I know I usually post about everyday beauty, but this adventure can’t go untold.
I’m back to golf this summer. After having taken a couple of seasons off, I decided to give it another go and I’ve joined a foursome in a local ladies’ league. It is a small, friendly group and we four have all agreed that we are just out for fun, nothing competitive.
Competitiveness and ambition aren’t the same thing are they? I think there is a possibility that we each have a streak of ambition. Of course, I can only really speak for myself.
Last week, I had a pretty good game, so this week it was only natural that I would want to improve, right? Plus, this week the ‘game of the week’ was best score on a secret hole. How fun! That would take the pressure off trying to perform on any particular hole. In my secret analytic mind, I figured the chosen hole must be number five.
Five is the longest and trickiest hole. A par 5, it starts off high, has bit of a dog leg, is flanked on the left side by sand traps and on the right by a very long marsh. Easy enough though, with a plan. Keep it centered, drive to the corner of the leg, then straight up the fairway to the green. Don’t even think of the water or the sand.
My drive went a little left, but otherwise pretty much as planned. Donna was in trouble though. Her ball had hit the very edge of the right-hand marsh, hard to tell at a distance if it was just in or just out of the water. She was safely off to the side searching in the reeds, so I decided to take my second shot. Somehow, and I’m not sure exactly how, my ball flew right, skimmed her leg, and landed at about the same spot as hers, but definitely in the water.
I went over, to apologize for the close call, and to help look for the balls. As I was leaning into the soggy edge of the wetland, I saw movement in my periphery. It was one of those eerie moments when time both slows down and speeds up. The movement was a cart slowly rolling toward us. The movement picked up speed. By the time I realized that the bag was purple, and mine, it was hitting a ridge at the edge of the marsh. As Newton’s law of movement will have it, even though the wheels had come to a stop, the weight of the clubs continued, ass-over-tea-kettle as my mother would have said, and the whole works catapulted forward landing upside down in what I then determined by the odor of close proximity, was more of a swamp.
OMG! How could that have just happened? I was in shock, and I took a minute to pick out the two balls I had spotted in the shallows. Terri, the first to snap back to reality yelled, “never mind the balls, your clubs are sinking!” Yes, the bottom of the golf bag was just above the surface, detached from the cart, which was also completely upside down. They had come unfastened in the crash. Both were sinking fast. I leaned helplessly toward them, but they were beyond my reach. “Wait!”, yelled Donna, “don’t go in! Someone, give me a pole!” Pole, nine iron, whatever, by thinking quickly, she was able to hook the strap of the bag and pull it toward us. As soon as it was close enough, I eased it out, carefully keeping it prone so I wouldn’t dump its contents aka, my clubs! With the bag, and what looked like most of the clubs back on dry land, my attention turned to the cart which by now was almost fully submerged. Hmm, how deep could this be?? As I eased into ankle-depth muck and grabbed the edge, trying to pull it to safety, I saw first my water bottle, then my visor, then a purple club handle bob to the surface.
My efforts oscillated back and forth between the floating objects and the sinking cart, but all were just beyond my reach. Donna, still on the scene, and thinking more clearly said, “here, let me hold on to you”. Yes Donna, who is approximately 10 inches shorter, and about 100 lbs smaller than me, was holding on very securely to my skirt. Just to be clear, at this point, if I went in, we were definitely both going in. That is teamwork though, and we did it. All bobbing paraphernalia and the cart were successfully pulled on shore.
Meanwhile, Terri had been on deck to hand over poles as needed, but Jackie had been rendered helpless with laughter.
I reloaded my bag on the cart, noted that yes, the brake had been on, verified that our snacks were safe in their waterproof pouch and fished my phone out of its not-so waterproof pocket.
We let the next team play through while we collected ourselves.
It was only later that I realized that while all the distraction was underway, a deer fly had slipped up my shorts and bitten the cheek of my butt—but that is a whole other story.
One thing is certain. At least I’m pretty sure. I am not going to have the lowest score on hole five.
PS Sorry, there is no video footage for verification