Bogeys, Birdies and Other Mysteries

To live in Southern California is to live among tribes. Tribes of color. Tribes of class. Tribes that worship expensive restaurant food, tribes in black clothes and dark glasses. Jesus tribes. Tribes that celebrate spring by taking the ol’ RV out to the river. Tribes that dress up like vampires and go to Disneyland.

For sheer mystery, however, there is no tribe so curious to this correspondent as the burgeoning subculture that gathers on clear days to hit tiny dimpled balls across 18 holes’ worth of short grass: golfers. Why the sudden boom in numbers? Why the mass interest in excruciatingly bright clothing? What secret meaning is being transmitted among all these people you see huddled at the driving range, comparing clubs?

The mystery only deepens if you study their signature posture, which is one of anguish. Nor is the rush to join the tribe explained in their muttered outbursts: “Not again!” “C’mon, c’mon, C’MON!” And the popular, Homer Simpson-like “Dohh!”

And why do they evoke such mixed feelings? Because you can’t talk for long to a golfer about the sport without feeling at once utterly bored and strangely compassionate. The boredom you could chalk up to the game being so hushed and incremental, but why the compassion? Even if you don’t share their customs, even if your tribe is as foreign as the tribe, say, of people who thought Big Bertha was surely not so big that you had to get personal about it--even if you are that much an outsider, there is something poignant about this cult of loud clothes and muted suffering.

Ah, you are thinking. Another struggling golf widow. How pathetic. But no. Although our household is tribally diverse, there are no Golfer-Americans in residence. Extended family however, is another matter, and golf sagas have now come to punctuate so many family get-togethers--not to mention casual chats with colleagues, strangers, children, bookstore owners, the panhandler at the onramp, etc.--that you’d have to belong to the tribe down at the morgue not to wonder about this golfer thing.

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It is Sunday, a bright, beautiful day here in the suburbs. Birds twitter. Eucalyptus perfumes the air. Cleverly, your correspondent has managed to sneak onto the driving range of a nearby private country club, thus observing numerous actual golfers in their lair.

There are 10. Ten pairs of white shoes against the emerald-green grass, 10 visors or ball caps or broad-brimmed hats. Ten bodies curved into stiff-armed, murmuring commas: Whup. (“Humph!”) Whup. (“Not again!”) Whup. Whup. (“C’mooonn . . . Dohh!”)

A man with white hair and whiter pants watches his ball rise in a long arc that looks great, but veers way to the right of where he aimed it. He freezes, just looking, his golf club up in the air, his body sort of pigeon-toed and twirled around itself. Dohh. He untangles his knees and rubs his shoulder. A big-bellied guy saunters up. “You know what your problem is, is that. . . . “

The man just stares into the middle distance. “I know what my problem is,” he mutters as Mister Free Advice strolls away.

You can’t help it, your heart just goes out. I know what my problem is. This is a tribe where everyone gets to see your problem, and still membership shot up 7% to 26.5 million golfers nationwide last year. There is something in that plaintive sentence that just seems to say it all: I know what my problem is, and yet I keep coming back, hoping that by some miracle I’ll come to terms with it, via the grace of this little white ball.

Talk about suffering. Naturally, the question must be posed: Why do you do this? Is it fun? Honestly?

Well, the golfers say, answering the first question, it’s “relaxing,” or “an expected part of doing business.” The rest is evidently a tribal secret, because no matter how many golfers are quizzed, the question of fun remains a mystery.

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So the recent growth of this tribe can be explained only in theory. Personally, this correspondent is only half-persuaded by the talk of business and camaraderie and fresh air. More convincing, at least on the guy-my-age front, is the attraction of anything that puts you in the company of guys like Tiger Woods and Jack Nicholson, plus lets you say cool B-words like “Birdie” and “Bogey” while you smoke cigars.

But you can’t discount, either, the lifelong yearning to finally be a grown-up, or at least join the subculture that, in childhood, seemed the most grown-up of grown-up tribes. Funny, how that yearning will come down to just you and Nature and your “problem” and the comic mystery of--Dohh!--your life.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.