Gene's Blog

Let’s talk golf, giggle

Specifically women’s golf.

But first a word from our sponsor. Me. :^). I’ve been a sports fan all my life, what else did a kid growing up on a farm in the middle of Minnesota have to do? I mean one who had no interest in farming, who was sure he had been born in the wrong place and time and who had nothing whatsoever in common with anyone else in his family, but for one blessed, special uncle, my Mom’s youngest brother, Jim, who was but 15 when I was born and my childhood hero. He, too, escaped the farm, for a life in the big city, lol. But he’d come home weekends and play games with me, catch until my hand hurt so bad I nearly cried, but never did, because I could not, would not, disappoint him. He was both practicing and teaching, I knew that then and I know it now. So my love for sports came from him. I didn’t have the physical size to excel but I had the talent to do so. I was the starting shortstop on a men’s softball team when I was 12, lol. One night they had no one to fill and asked me, and I played with those guys for five years. I played everything they offered at my high school, but there my lack of size meant lack of opportunity, I could DO anything, but basketball is hard when you’re 5’6″, it was then and it is now, and if you also weigh 120 pounds, so is football, though I made varsity my 9th grade year because of my speed, blowing out a knee sort of turned my interest. There’s a lot more to that and I won’t go into that here, but I wanted to establish “creds” as a male athlete before I do what I’m going to do next here, which is essentially turn on my gender, giggle.

When I enlisted in the Army, as I explained on the main site, primarily to avoid being sent to Viet Nam and to be able to choose my own specialty – which as it turned out I didn’t do as wisely as I thought I did. I chose clerical, I mean I thought how dangerous can typing be? What I didn’t know was that every company in the army, including every infantry company, had a company clerk, who was not only privileged to carry an M-16 but also a portable typewriter. So, I didn’t quite outsmart anyone but me with that choice. I tried on their tests though – we were given a battery of tests I don’t believe ANY corporation rivals to this day. Every question that had to do with physical activity, I failed. Do you like to camp? NO. Do you like to hunt? No. Do you like to fish? No. Do you like walking in the woods? NO. Even though I spent more days of my life in our woods than I did in my room. They were tricky, they’d ask the same question, in slightly different ways, in various places throughout a three hour test. I think I caught ’em all. But that part about the clerical need in infantry companies, well, how the hell would I know about that?

So, after 8 weeks of Basic Training, I got sent to clerical school. It was a self-paced program, you finished as fast as you could do it. I already knew how to type. I finished a four week program in two days. And got sent, because they had to have SOMETHING for me to do, to a basic training company where I was their acting company clerk. Which is where I realized that clerical wasn’t quite as safe as I had thought. The bonus was that the first 10 finishers in the clerical program got sent to Fort Benjamin Harrison which is in Indianapolis and is the main financial center of the United States Army. I hope that isn’t divulging a secret or Homeland Security will be knocking on my door later this evening, giggle. While I was there, at that basic training company, one of the NCO’s, (non-commissioned officers, giggle) invited me to play golf with him. I didn’t play golf. I didn’t even really know what it was. Look, at my little high school, with 63 of us in my graduating class, which was the largest senior class they had ever had, there were four sports. Football, basketball, track and baseball. All for boys. None for girls. WAY before Title 9. Since I didn’t play, he said, well, walk along with me then. So I did. And discovered that golf courses are incredibly beautiful places. Of course, the air was filled with military sounds, which consist primarily of words one does not say in mixed company. An aside, you would NOT believe how bad the language gets when there are nothing but guys in a room, or a barracks, or a boardroom. I decided THEN I was going to learn to play that game. It was the game of the gentry. A group I intended to join. I enlisted to avoid Viet Nam, yes, but also to get the GI bill which was the only hope I had of going to college. That I was second in my school in the ACT exam didn’t matter, my parents were poor, horrible credit, no loans for this boy. And I SAW what credit did to them, I was not going to borrow money for school. But the GI bill, and my ingenious plan to be a clerk would foil all that. mmmhmmm. Well, best laid plans and all that.

But, as those of you who have looked at my main site know, I’ve had a guardian all my life. And she kept me safe through that too. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten golf, I am just meandering. Those of you who have seen my main site, or read any of this, know that is another tendency, but I do, almost always, come back to point. And I will tonight as well. There were 200 of us who started that class in Finance School at Benjamin Harrison – it turns out that the army needed finance specialists, payroll personnel, in Viet Nam too. The only real safety there is that they did not do foot patrols, they just worked in a central office and a couple nights a week stood guard duty out on the outer perimeter, set up the clay mores (mines), and watched to be sure the Viet Cong did not breach. When my finance class graduated, 197 of us were sent directly to Viet Nam. Three of us were not. I was one of those three. I was instead placed in a category called “waiting for orders” which meant they didn’t know what to do with me and so had me doing odd jobs around the base until those orders arrived. What that meant mostly was that the three of us walked the perimeter of the base with little sticks with nails on the end snagging cigarette butts and putting them in our little bags. Yeah, that was boring. After three weeks, my orders arrived, I was to go to Oakland Army Base, after a thirty day leave. Which I did. Oakland Army Base was a transition station, for guys going to and coming back from Viet Nam. My duties were simple. I did audits on the payroll records of guys coming back who were being discharged, which meant I went through their entire payroll record, recomputed everything from dates of promotion, to leave times, to balances due and paid. Then prepared their separation voucher, split that in half, the days of not carbon paper, but there were five copies, you had to press hard, that separated into two pieces, one of two sheets and one of three. We split those up and ran separate tallies, then compared to be sure the numbers were right. Then those guys got to go home. It was a good job. I got great with a ten key adding machine. We worked in three shifts, because out-processing never stopped, no guy was kept a minute longer than he had to be. My shift was early 6:45 to 2:45, which left me plenty of time to get into mischief – which I will talk about another time, I was a high school grad who was there with a dozen other new guys all of whom were already college grads, one of whom attended UC Berkley. I learned a lot there. Most of which I will never put in this blog, giggle. I had the privilege of having a wild night with a good friend from back home before he shipped out to Nam and died there, the last of his friends and family to see him. I treasure that memory – though there was certainly an ugly side to it, which I won’t bring up, again, here, giggle. The Beatles White Album came out while I was there. I saw an original copy of the original cover in a little headshop up near Berkley’s campus – John and Yoko nude, which I wish to hell I had bought cuz gawd what would THAT be worth today, lol. Probably the same as my baseball cards, which my mother threw away while I was gone – original Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris cards, I had ALL of every team, sigh. Okay, back to OARB, I saw San Francisco while I was there, Golden Gate Park, Haight-Ashbury, Sausalito, and if you’ve ever seen any of those car chase scenes in any San Francisco detective movie, where they are going what seems like straight downhill and flying through intersections? Well, I did that too, only in my version we got broadsided, lol. It was 1969 and San Francisco was peace and love, man. Except for the riots. You can go look that part up yourself, giggle.

Well, nothing that good lasts forever, and so just after Christmas, all of us, roughly 12, who had been sent there in October, got new orders, this time all of them went to Viet Nam, except me. I got sent to Germany. There is a story in between here that I am not going to tell now, but those 30 days in between changed my life, in a lot of ways. Anyway, when I landed in Frankfurt, it turned out Germany was full. So they sent me to Italy, Venice. All I saw of the Matterhorn was the tip of that hand, lol, and when I got to Venice, IT was full too. Though it was amusing, because the First Sergeant (next to top of the heap in enlisted ranks) said he’d never seen as high a GQ as mine – that is the military version of the IQ test, and the one I never found a trick question in, so just answered – and he said he wished he could keep me just to see what I could do, giggle. But, they were full too. So he sent me to Livorno, Leghorn in our language, actually a place called Camp Darby, situated halfway between Pisa and Livorno, on the Italian Riviera. The major port for goods being shipped to Europe, from which they were flown to American bases around Europe, remember this was 1969, still just over 20 years past WWII and we had a MAJOR presence all over Europe then. It was from that place that I volunteered for a tour of duty in Viet Nam, giggle, the kid who enlisted to avoid it, volunteered. Yeppers, that is true. But another story. And I had better get back to golf, giggle.

I was discharged from the Army at OARB, how is that for symmetry? And I got robbed there too, which was a complaint I had heard before but never believed. You had to have a strip down physical if you were getting out, so you put all your belongings in a little bag, which when I got it back, no longer held my sapphire ring nor the gold watch my uncle had given me. So I believed the stories then. But, was NOT going to waste a minute worrying about those things, I had an airplane to catch. And I caught it.

Veterans did not have to take the mandatory physical education credits in college that everyone else did. But I did anyway, I took fun ones. One of them was golf. That first summer back, even though I had been in college for two quarters, the second of which I took a phy ed class in golf, I was able to draw unemployment, it was a guarantee for vets, so I did. Same money as my GI bill, but nothing to do. So I found Wapicada. You could play all day out there for $5. As many holes as you wanted. Huge practice range, a place where you could practice putting and chipping, a practice bunker, you could move as far away as 60 yards and hit shots to that green. I would go out in the morning, hit range balls, play 18, go home for lunch, come back, practice chipping and putting and play another 18, all for the same $5. It was the summer from heaven, honest to gawd. It would have helped if I had as much natural talent for THAT game as I did all others. But I didn’t. And I had no money for lessons. But I played. And played. And, over the course of time, some of which I may detail here, later, I eventually got to be decent at the game. Which brings us back to the game.

Golf is always called a “gentleman’s” sport. Which it really is. You will not meet many nicer people than you will on a golf course. It is not a game where you root against the other person, because it is a game you are playing yourself against the course, not another person. Except for tournament play, both amateur and professional. But there are ethical rules which apply regardless. And I have to tell you men are not the nicest competitors.

And now back to Womens Golf. I bet you thought I was never gonna get here, giggle. As it turns out, for me, the womens game, both professional and at the high amateur levels, is much more like mine, than the highest levels of mens golf. It took me a while to come to this realization, of course, after all, I am a guy. :^). But they hit their clubs the same distance I do, they face the same type and length of second shots I do, their course management, well if I could DO that, would be like mine. And they are tremendously talented. None of what I just said means they are less than professional male golfers. What I just said is that their game is one the REST of us play. Except for the very elite amateurs and professionals, no one hits the ball 350 yards off the tee. We ALL have to play to avoid the hazards, to play the shot that, as Jack Nicklaus put it in the book I learned to play from (Golf My Way), makes the next shot easy. And the women are superb at this. They are incredibly entertaining to watch. They play wonderful golf with which almost ALL golfers can identify. And, NONE of them think they are superstars. The best of the male golfers are like the best of male athletes in other sports, they travel with an entourage, you could not get close enough to whiff their cologne, let alone say hello. They are above we mere mortals. But you NEVER see that in the womens game. They understand sportsmanship (and yes, this time I say sportsMANship) better than any elite male athlete. Elite male athletes think they are gods. Elite female golfers, indeed, elite female athletes in general, think they are blessed. That is an ENORMOUS difference. And, as I have aged, I have come to realize that it is not only the quality of play that is important, but the quality of the person playing. And invariably, the highest quality person, playing at the highest level, is a woman. And, like in womens tennis, womens golf NEEDS parity, in purses. The disparity between what men play for, even the Senior Tour men, and what the women play for is just plain ridiculous. THEIR game, except for Tiger of course, is more entertaining to watch than any male tournament. Ladies – you have some catching up to do. I’m not going to hold my breath here, because this is a change that will take time. But it is a change that MUST happen, and will, because although what I am talking about here is athletics, what I am saying holds true across the spectrum of human experience, political, religious, spiritual, economic and human.

So. Now let me tell you about a happy experience I had that provoked all this, giggle. I got a blurb in my mail from something and it was about the US Women’s Open which is being played at Interlachen here in Minneapolis this coming summer. I really didn’t know it was here. I pay attention to womens golf, I WATCH a lot of womens golf, even to the point of dvring it, because I would rather watch them play then reruns of just about anything. It is FUN to watch, and with a dvr, you don’t have to watch commercials, giggle. Well, I got this thing in my email. So I clicked on a link and saw it was here, looked at the prices and decided, okay, this would be fun, but I’m not taking a week off to do this and though I support them, I just didn’t think I could afford that. So I looked for an email address to contact about the tournament. I started with the director, but figured, okay, she is going to talk to me? Then found the promotion’s directors name and email. Because they were offering a holiday package that included two days, ANY two days admission, plus a hat, for $95. I thought that was a mistake because the final rounds are the most expensive, so I wrote her. And she answered me the NEXT day, saying yes, you could use both those tickets ANY one day or one person could use them on ANY two days. Plus you get a hat. giggle. So – okay, I’m aged, but not THAT aged, I expect to still be here late next June, you know, most likely. sigh. (that is a different thing) So I thought what the hell, and ordered the package. They promised delivery by mid-December, in time for Christmas. I thought okay, cool. That was two days ago. And so below here is the email I sent that young genius, running their promotions as a thank you.

I wrote you a couple days ago inquiring about the Holiday package. You responded so quickly I was amazed. And impressed, and with exactly the information I wanted. So I ordered the Holiday package. And today, when I got home from work, I had an early Christmas present, lol. Absolutely amazing. I have NEVER had that quick a response to an order of any kind from anywhere, from my initial inquiry, to placing the order and receiving the merchandise. Now, I grant living in a Minneapolis suburb may have had something to do with the speed of delivery, but I feel compelled nonetheless to tell how I impressed I am with your service both in terms of time and quality. And I LOVE the hat. I’m going to have buy another one or two while I’m there since salt tends to ruin them and they really aren’t washable, unless you have somehow worked another miracle and this one is, giggle.

I really just wanted to say thank you, so feel free to share this. I so appreciate the women’s game – it is one with which most, and I do mean MOST golfers are more familiar than the men’s. Most golfers, and I include all men over 30, play a game far more similar to the women’s game than to the pga guys. No one hits the ball 350 yards but them. Granted, most golfers do not play with the precision, course management and talent that lpga quality women do either, but the distances we hit our clubs and the length of second shots we face and course management decisions too, are much more comparable to the professional women’s game than to the pga tour – those guys are like aliens, the women are like human. And I appreciate it. I also appreciate the size of the purse that the women play for at the Open. I think it ridiculous that the mens senior tour plays for so much more money than do the women. I see NO reason golf should not have parity, as the professional women tennis players have finally managed to achieve, or very close anyway, to the men’s game. I think if you promoted the women’s game as “every persons” game, you could launch a campaign that would begin the drive to real parity. Because the excitement, the quality, the competition are every bit the equal of the mens game, and the sportsperson ship is exceeded by no other sport of any kind. I’m 58 and have been a sports fan all my life, and am used to spoiled male athletes taking both their gifts and their fans for granted. The women who play the professional game NEVER do that. I can’t tell you how much that means to the average fan. No, I don’t plan to be standing in line for autographs, though there will be many young people there who will, and the women who play in this tournament will accommodate them, I know. I’ve seen them do so time and time again. :^) gene

Oh, and I promised I would promote this tournament often on my blog, giggle. So this is not the last you will hear of this, and this 2008 U.S. Women’s Open is not the last time you will see this reference either. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene