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I bought my set of golf clubs for $154 at Target during my second year of law school. They're made by Wilson. Everyone who sees my clubs is astounded that Wilson makes something other than tennis rackets and volleyballs. My golf clubs are a popular variety of clubs called "Power Chambers." This is all the more surprising considering they have no power. And not just because I wield them.
For $154 I received a full set of clubs and a golf bag. One size fits all. I broke the cardboard box down and started playing immediately. In the ensuing six years I've only had to replace one club, a putter. Yep, someone stole the power chamber putter. I still can't figure out what the thief was thinking. Perhaps the thief believed, mistakenly of course, that because he'd seen so few of them, Wilson golf clubs were particularly prized. Truth be told, I sort of feel sorry for anyone who's this bad of a thief.
I'm telling y'all this because I'm fairly confident that I'm the first person in Wilson's power chamber history to use their clubs at The Player's Championship Sawgrass course. Also because I think it demonstrates what type of golfer I am; namely, bad. Probably many of you who are also bad golfers have wondered how you might fare on a professional course. Well, you're about to find out.
In honor of The Player's Championship beginning this Thursday, ClayNation column Monday and Wednesday will focus on my round of 18, DDT style. Here's a printable scorecard so you can follow along.
I played with my good friend Tardio. Tardio is the kind of golfer who believes he's much better than he actually is. He has all the skill that a good golfer would need but these skills never operate in concert. One day he'll crush the ball long and straight off the tee and airmail his approaches from the center of the fairway. Other days his irons are spot-on but he's attempting an approach shot with a ball wedged against a tree trunk. Tardio always believes that he gets bad bounces and everyone else gets great bounces. Plus, he can't putt. Ever.
But to Tardio's credit he's a much better golfer than I am and we're playing the Sawgrass Course because he told me to call them and tell them that I'd written a book. In Tardio's words, "Once you've written a book people let you do stuff that other people don't get to do." Amazingly, he's correct. So on the Sunday after the Cocktail Party in Jacksonville, we arrive to golf.
Our round costs $365 each (when I booked it I thought they meant total) and we're immediately led out to the driving range where we take turns rifling shots into Florida clouds -- it's overcast and we're both afraid it's going to rain. To protect against this Tardio is wearing his golfing rubbers. Every time he swings on the practice tees he squeaks like an old man walking in mud. I hit a few shots with my pitching wedge to get loose and Tardio watches me.
"You not breaking out the power chambers, yet?" he asks.
Our playing partners arrive. We're in a foursome with two vice-presidents of large American companies, a husband and a wife. One of them sells pet food, Purina or one of their competitors, and the other sells something that's not pet food -- clothing of some form or fashion. And by sells, I mean fires people.
They are very excited to meet us. After attending the Georgia-Florida game the day before, we smell like whiskey bottles with legs. Tardio tells the vice-presidents we're lawyers and they nod skeptically.
Craig, the vice-president of Purina, steps up and begins sending majestically arcing drives off into the distant horizon. These drives may or may not have actually landed in St. Augustine. I take a swing, bring up a large divot, and my ball careens sideways along the length of practice players. I turn and look behind me as if another golfer had also narrowly missed me.
"Power chambers," Tardio says derisively to no one in particular.
Just then our caddy arrives. Our caddy is an average-sized man with a deep tan and really white teeth. His name is Harry and we spend about five minutes meeting him. Mostly we talk about the weather. Then we return to our warm-up shots. My hands are shaking. Harry works his way down through our bags, wiping off our club heads and occasionally pulling out a club and looking down the barrel of the club as if he's sighting a gun. My clubs are the last ones for him to reach.
I sneak a look at him as he eyes my Wilson clubs. For a moment he seems unsure what to do and then he starts to delicately wipe off one of the clubs while keeping the club at a decent distance from his chest. I recognize the cleaning movement—sort of how you clean your shoes when you stepped in dog poop.
I shank two more shots into the distance before me. Then, the clock tolls, Harry returns my clubs to the Wilson bag, and says, "OK, guys, we're up next. Remember, we've got to keep the pace going."
With that we're off on a professional course with our own caddy.
1. Hole One: If you've never played golf with a caddy before, it's incredibly nerve-wracking. Of course I get nervous playing golf with people I don't know so this is doubly terrifying for me.
I'm teeing off first. It's a par four. Harry points into the distance and tells me where I need to aim. The hole doglegs a bit to the right but from the tee-box we can see the foursome in front of us approaching the green. I take the power chamber driver and take a practice swing. I set my ball on the tee and take another practice swing. My legs are shaking and I'm taking deep breaths trying to calm myself. I address the ball, take a deep back swing -- picture the ball splitting the fairway.
Then I swing. I crush the ball. There's a resounding bang. My ball has slammed into a pine tree trunk on the far left of the hole. For a moment no one says anything. Then Harry breaks the silence and utters the first comment on any of my shots on the round. "I think that ball's underneath the palmetto bush," he says.
It's under the palmetto bush. A dead yank left from the tee box. After everyone else has hit great drives, we ride in the golf cart to the palmetto bush. My ball, and this is the complete truth, is sitting in the dead center underneath the palmetto bush. It's a completely unplayable lie and almost unreachable. I climb down on my stomach and punch the ball out with the end of one of my clubs as if I'm striking the cue ball to begin a game of pool. Then I pitch back out into the fairway.
"That's a penalty stroke, I guess."
"You think?" asks Harry.
From the fairway I'm about 80 yards from the pin, a nice pitching wedge to the hole. Except I land in the bunker 20 yards to my left. The ball is also almost behind me. The shot I've just shanked is a difficult angle that almost defies the law of physics -- one that most professionals would have trouble pulling off. I'm on my fourth shot now (5th overall) and everyone else is already on the elevated green looking back down at me. From the bunker I take a swing and catch mostly sand, yep, I'm still in the bunker. "Double bunker," Tardio calls, shaking his head from the first green. Eventually I take an 8, the rare quadruple bogey. Tardio makes par. Our playing partner, Craig, the Purina V.P., makes a birdie. This is going to be a very long round.
2. "Why didn't you use your sand wedge?" Tardio asks as we drive to the second hole.
"Because my clubs didn't come with a sand wedge," I say.
"Makes sense," Tardio says.
While I wait for my turn to tee off at the par 5 second hole, (it occurs to me I may never have honors again) I convince myself that things can't get worse on this round. Of course I'm wrong. But on this hole I hit a nice drive and then I hit a superb five-wood, about as well as I can possibly strike the ball, just short of the green. "Perfect," says Harry. I beam. I'm laying two and have a short chip to be on the green in 3. My chip is executed with less than perfection and I eventually leave a par putt short. "Your skirt blew up on that one," Harry says.
3. After a bogey we're on to the 152-yard par 3 third. My tee shot doesn't get much more than about 6 feet off the ground. "Nice loft," Tardio says. But the shot comes to rest just short of the green. After a decent pitch I barely miss the par putt. "Now that's a good putt," says Harry. I'm on golfing fire. Just to prove this point, I blow on top of the power chambers to cool them off. Tardio rolls his eyes.
4. At some point in my golfing life, after every nice golf shot, I started to remark that I was, "Dialed the F(expletive) in." As you can imagine I'm quite reserved on the golf course. I take out the power chamber driver and hit a perfect drive. Then I utter my exclamation. Only I use the letter instead of the expletive. After all, we're in classy company. Hence, "DTFI," I say.
Tardio pretends he doesn't hear me.
With my second shot, a five wood, I land on the green and then carry off the back.
At this point Craig, the Purina V.P. comes undone; he's laid up his second shot just short of a small water hazard in front of the green. On three consecutive shots he mishits the ball and it lands in the water. Tardio and I are both uncomfortable. Up until this point Craig has seemed like the kind of golfer who might break a club over his knee and stab both of us in the eyes if he makes an error and we say anything at all.
But he laughs at himself. We breathe easier. So easy in fact that I hit a nice chip back onto the green and make a par. Harry gives me a fist bump. My debut on the PGA Tour appears imminent.
5. Perhaps carried away by my performance on the fourth hole I overswing and yank the next drive into a sand trap on five. The sand trap is way left. Almost impossibly left. The kind of sand trap where, when you stand in the tee-box, you think, "Why in the world would they even put a sand trap there?"
When we arrive at the ball I climb down into the trap and ask of Harry, "How many times has this ever happened at The Player's Championship?"
"Zero," Harry says.
From the bunker I punch out my ball and it heads at an alarming rate of speed towards the bunker on the right side of the fairway. Then, the first true calamity happens since the first hole. I walk past a ball sitting up just short of the bunker on the fairway and climb down into the other bunker. Take a practice swing and hit the ball into another bunker further up the fairway. Only, just as I swing, I hear Harry call out, "Nooooo!" Which makes perfect sense. Because I've just managed to hit the woman vice-president's ball instead of my own. Turns out she was too nice to tell me that I was playing her ball. Either that or she was in shock. This is mortifying, the golfing equivalent of making a porno movie starring yourself and a horse. So we have to put a new ball down for her and I have to clamber back up out of the sand trap and hit my actual ball. Which I do. Into the water. Only it turns out there's some uncertainty about where my ball actually landed. Yep, the caddy has lost my ball. Or in his words, "I didn't see a splash and I was watching for a splash."
Eventually we find my ball embedded in the mud alongside the pond. I play it from there and end up with a miraculous 6. (A 7 if you count the ball I hit which wasn't actually my own.)
6. "I've gotta pee," Tardio says, "Do you think we can pee on this course?"
"I think Harry will yell at us," I say.
"We're grown, Harry can't yell at us," Tardio says. "I've gotta go."
We all hit our tee shots on the sixth hole and then Tardio sprints off into the Florida scrub brush to go to the bathroom. I wait to see if Harry is going to yell at him and when he doesn't I follow Tardio into the woods. Because the only thing worse than having to pee is having to pee while someone else gets to pee.
When we re-emerge, I manage a bogey. Tardio doesn't fare as well. After he hits a three wood, a disgusted Harry says, "That's over everything." We're through 6 holes and I'm 9 over par. "I want a beer," Tardio says, "but Harry will yell at me for sure."
"I think Harry likes me a lot more than he likes you," I say.
"No way," Tardio says. "You already hit the wrong damn ball."
(Coming Wednesday, holes 7-18, the famous island green, and the conclusion of our round)