Michael O'Keefe, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray in "Caddyshack."
Photo: Everett Collection
It’s time for me to quit playing golf. I know I’ve done this a few times before, but now I mean it. I need a less stressful habit, like microneurosurgery, or robbing banks. I need to take my golf clubs aboard a deep-sea fishing boat and then drop them into the ocean. Then I need to snorkel to the bottom of the ocean and bury my clubs in the sand, just to make sure the clubs don’t become a reef, and the fish get polluted with my bad golf mojo.
I have to do this, because I hate golf, I really do. I could sit in a wooden chair and stare at a wall and it would be a better use of my time.
I didn’t feel this way a couple of months ago. A couple of months ago, I fell back in love with golf, hard. We actually got remarried, golf and I, and it was going great. Sure: You had to wear a mask into the pro shop, and you weren’t supposed to touch the flagstick, but it was still, you know, golf. I was outside! I was doing something besides reading scary articles in the newspaper! A golf course was suddenly my happy place, which in retrospect should have been a dire warning.
After all, this was a big reversal for me. A few years back, I’d had an epiphany that the correct amount of golf for me to play wasn’t routine golf, or occasional golf, but never golf. I jammed the clubs in the closet and left them to the spiders. I drove past courses and didn’t even turn my head. I taught myself rock climbing and French cooking. OK that last part isn’t true. Mostly I sat on the couch and looked at my phone. At least I wasn’t making myself miserable playing golf.
Playing golf these past six months, however, has felt like an escape. I started taking my kids. Playing golf with your kids makes you emotional, almost teary, and I’m not talking about the time my 7-year-old lined up in the wrong direction in the tee box and nearly drove a Titleist straight into my eye socket. Something felt cosmically right this time. I used to hate the fussy parts of golf—the rules-y stuff, like having to wear shoes, or a shirt of any kind—but golf amid this pandemic has seemed less uptight, easygoing, almost relaxing.
I was re-seduced. Before I knew it, I was up to my old tricks, looking for out-of-the-way driving ranges and shopping for wedges on the internet. I was practicing in the mirror. I was buying plastic practice balls. I stayed up late watching chatty YouTube videos of Florida pros telling me how to improve my flop shot. (It turns out YouTube is just videos of dogs on surfboards and Florida golf pros telling you about the flop shot.)
I was hitting a dangerous state: I thought I was getting better. At the range, I found it easy to hit 10 balls in a row, dead straight. Then I would hit 20, dead straight. Then 30. OK, that’s a bald lie. I never hit 30 balls in a row dead straight, or 20 or 10. It was more like 6. Or 2. Still, I was hitting them better. When I got on a course, I was parring a hole every now and then, even a birdie once in a while without that much cheating. I’m not saying I was ready to drink a bourbon and chat up Jim Nantz in Butler Cabin, but I was starting to think that, after all these years, I was figuring it out.
Again: This is a treacherous place. The only thing more hazardous than a bad golfer is a bad golfer convinced they’re improving. This isn’t to say that people can’t improve, that coaches and lessons don’t help—well, OK, in my case, it is to say that a little bit. Coaches and lessons have only done so much for my sad state. At a certain point I need to accept that when I say “I think I’m getting better at golf” it’s like watching someone strap a canoe to the top of a car with cheap twine and say “I think that is working pretty well!” I might be OK for a minute, sure. Inevitably, I’m going to be picking up canoe bits on the Interstate.
But I kept playing. The kids got bored of me, so I played alone. Golf alone is actually the best way to play golf. You don’t have to watch your pals take five minutes to line up a 2-foot putt, or deliberate between a 9- or an 8 iron like they’re picking where they’re going to live for the next 40 years. Of course, the problem with playing golf by yourself is that when you hit a great shot, you’re the only one who saw it happened. Who do you tell? The Canada geese in the fairway? Hey geese! Didja see that up and down? It’s a little lonely.
So I slipped. I made the worst mistake of all. A few weeks ago, feeling confident, I made an appointment to play with two work colleagues, socially distanced. I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, I do know what I was thinking: I was thinking they would see my game and think, Hey, Jason’s hitting them pretty good. I love that guy. He rules. I would card a couple of pars and a birdie and be so proud of myself. Instead I played Horror Golf. I flailed; I sliced; it was grotesque. I didn’t look like someone who had been practicing regularly. I looked like someone who had held a driver for the first time that day in the parking lot.
Now I am hurt. I’ve been hacking so much this summer I now have tendinitis in my elbow, which the internet tells me is caused by my being horrible at golf. It’s embarrassing. It’s like getting injured rolling croissants. I whimper when I pick up the remote control. When my kids ask me what’s wrong, I tell them Daddy got into a fight with a bear. They don’t believe me. Daddy, they say. It’s probably a medial epicondylitis owing to poor swing form. Maybe you should sit in a wooden chair and stare at a wall.
So that’s it. I’m done. I’m hurt and I’m wretched and I’m back where I was. That’s that. I have learned my lesson—I won’t play golf again. Unless, of course, you want to play golf tomorrow. You do? What time? I feel like I’m starting to turn a corner.
Share Your Thoughts
How has your golf game improved — or fallen apart — over this strange summer? Join the discussion.
Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com
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