Feature Columns
Falling for a game of golf this season
By Dan St. Yves
Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Perhaps I‘m getting a bit too preoccupied with golf lately.
I mean, the topic has come up at my weekly poker game, during a brief chat with the cashier at a grocery store, and with the doctor who recently removed a golf tee from the ball of my foot. A golf tee that was yet another setback in my attempt to launch a barefoot golf league. Add that hazard to dodging goose poop, and I‘m afraid barefoot golfing will never get off the drawing board.
As long as the snow stays away (or you happen to be departing to a hotspot like Arizona, for example), the golf clubs just can‘t be packed away in the garage for the season. It wouldn‘t be right. It would be like coffee without cream and sugar or Yogi without Boo-Boo.
If you have just taken up the endeavour of golf, don‘t fear! You can still golf a bit longer, and try to get better before next spring, amid the rush back to the greens.
As a matter of fact, I have compiled a few tips and definitions, which might help the novice golfer become a bit better acquainted with the game:
u Woods. These are the clubs with the large, over-sized heads, and woods are also the likely destination of your ball, when driven off the tee box. This time of year, you may even add just a wee bit of excitement to your game of golf when you‘ve gone into the woods to search for your wayward ball, and come face-to-face with a lumbering bear searching for dinner. Always keep your wood club with you, in the woods.
u Irons. These are the sticks that range in appearance from something much like a hockey-stick in composition, to lofting quite a bit, like a front-end loader. Not a bad comparison, when you are trying to ‘loft‘ your ball out of a sand-trap, or water hazard. These irons will number from about 1 to 9, with lofts graduating slightly, the higher the numbers go. The highest loft is on the sand wedge. Not to be mistaken with a corned beef on rye, this iron will be your best friend in many situations along your average golf course layout.
u Putter. Not what the foursome ahead of you appears to be doing, rather, this club is the last one that you will typically use once your ball has successfully landed on the green (more on that term momentarily). Of course, by the time your scorecard has reached 187 on the front nine, you‘ll be wondering why you aren‘t just puttering away in the garden back home.
u Greens. This is a funny one. On the average golf course, the fairways are green, the forest is green, the guy that asked to play with your group is pretty green, and yet the description for the area with the hole is ‘the green‘. Golf was invented in Scotland, so I will assume that tempers began to flare after naming ‘fairway‘, ‘rough‘, and “ another wee dram, ma‘am”.
u Clubhouse. The best part of a round of golf. After an arduous afternoon of driving around in a golf cart, being handed your clubs by a caddy, and quenching your thirst with chilled beverages straight from the mobile beer cart, you are finally able to relax in some small bit of comfort, along with your companions and eight flat-screen TV‘s. Until the next time the weather is fair, and you can all gather again.
Happy flailing . . . I mean falling, into golf!
- Dan St. Yves is a humour columnist. His column appears each Wednesday in eVent! Check out Dan’’s website at www.nonsenseandstuff.com or contact him at ThatDanGuy@shaw.ca.