
account of how one could go about quitting golf, if one were so
inclined? In the words of the author, “Golf is not a subset
of some highly enlightened, Zen-based Eastern religion that if
mastered will bring you closer to total consciousness. It doesn’t
offer a glimpse inside your, or anyone else’s, soul….What
golf is, on the other hand, is a nasty, vicious game, played mainly
by educated people who quite frankly should know better than to
keep playing [it].”
Brass’s point, in brief, is that for all the money, time,
and emotional distress golfers devote to the game, next to no
one ever improves substantially at it. Hey, the truth hurts.
However, Brass’s sharp wit, breezy style, and occasionally
bawdy humor salves the wounds inflicted on so many of us by this
mean-spirited game. Take for example his discussion of chunking
your wedge shots:
“[I]t’s a nasty little effect, much like herpes. Always
popping up at the wrong time. There you are, poised and ready
to score. The target in your crosshairs, looking as vulnerable
as a drunken sorority girl, and you lay half a yard of closely
mown bent grass over the ball.”
Like I said, the truth hurts. But if we, as participants in
perhaps the most frustrating past time in the history of the world,
cannot laugh at our own ineptitude and the inherent evil of the
game itself, then we should quit it. And, moreover, stop making
the lives of those around us so miserable with our moaning and
whining about slicing, three-putting, rope-hooking, etc., etc.,
ad nausum.
But even if you don’t want to quit the game, at least do
yourself a favor: cross off all those worthless instructional
books from your Christmas list and replace them with How to
Quit Golf. And put some laughs back into the game. |
