Golf is not for the timid. I love to shoot 36 holes on a Sunday, especially during hunting season. I have to carry an extra bag for my firearms.

But that is not what I am here to talk about. The new golfer, Harvey, is irritating. He sticks out like a neon golf ball in a sand trap! He buys all the latest Bubba Watson gear, but that is not the most irritating part. It is that dagnabbin (this blog is a “G” rated blog, so I am being very nice right now) iPhone he has to have with him.

OMFG (this means Old Man From Gainesville – he was a very irritating person, too, but he only shouted incessantly at everyone around him for the entire 18 holes)… Harvey has to look at that thing for every shot. I thought we paid caddies for that. He uses the laser level app to check the slope of the green, the weather app to check wind direction and speed and then he plays that music…

I didn’t think those iPhones had it in them… the speakers can put out some sound!

He was playing tunes (putting it mildly) that were scaring the gator from the 15th hole so bad that only his tail was visible in the center of the lake. Then he used the thing to take a picture of the gator. It wasn’t bad during the first three holes (yes, I was paired up with him, lucky guy that I am). But at the fourth hole, he actually talked to the thing, “Which club should I use, Siri?”

Before I could reply that my name was Alvin and not Siri, the phone answered him. “Well, Harvey, since you are on the 4th hole, which is a long par 3, and you have a bad habit of slicing with the 9, I recommend you use the 8 and swing a little slower than you usually do.”

I was still wondering how it knew he was on the 4th hole (I could use that for those times when I play against Old Man McGee – loser of a hole drinks a shot of Single Malt Scotch for each stroke above the winner we were – since after losing three holes to him, I had a hard time figuring out where I was), when he put the ball right on the green with only a three foot putt to go. Glad we weren’t doing shots.

I wasn’t concentrating, still had that Siri thing on my mind, and I put my shot right in a squirrels nest halfway up the pine tree behind the green. I tried coaxing the squirrel into dropping the ball onto the green, but he was still mad at getting awakened so abruptly. I took the penalty strokes and ended up finishing the par 3 with 6.

 

Next hole was not much better. I must have been a little irritated, because I swung so hard at the ball that I saw Sponge Bob’s face cringe right before my driver connected with his nose (yes, I was using a Sponge Bob ball) and sliced him into the golf cart and ricocheted him into the deep woods.

I was going to go looking for Sponge Bob, but I must have scared Harvey when I pulled out the machete. He screamed and started swinging his driver at me (he didn’t even ask Siri which club would be best for beaning a machete wielding attacker – I think she would have chosen a 5 iron, not a driver). He got close a couple of times before I chopped the head off the club… Big Bertha’s head went careening off toward Sponge Bob in the deep woods. I put the machete back in my bag and pulled out a new Sponge Bob ball.  I was already mentally calculating how much Scotch I would be drinking if I were playing Old Man McGee.

Three holes later, I had opened the secret compartment in my golf bag, and was drinking straight from the bottle of Jose Cuervo. Forget shots… I was in pain! This guy was pummeling me each and every hole. During the small talk between shots, he had explained that he had only started golfing two months ago after attending an expensive Bubba Watson golf clinic. I told him I had just started this morning (obviously I lied…).

I was hoping to scare him with the gator on 15, but no, he had to have that loud music banging away. I was tempted to push him in the lake, but I was having my own challenge staying upright. The holes between 4 and 15 had been a literal blur, with occasional slugs of tequila as defining moments. I knew we only had 3 more holes after this and I could go back to playing with one of the regulars.

We almost finished 15 without much of an incident. I had found a couple of cigarette butts at the tee and I had stuffed them in my ears (don’t try this yourself – it took me three weeks to get all of that tobacco out of my ears). So I shot my par without a thought about the Siri wielding guy beside me. I was stumbling back to the golf cart when I realized that my opponent was not there. The idiot had overshot the green on his drive and plunked his only golf ball into the lake. He was wading in and poking around with a brand new, never christened with mud, ball retriever. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the retriever extended to almost 15 feet. His Bubba Watson shoes looked pretty sad when he stepped out of the water.

The gator had had the last straw, too. It was one thing to play terrible music on the golf course, but to actually encroach on its turf… that was too much. I never saw that tail move so fast in my life! It looked like a little motorboat stirring up an incredible wake straight toward my geek opponent! I pulled the aluminum baseball bat out of my bag and half ran, half rolled toward the soggy figure stepping out of the lake, oblivious to the 15 feet of death churning up behind him. Instead, he saw me with my bat running at him.

I remember this as though it was going in slow motion, even though about 5 seconds elapsed.

Harvey, mistaking me for a baseball bat wielding attacker, shrieked and swung the ball retriever at me just as I slipped headlong into the lake. The retriever missed my nose by half an inch, but the ball was still in it, and it fell out as I was shouting for him to put that thing down. The taste of the mud from the bottom of that lake was disgusting. I know, because the ball was still covered in it when it popped in my mouth. The gator was about to clamp down on the soggy Bubba Watson shoe and the leg that protruded from it. My bat caught it in the back of the jaw, so it was unable to close its mouth.

Harvey heard the angry hiss coming out of the gator behind him and he jumped higher than I have ever seen anyone wearing Bubba Watson shoes jump. If the gator had been standing still, normalcy would have occurred at this point – well, once Harvey landed, it would have been normal. But the gator had momentum that carried it up from the lake to the edge of the green. Harvey landed right on his rear quarters on the back of the gator, and since he felt himself falling backwards, he grabbed the only thing in front of him that had no teeth – the baseball bat. He held on to that bat for dear life, one hand on the left of the gator’s face and the other hand on the right side.

This was one of those times that the ranger would never have believed me – actually, he looks at me in disbelief an awful lot – had he not been driving out from behind the bushes at that exact moment when Harvey was riding the gator up the hill to the green, dragging me (still holding the bat) along with a muddy golf ball in my mouth, Van Halen loudly blaring out of Harvey’s shirt pocket. I finally came to a stop and spit the golf ball out of my mouth.

And it rolled onto the green and made a beeline into the cup.

Give me a stinking break.