A Formula for Excusing Your Golf

If you watch pro golf tournaments on TV, you get a terribly warped idea about the game. Specifically, you get the idea that golf is easy. Nothing is further from the truth. Well, OK, perhaps some of the men testifying in the Iran- contra hearings are further from the truth.

The average golfer--the guy with the big stomach and pants that used to be somebody’s drapes or the older woman who wears a shocking-pink skirt and blouse ensemble but somehow still looks like Lyle Alzado--has two ways of overcoming the difficult nature of golf. One is to practice like a madman, hitting bucket after bucket of practice balls and playing 36 holes a day. The other way is to make excuses for why your drive just sailed off the course and over eight lanes of the Ventura Freeway or why your eight-foot putt just went whistling past the pin, off the green and into a dirty lake full of carp.

Most golfers go for Plan B.

“I pulled a muscle in my rib cage and I can hardly swing,” Al Sonnett of Sherman Oaks explained the other day before teeing it up at the Westlake Village Golf Course. “I’m just gonna have to tap the ball today. I really don’t feel good. This is the first time out since I got hurt.”

Not that it matters, but Al says he pulled the muscles in his rib cage playing golf.

Ernie Fazio of Encino said he’s a pretty good golfer. “Except for my long shots. You know, the drives and the long irons. All kinds of trouble there.”

His first tee shot at Westlake Village screamed off to the right, into a stand of trees. Clunk. Squirrels donned football helmets.

“But I’m a good putter,” Ernie said. “I’m excellent on the green.”

None of my business, Ern, but seems to me it’s gonna be a while before you get to a green.

Barbara Lajoie of Moorpark calls herself a “pretty good golfer.” But she hasn’t been putting real well lately, and, well . . . “I just got glasses and they throw me off,” she said. “I’ve been putting real weird. I was used to putting without glasses, and when I got the glasses I had to adjust to that. As soon as I got them I started missing all my putts.”

Again, none of my business, but instead of moaning about missing every putt because of your glasses, Barb, how about TAKING THEM OFF WHEN YOU PUTT? I know it sounds pretty radical, but it might be worth a shot.

Excuses aren’t the sole possession of experienced golfers, either.

“I always overhit my putts or underhit them,” said 15-year-old Tyler Trammell of Westlake Village. “The greens are always too fast or too slow.”

Golfers use dozens of other well-worn excuses. Most of them have one thing in common. They’re not very imaginative. So for the sake of making golfers enjoy their game more, here’s a new list. Feel free to use any or all of them.

My wife cracked me in the head during dinner last night and my contact lenses fell into the alphabet soup. You try playing a round of golf with the letter M in front of everything.

My pants keep rubbing against my knees and it’s distracting me.

My eyes have been watering ever since I put on this new cap I bought in Scotland. I think I’m allergic to wool. Or to Scotland.

This shirt is driving me crazy. Every time I swing I can hear the little alligator sliding across my chest. And he’s starting to make strange noises when I putt.

My shoes are too tight and both of my little toes are killing me. I’m trying to think, ‘Follow through, follow through,’ but all I think of is, “corn, corn.”

I shoot about 72 or 73 whenever I use those new orange golf balls, but about 90 or 95 with the regular white ones. Just my luck, all I brought today were the white ones.

I let my neighbor Bill Shoemaker use my clubs last week and I think he ruined them. They feel real short.

My shoulder hurts. It’s the old war injury. I ever tell you how I held up the Remagen Bridge on the Rhine River in Germany all by myself while my division drove tanks over it?

I won’t start playing well until these golf balls thaw out. My goofy kid put them in the freezer last night. When I get a hold of him . . . My golf glove has holes in it and my hands hurt. My wife thought it was an oven mitt yesterday and used it to take a meat loaf out of the oven.

I’m swinging too hard. My doctor says I’m really too strong to be playing this game.

I’m not swinging hard enough. My doctor said I should have waited longer after the operation, the major operation, to start playing again.

The putt would have gone in if the ball didn’t hit that bug on the green. Where? Well, right after I hit him he flew away. Musta been two inches long. And he had teeth. I swear.

I haven’t played well since I hurt my neck looking at the total eclipse of the sun in 1979.