Golf Nuts

Ron Garland

Description

These are the folks who practice chip shots in elevators with invisible wedges. These are the people on the golf course in parkas on the first day the temperature tops 30 degrees. These are the junkies who spend hundreds of hours searching pharmaceutical companies' websites for a cure for the "yips". These golfers are "nuts" and the anecdotal stories of Golf Nuts are proof. In pathological putting circles, author Ron Garland is known as the "Head Nut" of the Golf Nuts Society, an organization that he founded which now boasts a vast membership of "nuts", and these are his favorite accounts from a group of seemingly normal people with an abnormal obsession.

Sujets

• Sport
• Autres sports
• Golf
• Michael Jordan
• Recreation
• Ron Garland
• Sports

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781620459881
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Ron Garland with Brian Hewitt
GOLF NUTS
You ve Got To Be Committed
Foreword by Michael Jordan
Illustrations by Steve Artley
Copyright 2002 Clock Tower Press
Illustrations Copyright 2002 Steve Artley
The Golf Nuts Rules of Golf Copyright 1995, Golf Nuts Society.
All Rights Reserved. Golf Nuts Society is a Registered Trademark
of the Golf Nuts Society
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles. All inquiries should be addressed to:
Clock Tower Press, LLC 320 N. Main St., Suite 1 Chelsea, Ml 48118 www.clocktowerpress.com
Printed and bound in Canada.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Garland, Ronald. Golf nuts : you ve got to be committed / by Ronald Garland with Brian Hewitt. p. cm. ISBN 1-58536-066-X 1. Golf-Anecdotes. I. Hewitt, Brian. II. Title. GV967 .G25 2002 796.352-dc21 2002010783
Introduction
The Disease
1st Hole
Early Symptoms
2nd Hole
The Nuts Get Organized
3rd Hole
Nut Bowl I
4th Hole
The Prez
5th Hole
Joe
6th Hole
Michael Jordan, Nut 0023
7th Hole
These Celebrities Are Nuts Too!
8th Hole
Golf Nut Greats
9th Hole
It s Golf or Me!
10th Hole
What, Me Work?
11th Hole
The Heavy Stuff
12th Hole
I ll Take It!
13th Hole
The Collectors
14th Hole
The Truly Committed
15th Hole
I Love This Game!
16th Hole
I Hate This Game!
17th Hole
The Search for The Secret
18th Hole
There Is No Cure
19th Hole
Dear Head Nut
Nut Notes
GNS Fact Sheet
Celebrity Members
Golf Nut Record Book
The Golf Nut s Glossary
Golf Nut Quiz
GNS Membership Application
To Judy, my wife and chief enabler
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank all of you golf nuts (you know who you are) who provided me with the reassurance that I wasn t alone, and with the material that made this book possible. You people are nuts.
And then a special note of thanks to the golf nut at Clock Tower Press Golf Editor Brett Marshall - who was nuts enough to believe that a story about golf nuts would be of interest to other golf nuts.
Also a big thank you to Brian Hewitt, who did so much to make the book an easy and enjoyable read. My suspicion is that he may never recover from this little project.
Last of all, thanks to you - the reader - for being nuts enough to buy this book. I hope it brings a smile to your face. That has always been my goal since starting the Golf Nuts Society in 1986. Anyone who plays this maddening game needs a little comic relief once in a while, don t you think?
Preface
This book is not War and Peace . It isn t even Beyond The Valley of the Dolls .
Arguably, it has no redeeming social value. Nor has any attempt been made in the following pages to couch any grand statements about the cosmic meaning of life. College students will never be asked to compare and contrast the symbolism in this book to the symbolism in William Faulkner s great short story, The Bear.
To be sure, most golf nuts believe The Bear is Jack Nicklaus. Few golf nuts apologize for their priorities that often put golf ahead of almost everything else in their lives.
Tom Wolfe wouldn t buy this book on a bet. Elmore Leonard wouldn t even consider a screenplay about this material. It s safe to say John Grisham would rather pick fly droppings out of a pepper shaker than pore over this tome. But John Updike, one of the most cerebral writers of our time, might love this book if he gave it a chance. Updike, you see, is a golf nut. And golf nuts are what this book is all about.
That is not to say this is literature. No, sir. Not in the loosest sense of the definition can this be considered literature. But that doesn t mean it isn t a good read. All anybody who aspires to create something from scratch and put it on a blank page can hope to do is be good at what he or she is trying to do.
Animal House wasn t a great film in the classic sense. But it was good at what it was trying to do. Same goes for a goofy little flick called Wayne s World. Caddyshack was very good at what it was trying to do. So much so that much of its dialogue has been committed to memory by so many current touring pros that it s hard to walk down the range at a PGA Tour event and not hear daily allusions.
Caddyshack captured something all of us in golf knew existed but hadn t figured out how to express. This book about the Golf Nuts Society is a similar attempt. It is an attempt to be good at what it is trying to do. And it is an attempt to show the people who live golf to a fault that they really aren t so strange after all. The golf nuts you will read about in this book exist in the sport s twilight zone. But are they so very different in their passions for the game than you and me?
You decide. Then go back, rerent Caddyshack and start memorizing lines.
Go nuts Brian Hewitt
Foreword
I first met The Nut (as I call him) in the summer of 1986. I was flying to Oregon a lot because of my endorsement contract with Nike, and spending a lot of time with their creative director, Peter Moore. After our meetings, Peter and I would go to his club to tee it up.
Ron The Nut Garland was a good friend of Peter s and was also a member there. Peter invited him to join us one day. He was the reigning Oregon Amateur Champion, and man was he competitive! Throughout the round we were having long drive contests, and closest to the pin contests, and putting contests. You name it, we did it. It was great, especially when I d knock it by his driver with my 1-iron. He didn t enjoy that as much as I did, but what did he expect with that short quick swing of his?
On the 18th tee Peter told me about Ron s new club. I thought he was talking about a new driver or some super club, because Ron surely needed one. But Peter was talking about a different kind of club-something called the Golf Nuts Society. It was a club for golf nuts, he said. I signed up, and Ron gave me a membership kit, a couple of license plate frames for my cars, a shirt and a cap, and I was set. I was officially a Registered Golf Nut.
Over the next couple of years, whenever I found myself back in Oregon to see Nike or to play against the Portland Trailblazers, The Nut and I would tee it up and he d ask me what I d done to earn Nut points since the last time we d played. One time we scored a ton of points ourselves when we teed off at 2:00 p.m. one afternoon and still got in 45 holes. We finished at 10:00 p.m. in total darkness. Now that was fun.
I always had some good stories, and pretty soon I d earned enough Nut points to move into second place in the 1989 Golf Nut of the Year competition without even taking the Society s entrance exam. Now, I m pretty competitive, and I wanted that title. So I finally took the entrance exam and aced it, then went on to win the 1989 Golf Nut of the Year title (there s nothing like winning). I ve also been a member of the Society s Board of Directors since 1986, and for a long time I held the All Time Leading Scorer title too, until some other nut finally outscored me.
I ve done some pretty crazy things to feed my golf habit, and you ll have a chance to read about some of them in this book. Like the time that I was a no-show for my first NBA MVP award presentation. Everybody was in Chicago for the presentation-except me. I was at Pinehurst going 36 a day with my golf buddies.
I can t think of anyone better to write about the exploits of me and the other Registered Golf Nuts than The Nut himself. He has written a very funny book about the members of his crazy society, and every story is true, which is a pretty scary thought. These guys really are nuts!
If you love golf, you ll love this book. It s for golf nuts. The certifiable kind, like you and me.
Michael Jordan Registered Golf Nut 0023 1989 Golf Nut of the Year Golf Nuts Society Board of Directors
P.S. And tell that nut who took my All Time Leading Scorer title that I m coming after him .
Introduction
The Disease
Yes, golfers are nuts. I ve been nuts since the first time I swung a golf club-I missed the ball completely and it made me nuts! Then, one day, I hit my first perfect shot-a flushed 7-iron that rose high above the trees and settled three feet from the pin. I ve been nuts about the game ever since.
Golf is a love/hate relationship more complex and confusing than the battle of the sexes. If men and women fell in and out of love as fast or as often as golfers fall in and out of love with this game, there would be no such thing as love. I can t tell you how many times I ve said, I hate this game! after a bad shot, only to be exclaiming, I love this game! just three swings later.
We golfers confound nongolfers. They scratch their heads in wonderment as they watch us do the most amazing and puzzling things in pursuit of a game that we say we hate. Fortunes have been spent in search of The Secret ; lives have been risked playing in weather that has the National Weather Service issuing warnings; and marriages have been destroyed because Dad came home late for dinner-again.
It is so true that the game will drive you nuts. I ve seen it happen to so many good men and women. They live perfectly normal lives-until they get a golf club in their hands. Then they go nuts. Totally nuts. Here, see for yourself-
Doug Skille went out one summer evening to hit a few chips on a nearby green, and never returned. Well, he did finally return, but only after he had played nine holes in total darkness with only a 5-iron, a flashlight, and a couple of golf balls. It was 10:00 at night.
Steve Post played golf during his wedding rehearsal.
Jeff Larsen was practicing chip shots in his living room one evening with his favorite sand wedge when he took a carpet divot that tore through the carpet and the padding, and embedded in the plywood flooring, snapping the club shaf