Most Likely Events That Will Leave You Bloodied at the Muni Golf Course
The doves’ morning song rouses you from your slumber, heralding a new day. Giddiness guides your steps as you freshen yourself into perfectly pleated slacks and a smartly pressed polo shirt. You venture out onto the morning dew where crisp, clean air fills your lungs. You load your clubs into the boot of your SLK and embark on the seven minute drive to your exclusive club, where a career looper is anticipating your arrival. The good man takes your bag under his watchful eye as you then head to the clubhouse where the morning sous chef has your regular breakfast sandwich (the perfect combination of bagel, egg, bacon and cheese) ready for consumption and digestion and passage. The career looper dutifully posts sentry at the first tee preparing a new campaign towards breaking your course’s 18 hole record.
This is not reality though, and none of the above happened or is going to happen anytime soon. You woke up to your usual Saturday morning alarm - a textbook flying elbow drop courtesy of one of the middle kids. You found some clean-ish shorts at the top of a clothes pile of worn, but not quite ready for the laundry garments that is currently occupying the chair in front of your computer (you’ll get to cleaning off the laundry chair someday - promise). Breakfast consisted of a piece of last night's pizza and a cup of coffee. No hate though. You are still smiling with the knowledge that soon you will arrive at your local municipal course to tee it up with your boys for a morning of escape. You throw your clubs into the backseat of your late model Camry and off you go!
Although the local municipal golf course isn’t the middle aged sanctuary you dreamed of when you were a single lad embarking on a career, and daydreamed of what you would do when you found a little extra coin in your pocket. It is the safe harbor providing respite from the demands of families and pressure of bosses. You connect with kindred spirits in line with the same pursuits as you - exercise, sunshine, banter, light gambling, and moderate alcohol consumption - what we used to call camaraderie. This is the case 90% of the time, however there still exists the 10% of potential chaos, when your experience on the muni course goes a bit topsy-turvy. In my muni experience a seemingly harmless conflict of opinion can hold all the potential to go full clown show within in a matter of moments. That is why, as a matter of PSA, and possibly as a resource for situational awareness, I’ve listed some of the main reasons why you would come home from your local Muni course soiled with blood; such that your wife is forced to pick up the phone and initiate an interrogation, all the while deciding if she is calling urgent care or a divorce attorney.
Too drunk - A few too many Truly’s in the midmorning sun is the obvious culprit, when a misplaced foot on the cart path causes your spikes to slip and slide and consequently you find yourself face down on the pavement with a chipped tooth and a busted lip. Instinctively, you start mopping the blood off your face directly into your moisture wicking golf shirt. Thankfully, it’s Saturday and you have about 20 hours to find another acceptable shirt for Sunday services. The clock starts NOW!. (Check the Fashion Tab on this site to see my companion article clothing review: “Which Golf Shirts Make for the Best Tourniquets”).
2. Aggressive, inattentive cart driving - Riding in a golf cart is a game of inches, whether you’re piloting the vehicle or in shotgun. The truth is, a modicum of trust is required for two people of various acquaintances to embark on their golf course journey together. Man meets machine and he suddenly finds an insatiable desire to “find the limit”. Then you find out he recently wrapped binge-watching Drive to Survive (on Netflix) and asserts “When you no longer go for a gap that exists you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing”. True! We are competing; however, in a match of golf and as of this printing Rick Shiels Golf has yet to release a video on toppling a 12 mph cart at your golf course’s non-existent Beckett’s Curve. At the other end of the spectrum is the driver with his head too into the match and reluctant to pull his trained gaze off the on-course action - after all, blind trust in the integrity of your playing partner is the crucible in which rules infractions are born. This preoccupation can cause your course chauffeur to steer too close to the treeline, where the odds of a low hanging branch puncturing unsuspecting occupants, causing a burst of blood like a sizzling bratwurst under immense pressure, increases significantly. Oh! and There will be blood.
3. On-course knife fight - You cannot take any aspect of personal safety for granted in the post-pandemic era. This extends to your on course safety as well. As Charly Bowdre so eloquently advises in Young Guns (1988) and immortalized in Warren G’s Regulators, “You can’t be any geek off the street. You gotta be handy with the steal, if you know what I mean, earn your keep.” 90’s kids hold these truths to be self-evident. And we are not talking about the stiff shafts on your irons. From the strength of the coffee in the snack shack’s airpot to the suspicious scratching out of 500cc on your partner’s driver, there are many frictions on the course that portend a duel of knives. My advice is to focus on your game and save your energy for the street toughs congregating at the turn’s vending machines.
4. Attacked by a flock of geese - They call her The Bird Lady of Shady Hills. This widowed, grandmother of seven, loads her clubs into her custom, lilac colored golf cart fitted with curtains she crocheted herself that lovingly depict her favorite songbirds. Every Tuesday at 7am she disembarks from her condo in phase 3 “Sunny Pastures” of the retirement community and travels down the esplanade to where the local government and the developers shook hands to build a public golf course in return for a sweetheart conservation easement. No abusive tax avoidance practices here. Unfortunately, you have the 7:30 tee time right behind hers and you notice that even before she gets to the tee box, miraculously, seemingly by some act of god, all the geese have waddled out of the pond are queuing in front of the blue tees. It all makes sense moments later as you see a feeble, liver spotted, hematoma’d hand emerge from birdy curtains to throw down gobs of birdfeed. The frenzy begins - gusts of wind converge from flapping wings, a cacophony of honking birds mute any pre round boasts and banter, guano, or as the French say “vert caca”, is smeared slick from Red Tees to Gold. Fear now grips you as the insatiable birds finish their morning appetizer and the Bird Lady tees off on the opening Par 4 399 yard switchback - piping one 65 yards down the middle of the fairway with a loft that betrays the 19 degree angle of her club face. You have at least another 10 minutes before The Bird Lady is safely outside of your driving distance and the geese, Canada's annually occuring F-U to America, have now locked eyes on you and your everything bagel. They pounce and swarm, chaotically flapping and biting for any morsel of your delicious ode to glutenous excess. In the fracas - cuts, scratches, avian influenza, and blood are all exchanged between man and beast. I’m not saying this happens all the time, for it only has to happen once before you're known as an easy mark in bird circles. Not sure what that road to redemption looks like, or if it even exists. Beware.
Unassuming geese can turn blood thirsty savages when provoked.
5. Struck by an errant shot - You’ve just been hit by a golf ball and no doubt crumpled onto the pitch, grasping your head, and are now screaming “Oh why God?! By all that’s holy, Why me?!”. You’re just about to shake your fist at the heavens, when you realize the rest of your foursome is staring at you and distancing themselves from your wholly untethered reaction. A little late is better than never to remember Don’t Panic! Compose yourself and go through your checklist. 1) Where are you? On the fairway - good. Now check if you’re on the hole you’re playing’s fairway; or are you more than likely on the fairway belonging to the hole on the other side of the treeline, where your tee shot landed. Oh! You’re over there? You might be in the wrong and took an unnecessary risk playing your ball from there without registering what was happening with the players on that hole. 2) Are you on the green? - You are? Congratulations! Now ask yourself how long did your group take to get on the green? Is your group possibly playing too slow? Oh, it's a fivesome with four carts? Ok, you definitely may have deserved some chin music from the group playing behind you. You’ve just been called out for disrespecting and encroaching on every player on the course’s time. You’ve been dealt your warning and penalty all in one, now consider thoughtfully whether to escalate the situation to fisticuffs - doubling down on being wrong - or with a wave of the hand and tip of the visor acknowledging what just happened and letting the trailing group know “I’ll be better”. I know what I would do, but I’d love to hear from the gallery, especially if you’ve been hit by a golf ball, what the situation was and how you responded?
