Golfing Blows

Golfing blows.

               

                   The big guy JB making it look good

                Currently I’m working on my golf game in Afghanistan. I have always considered myself a slightly above average athlete, but this ridiculous sport is kicking my ass and I would have already given up, but there isn’t much else to do.  That’s right I’m attempting to try and learn the sport I’ve loathed my whole life in one of the worst countries in the world.  As a Medevac pilot in Afghanistan I’ve had a lot of down time which is sometimes briefly interrupted by sprinting to the aircraft to go earn my paycheck. All this down time has inspired me to give golf another chance.  All my life I have had plenty of opportunities, but have had far too many expensive time consuming hobbies (Skiing, Fly fishing, Mountain biking) to add one to the mix that makes be look like a douche-bag.  But over here I’ve actually kind of started to enjoy it.  All it took was some free clubs from Calloway, endless free time, and 5000 golf balls my girlfriend’s Dad collected for us at his country club.  I’m also learning about club selection from Tiger Woods golf on Xbox.  I realize by now you all think less of me and my job, but being in the Medevac is a strange beast, we are on call 24/7 and must stay in our AO at all times in order to meet our response times.  If you’re a busy motivated person doing this for 9-12 months will make you go insane. Hence golfing has become our stress relief. I will definitely make another blog post explaining Medevac life at a later date, but until then let me complain about why I hate golf.                   My buddy Jesse once (actually twice) tricked me into playing golf, the first time he told me that there were monster bass in the ponds of the Thousand Islands country club.  He recommended that I bring my fly rod and I could rip lip and drink beer while they golfed.  Well we showed up and there was a tournament going on and it became evident that I would look like a giant jackass fly fishing during a golf tournament. Given not much choice I decided to drink beer and tag along with them.  Afterwards, Jesse once again lied to me and told me I did much better than he thought I would.  I’m not sure if this was a complement for how well I did or a burn for how shitty of an athlete he thinks I am.  Either way it worked because later on that night at the bar I was proclaiming myself to be gods gift to golf (after a half dozen shots of whiskey) and challenged his wife Kristen to a game of skins (which I first thought was strip golf).  She was actually offended that Jesse thought I had a chance against her since she had been taking lessons all summer in an attempt to share another hobby with her man.  Reflecting on this makes me think the two of them may have been playing me all along.  We agreed upon a bottle of scotch for me and a bottle of Kettle One for her.  On to my victory, or so I thought.  Well things started off kind of close I took a few holes and so did she, but around the 7th hole or so she started to pull away and my weak game fell apart like Jose Valverde in the 9th.  I still wasn’t even exactly sure which way I was comfortable swinging since I bat and throw a baseball left handed yet shoot a hockey stick right handed.  The ninth hole was the last one I have ever played.  I teed off and shanked it hard right into a fence, then sliced it hard left into the trees.  From where my ball lay I thought I could just slam the shit out of it through the trees onto the green. Well I hit it hard, but god knows where it went.  I slowly cruised the edge of the tree line in my cart looking like a creeper trying abduct a child when I came upon a gorgeous house and a yuppie couple sitting outside on their adirondack chairs enjoying a glass of wine and a great late summer evening. Fourteen years ago as a jackass delinquent teenager this house would’ve been first on my egging list.  The man said he heard my ball banging around behind his house and offered to help me look for it. As the two of us were walking around searching like idiots, he asked me what I was playing, confused at his dip-shit question I replied “Golf”.  He said “No what kind of ball are you playing?”, now I’m the dip-shit.  I had no idea since I had just been picking up random balls I was finding in the grass along the way.  I declared that had to be mine and took a drop directly in front of their deck chairs.  Now on my fifth shot I was ready to show these country club home owning yuppies how it’s done.  I had about a 75 yard shot onto the green and instead hit a 12 yard grounder that even Bill Buckner could have handled.  Disgusted with myself, I got in my cart and as I’m driving past them my golf bag falls off the back of the cart.  I actually saw the woman spit out a bit of her wine as she tried to hold in her laughter. Bitch. I wanted to rip a hard left and peg my golf cart into their deck chairs like a Greenpeace hippie trying to disrupt the Japanese whaling fleet.  Instead, I sheepishly picked up my golf bag and lined up my next shot.  My sixth shot landed on the green and I three putted my way to whatever you call a six bogey.  After that hole I conceded the cup, proclaimed golf a waste of time, and suggested we put our time to better use and go hit the lake.  That was the last time I played golf until now.

My swing is starting to look a little less like a child with down syndrome is weed whacking and a little more like a golfers, and I can hit the ball solid about 50% of the time.  But what I really enjoy about the game is trying to hit Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAPs) vehicles as they cruise by in front of our make shift driving range (These are the vehicles that congress impressively pushed through in record time during the Iraq campaign to combat Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) giving a nod to World War II esqe American production might). We even hit a water truck the other day which sent us (adult men at war) scurrying like kids who had just hit a car with a snowball.  Also the other day, a civilian contractor stopped on his gator and started helping himself to our “donated” golf balls like a hobo picking up cans.  We of course did what anyone on a live range and a club in their hand would do, started teeing off on him.  This of course did not go over well, you see this man was a contractor for the special forces team on our base and they of course paid us a visit later that day.  One of the questions they actually asked us was “do you guys even ever go pick them up” to which our sarcastic reply was “No, here in the Medevac we only hit pristine new balls, after our clubs touch them they’re forever tainted”.  Our fearless team leader held his ground in the face of these door kicking, American badass snake eaters (who thought it was necessary to have a confrontation about golfing… in combat).  He said “let me put it this way if some civilian was out stealing balls off your range what would you do?” After a quick discussion it was agreed upon that they wouldn’t steal our golf balls anymore and we apologized for teeing off on their civilian. As they walked out they promised to call off the team of ninjas that were scheduled to zip tie us in our sleep. You know things are going good in Afghanistan when these are the types of conflicts we get into on base.  I can’t wait to get back and challenge Kristen to another game, but this time I’ll make sure my clubs are firmly secured to the cart.

 I’m not sure where my ball went