December 10, 2003
Road Trip

Road trip.  Something we had to do for our wives. During this busy season the females in our lives struggle to find the time to complete Yuletide tasks.  With shopping to do, gifts to wrap, holiday goodies to bake, (and why is it we only get to enjoy spritz during the holidays?) and cards to address, the duties seem endless.  What could we husbands do to make the harried lives of our wives easier?  A life un-interrupted by husbandly needs would be a good thing.  So eight alpha males, old friends all, decided to make Christmas more leisurely for the truly special people in our lives by going to Mesquite and playing golf for five days.  Are you buying this?  Our wives didn’t either.  But we went to Mesquite anyway.

     Old friends have to rank near the top of the many treasures bestowed on those of us lucky enough to have spent several decades on planet earth.  In this group of eight some friendships dated back forty years.  While time may have taken its toll on athletic skills it has done nothing to diminish the competitive juices.  Many in this group played city league hoops with and against one another so long ago the games were contested in Mesa States Houston Hall.   That structure has housed classrooms for almost thirty years.  Half our group spent a multitude of summers on the Valley Agency sponsored slow pitch softball team.  Those epic struggles of jammed thumbs, sprained ankles and more than an occasional charley-horse date back to when the games were competitions held on the football side of Stocker Stadium since the fields at Columbine, Pomona and Canyon View didn’t exist.

    One of golf’s advantages is that some folks, yours truly not included, still play the game amazingly well even into their seventh decade.  Our group of eight included more single digit handicaps than one would to expect to find among AARP members. While the number of two hundred and fifty yard drives has diminished over the years once the irons come out of the bag the skill level has increased, not deteriorated, with time. 

     Some things about athletic competition never change.  Kansas State versus Oklahoma to the contrary, great athletes usually “whup up” on those who, on a really good day, grade out as “average”.   It has been said the golf handicap system is the only form of communism to ever succeed in our democracy.  But even a scheme designed to make everyone equal creates a ruling class.  In golf, folks with low handicaps fill the leadership vacuum. One day’s golf marathon pitted the low handicappers against those of us at the other end of the spectrum.  By rounds end our team proved again how valid the old sports theorem is that dictates while the race may not always go to the strong or the swift it certainly is the way to bet. While watching the “good” foursome boom out one monster drive after another and nail green after green in regulation, our group was simultaneously taking a more circuitous route through the desert exploring in detail every bunker, swale and pond the far edges of the course had to offer.  We noted the “good” group included one golfer dealing with two major surgeries in the past three years, another was two weeks removed from a leg cast worn the past five months as a result of a bad auto accident, and a third member of said foursome was gimping about from a severe case of gout.  And we, the healthy bunch, were getting our collective butts kicked.  Maybe, just maybe, it was rationalized; playing good golf was hazardous to your health.

    Age has dictated some changes in our lives.  Years ago after the athletic battle had been waged we retired to a pitcher of beer at either the Ivanhoe or Arn’s.  Today’s contests dictate a return to the motel room where over gin and tonics contestants remove their socks and in the spirit of competition determine whose ankles have swollen the most during the day’s outing.