NY Times: Golf sucks before you’re drunk

August 11th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

At least, that’s how I read this story about the pre-tee time nerves on a golf course.

For whatever reason, that first tee is symbolic. It’s a first impression and a microcosm rolled into one, and if you’re a terrible golfer (I am), it’s even worse. All of your friends, who usually aren’t polite enough to just let you fail without saying something biting, insist on giggling or insulting you to the point where you no longer even want to play that wretched fucking sport. It’s terrible.

The good thing? Pro golfers feel it too:

They call this the first-tee jitters, which sounds a bit wimpy for something so vexing. In the theater, they give it a beefy name: stage fright. In golf, we ought to call it first-tee terror.

It’s one of golf’s most common maladies and even the great Tiger Woods has admitted to having it. Lee Trevino once said the only people on the first tee of a PGA Tour event who weren’t nervous were the volunteers keeping score. Gary Player meditated on the first tee and Ben Hogan slowed his every movement.

“That’s why I tell my students to step on the first tee, take a practice swing about three inches from the ball, immediately step closer and hit it,” said Butch Harmon, rated the country’s best golf teacher last year by Golf Digest. “There shouldn’t be any more thought than that. The other thing I tell them is this: No one watching cares what you do. Golfers are too worried about what other people will think of them. No one cares. The other people are busy worrying about their own first shot.”

With all due respect to Butch Harmon, I think golfers should consider my theory: Get drunk. Not only are the jitters gone, so is that existential ache in your head about why, in the small amount of time you get to be on Earth, you choose to spend your Saturdays hitting an tiny ball around in circles. Screw that sissy nonsense; the cart girl is kinda cute, and I need another beer.