Golfing

The majestic Alabama Hills, as depicted by Ansel Adams.

The surreality of golfing is enough to warrant that nothing more needs to be said—unless you end up in Lone Pine.

Lone Pine as a concept should have dissolved into a wispy ghost town decades ago, but it survives by the graces of curious Los Angeles travelers in their shiny SUV’s, and of course a little peak called Mt Whitney, (which locals unsuccessfully tried to call Fisherman’s Peak), the Alabama Hills (home to a multitude of films, including Gladiator), Manzanar (the Japanese relocation camp during World War II), the earthquake of 1872 (the raised earth can still be seen as you exit Lone Pine toward Mammoth) and perhaps the most poignant reason to visit and stay a few hours: the Mt. Whitney Golf Club.

A few short springs ago, Dr. Doo and I were returning from a brief but glorious trip to Mammoth. The Doo has a propensity for doing as many activities as possible within the same time frame. This trip had so far consisted of camping and snowboarding; all that remained was a golf session. The only drawback was the 45-mile-per-hour winds shredding through the sub Sierra valley.

The Mt. Whitney Golf Club has an aura that immediately invokes the thought of zombie skeletons rising from the fairways. The clubhouse was home to an Indian lady, mother to three of the eight hoodlums carousing on the driving range. After the Doo (initially) failed to schwindle a two-for-one round of golf, we opted to hit a few buckets on the range.

In the field were two or three kids rodding around on the ball picker-upper, while three more were diligently hammering away at bucket after bucket of free balls, trying to nail the cart. Good times in Lone Pine.

The Doo had just inherited a $3000 set of clubs from his wife’s step dad, while I had my Craigslist, garage-found, $75 Cougar set. The Doo has always been more brain than brawn, and in this case I started nailing balls over the fence with my budget clubs, while he was clubbing them into the cart garage.

“Obviously these clubs aren’t doing me any good. Maybe I should just take yours, and we’ll call it an even trade.”

“I’ll hold my breath.”

After we nailed the cart a few times, the lady in the clubhouse decided she could probably allow us to play two-for-one, considering nobody had golfed that day, there was only about an hour and a half of daylight, and it was blowing 45 miles per hour right into your face on every tee.

I felt like a tumbleweed uprooted playing that course. I might be among the few, but when I see a forgotten ball along the course’s edge, I make a point of pocketing it, if its casing is still reasonably intact. The balls on this course looked like imploded nuclear bombs. Almost every one was blackened and mushroom-melted—inverted, though. The tops remained white and dimpled, but the ground side had exploded, indicating that the surface temperature probably reached 400 degrees Kelvin during the summer days. I decided they probably weren’t going to work very well as salvaged balls.

On the fifth hole, a nice little dogleg left, I clocked a decent one-wood to the right of the fairway, leaving a nice nine-iron lob to the green. As I set up the bags and prepared my formidable stance, I recalled the reviews I’d read on my budget clubs after I bought the clubs. All of them were not good. The bag sucked, the reviews ranted, whereby the little support legs would give out after a few setups. Almost every review mentioned that the club heads flew off after only a few strokes.

I read all these reviews, thinking the monkey’s writing them must have been hitting the ground just prior to the ball like a sledgehammer. The clubs had worked fine these first five holes. The bags sat down properly, with a decent backpack like strap for carrying purposes.

I breathed in, took my backswing, and upon connecting, watched the nine-iron head fly off to the left of my ball, which, I might add, landed nicely just high on the green.

“What the hell was that?” The Doo asked.

“That was the head of my nine-iron, going for the gold. Apparently the reviews were spot on.”

A few years later and just the other day, I found myself teeing up for Ocean Meadows in Goleta, California. A bigger course, with an almost constant wind not quite achieving 45 mph, and various

Technically she's a Gilf, but we'll let it pass this one time.

forgotten balls in levels of decay not unlike the Lone Pine beauties, although none as fantastic as the little mushroom clouds on display in the Sierra.

My group for the day, among them The Doo, noted the headless shaft still in my bags. I told them the above story, and none of them could quite comprehend the how or why of such a thing, let alone why I would still harbor a dead club among my collection.

As we played on, we came to the fifth hole. I had laid up a long nine-iron shot to the green, but due to the formidable headwinds, I opted for the seven-iron, just for kicks.

The seven iron. No longer.

The head flew off to the left, as the ball traveled front and center, a shot I wasn’t quite pleased with. What gave me more satisfaction, however, was that all four of us had been graced with the vision of the head of my seven-iron flinging into the distance.

“What kind of clubs are those?” one Mr. Silver asked.

“Cougars,” I said with a smirk.

“Well, it looks like you got fucked by a cougar. Might I recommend in the future acquiring the Milfs, next time?”

“A fine choice, my friend. I shall look into it. In the meantime, I believe I’ll place this dead shaft next to its brethren, and continue my collection of finely honed crap.”

At this rate of decay, given my current status as Utter Hack, I’ll get about five more games in before I have a bag full of headless shafts. Not a bad rate of return.

Now if I could remember the address of the guy I bought them from, I would happily leave the dead clubs in the guy’s driveway, free of charge.