Golf is as dumb as skiing but you can do it wearing fewer clothes.
When the Yellowstone Club in Montana was built it became the world’s only private ski and golf club. I was very lucky when I got the job to just hang around and ski with potential members and Tom Weiskopf was chosen to design and build a golf course. When I first met Tom he said he never owned a pair skis in his life.
I immediately responded by saying that I would trade him ski lessons for golf lessons. Today, Tom Weiskopf owes me about 100 hours of private golf lessons.
I really enjoyed teaching Tom the fundamentals of skiing beginning with “the pointy end of the ski goes in the front.”
Tom is about my height and weight before I started to shrink with age and is such a gifted athlete that in a short time we just got to ski together all day without any lessons.
Some golfers travel the world with a bag full of clubs and a suitcase full of proper clothes and many golf courses charge a lot more for a round of golf than for a chairlift ticket at a major ski resort. Unlike a ski resort, where the bumps and snow conditions are very different every time you visit, a golf course is almost exactly the same each time you play it.
When you watch golf on television the pros are slamming the ball out there 300 to 400 yards. I am lucky if I hit it 170 yards.
We are really lucky living here on our island because we have a very nice nine-hole course with 18 holes that you can play a round for only $30.
My own personal experiences range from our island course, a few rounds in Hawaii on Maui, the great Yellowstone Club course and the nearby Anacortes to play on a totally different golf course. To do the latter, I have to get in the ferryboat line at least an hour and a half early then ride the ferry for an hour. After going through all that effort there is a 25 percent chance of rain.
If you’re a skier I know you have 1,000 stories about lurching from one ski run to the next and any golfer who is honest has as many lurching stories on a golf course. (It’s kind of like fishing stories, right?)
There are 18 holes on a golf course because when the game was invented, the players usually had a bottle of Scotch with them and there are 18 jiggers of Scotch in a fifth.
Did you know that the Scotch invented knickers? When the game was being invented players were all wearing kilts complaining about having cold legs halfway through the game. One of the golfer’s wives was an entrepreneur so she just sewed his kilts at the bottom. Then she cut two holes in the sewn-up bottom for his legs.
He looked so different that the spectators started laughing at him. Polite spectators just snickered at how funny he looked in that outfit. Snicker was successfully shortened to knickers and grew in popularity.
In Palm Springs, California, there is a customized maker of golf carts so that they look exactly like the car you drive on the street. You can buy one that looks like a Humvee, an Audi, a Ferrari, or a Cadillac. They can even match the color of the car that you drive to work in and quite often they make to identical carts with or without a cold box to keep your lunch in and drinks in.
With all the fancy possibilities, I still enjoy playing here on our island in the nine-hole course and using one of their golf carts that has gas-powered engines.