Lee Bacchus looks at Golf

More Golf Cliches Needed

Somebody help me, please.

I¹m running out of golf cliches.

The other day I found myself in the unlikely situation of actually playing with someone worse than myself. Of course, as the round progressed (or regressed, actually) that meant having to make some hasty withdrawals from the cliché bank.

So as my fellow player would heel a thin drive that would barely dribble past the ladies¹ tees, I would offer encouragingly, "That won¹t hurt you," while in fact in meant a sure quad instead of his usual triple.

If he skanked one left into the rough, I¹d hit the ACM (Automated Cliché Machine) again: "That¹s a worker!"

Or if he topped one off the tee on a five-par: "Good hole to do that on."

One of the most excruciating rounds of my life was spent in a charity Texas scramble with a few fellow newspaper journalists and our, ahem, publisher (a man who played golf about as well as I could perform maintenance on the space shuttle). This guy was beyond pathetic. A blind arthritic poodle could¹ve hit the ball farther and straighter than our esteemed and much-feared superior.

And so as shot after shot withered into dribbles and drabs, chunks and thunks, we all desperately sought after the soothing golf cliché. We began to speak in golf tongue.

"Thin to win!"

"You almost got ahold of that one!"

"Good lay-up!"

If the ball never left the ground we¹d offer, "That¹s a good wind shot," Or, :Nice knockdown."

If a tee shot was skied into the ether we would be lamely exclaim, "That was almost on the screws!"

A wicked slice would turn into a "nice power fade," and a duck hook would be a "draw that got away from you."

And if he¹d blade a wedge over the green into the green glueŠ "Man, those front pins are tough today."

Just once, when someone necks a drive into the trees, I¹d like to exclaim, "Whoa, that was a steaming pile of crap you just dished out," instead of the polite gamemanship-like, "You should be able to get home from there."

But alas, this gentlemanly game demands gentlemanly behavior, especially when you¹re playing with your boss. That meant that during our woeful scramble, we were unable to drag out the venerable and reliable cliché which serves well when nothing else will, "The worst day of golf is still better than the best day of work."

Instead, one of us would turn to the trustworthy but nonsensical, "That¹ll play," an absurdity in a game that is already too absurd for words.