One of the nice benefits of living in California is the ability to golf year-round. On December 23rd, Jen's brothers and myself decided to take advantage of that opportunity and golf at Tilden Park. It had been raining much of the week but was nice that day, so we figured we had lucked out. That's when the adventure began.
First, BJ was late getting to his parents house to meet us. When questioned, he blamed the "fog." Which would normally be a reasonable excuse -- in fact, the last time we golfed at Tilden Park, we could only see about 50 yards in front of us for the first few holes. That was quite an adventure. However, as we drove through the Oakland Hills and could see all the way to both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, his excuse didn't make a whole lot of sense.
A few minutes after we left the house, BJ got a call on his cell phone. It was his wife Chrystal, wondering if he might know where the keys to their car were. Sure enough, they were right there in his pocket. At this point, we weren't sure we would even make it to the course on time, so going back was not an option.
Eventually, we got to the course and quickly put on our golf shoes. I realized at that point that I'd brought my old golf shoes on accident. I figured -- oh well, at least they still fit...more on that later. We checked in about 3 minutes before our tee time, then hurried to the 1st tee and we were off!
We found out quickly that the golf ball wasn't going to roll much because the ground was very wet. In fact, most shots would kick up mud into the air. After only a couple holes, the back of our legs had mud polka dots all over them.
Things started getting weird about the 9th hole. Because of the mud, I noticed the sole of my shoe started pulling off just a little. I tried to change my walk a little bit to minimize the pulling. I'm sure it looked funny but I needed to make sure they lasted until the end of the round. We each bought wraps to eat between the 9th and 10th holes. The wraps were pretty good -- in fact, while I was putting on the 10th green, a squirrel came up and grabbed the last bite of mine and took it up a tree.
The shoes got worse and worse from there. Eventually, as I would walk the soles would go clap-clap as if I had flip-flops on. As you can imagine, this wasn't great for my golf game but Jen's brothers enjoyed it immensely. In fact, Kevin kept telling me to stop "clapping" for myself after each shot.
I made it to the 18th hole and still had the shoes hanging on (barely). While in the fairway of the 18th hole, I wound up and swung hard and my golf ball split into 3 pieces. I stared dumbounded and then saw Kevin laughing uncontrollably. I put another ball down (I mean, what are you supposed to do in that situation?) and my next shot went sideways -- at head level, right between two people on another hole. You can imagine my chagrin as I clap-clapped myself over to that hole to get my ball.
I saved the shoes so we could get a couple pictures since I figured nobody would believe how bad they were. The evidence is shown below.
The shoes have officially been retired now. Golfing around Christmas is more than fun, it's entertaining! 
1 comment:
When you broke the ball into three pieces I laughed...then when you almost took out 2 seniors on the 9th green I almost wet myself (which would've warmed me up a bit). Thanks for the memory...can't wait for more next month.
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