Confessions of a Hacker – Bad Company

Filed in Other by on April 30, 2012

I am a long standing fan of the animated series ‘South Park’. One of my favourite episodes involves Crossing Over’s John Edwards being crowned as the biggest douche in the universe. Unfortunately, a couple of weekends ago I had the displeasure of playing a round of golf with two legitimate contenders for his title.

A father and son pairing, I’m going to refer to them as DS (Douche Senior) and DJ (Douche Junior – not to be confused with Dustin Johnson) for the purposes of this column. DS was maybe in his 50s and DJ probably in his mid-to-late 20s and both were A-graders, so there is little to no excuse for what unfolded.

DS and DJ both repeatedly failed a few of the basic rules of golf etiquette. When either one hit a good shot, Frank (a lovely old man who was my marker for the day and for reasons yet to become apparent, a friend of DS and DJ) and I would say ‘good shot’, ‘nice par’ or whatever  only to be met by nothing bar either an indifferent facial expression or a sour scowl. Similarly, if Frank or I hit a good shot or played the hole well, there was no acknowledgement of same. On both the third and fourth missed short putts of my morning (I really do have a mental block over the very short ones at the moment), there was sniggering come from the direction of both DS and DJ.

Ordinarily those aspects would be enough to label them both as very poor company and move on, but two situations really vaulted them into ‘complete douche’ territory.

On the 18th hole (our ninth for the day, as we started on the back nine), DJ and I both hit our tee shots into the left trees. DJ found his ball in a decent spot and hit his approach onto the green, but I was having no luck in locating my ball. My allotted five minutes to find the ball were running short when Frank called out to me from the other side of the fairway, gesturing back to where my ball was. Sure enough, there it was…. about half a metre from the unfilled divot DJ’s shot had left. He almost had to stand on my ball to hit his, but made no effort to tell me that he’d located it whilst I searched in vain. Jackass.

The coup de grace came on the par-4 second hole (our 11th for the day). DJ was about 40 metres short of the green in two and chunked his pitch shot barely onto the front edge. From about 15 metres away, I was watching the ball when a noise (not a ‘fore’ or a ‘look out’ mind you, just a nondescript noise) came from DS. For whatever reason, it made me look at DJ… who had thrown his wedge away in disgust – the wedge now flipping end over end in my direction. Fortunately it was a fairly lazy throw and I had time to move to one side and let it fly harmlessly past.

I looked at DJ, awaiting an apology from throwing a club that would have hit me if I were looking elsewhere… none forthcoming. I looked at DS, waiting for him to admonish his son for such behaviour… not a word. As an aside, if I’d done that in my own Dad’s presence, he’d have probably kicked me out of the group immediately, before insisting that I front the club board to explain why I should retain membership rights.

In last week’s column on perspective, I argued that “As a club golfer, you essentially have four tasks during a round: (1) abide by the rules and etiquette of the game; (2) keep pace with the group in front of you; (3) be good company to your playing partners; and (4) enjoy yourself. That’s it.” DS and DJ both went 0-for-4 against those criteria. In surmising their approaches to golf, the words of Trey Parker and Matt Stone have never rung so true:

Here he is, the Biggest Douche of the Universe! In all the galaxies, there's no bigger douche than you!  You've reached the top, the pinnacle of douchedom! Good going, douche. Your dreams have come true!

 

Previous ‘Confessions of a Hacker’ columns:

(1)  Seeking help, (2) Racking them up, (3) Holding your nerve, (4) Five-foot putts, (5) Letting the Big Dog eat, (6)  Slow play, (7) Trust the yardage , (8) Learning from low markers, (9) Learning from high markers, (10) Playing in the sandpit, (11) Shaping your shots, (12) Missing one-foot putts, (13) New sticks, (14) Perspective

Image:

Comments are closed.