Mr. Country and The Triple-Hit

About 2 weeks ago a caddie threw a CD on my lap. Apparently one of the members had recently recorded a country album. Now I’m not much of a country fan, so I hadn’t heard of him. I tried to look him up on Amazon and I think I found goat milk for sale that was cheaper and more abundant than any info on Mr. Country here. But the one thing I did notice on the CD was that under every song title it credited Mr. Country with the music and lyrics. There are 12 songs on the CD. So under every song, on the back of HIS CD, I have to read his name over and over and over again. In a way, that’s like putting the calorie count on water. We all get the point.

So when I was told I would be caddying for Mr. Country today I couldn’t help but lower my head and chuckle as I went over to shake his hand and introduce myself. He was accompanied by 3 men, and I’ll use their real names because as far as I could tell, they might not even be their real names anyway.

Mike, Vinny and Terry. Three guys who looked like they had just fallen off of The Soprano’s set. Either that, or they really WERE Mafioso. They all stared me down as I shook their hands. What are you tough-lookin’ guys doin’ with this lanky country boy?

I guess they were Mr. Country’s posse. Kind of like rappers in the whole east-coast west-coast clash of the titans, Mr. Country needs to have protection at all times from all those opposed to putting your name under every single one of your fucking songs on the back of your CD. YOUR CD Mr. Country. We get it.

Normally I like to clean the clubs a little bit before players tee off, but there was so much dirt crusted on each of the sets of rental irons that I barely had enough time to do 2 or 3 clubs before I had to run out into forecaddie position to see where their shots were going.

And I hate to give away some of the fun, but I swear to God and sunny Jesus—I could’ve taken a shotgun filled with buckshot, walked into the middle of a hayfield, put on a blindfold and spun myself around. Then I could’ve fired the gun in an arbitrary direction and STILL found every piece of buckshot in the hay EASIER than I could’ve found any NUMBER of golf shots these guys hit today. Every shot went in a different direction and they were all playing ready golf. Mr. Country told me this fact on the 3rd hole, but I could tell after their second shots on the 1st what kind of crack they were smoking.

And the worst part was, they were all giving me the cold shoulder for the first 6 holes. Other than acknowledging me as I gave them a yardage, none of them talked to me or looked in my direction until a magical shot occurred on 7.

Mike had rocked a drive 227 down the left side of the fairway and was now 187 from the flagstick.

“It’s 159 front and 187 pin, Mike.”

“You sure about that?”

Pause.

“Yeah. 187 pin.”

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you Tom?”

Why? You gonna cut off my balls with a spork or something?

“No sir. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

I sorta have an incentive to help you out Mr. Godfather.

“Because my clubs don’t lie.”

Just hit the ball. We’ll see what happens then prune-face.

And sure enough, he hit a great shot and put it pin high on the green, about 20 feet left for birdie.

“Tom! My man!”

Obligatory fist mash. Great.

“See, I told you I wasn’t lying.”

And from then on, the rest of the group started warming up to me. This only further proves my theory that as long as you hustle and don’t try to force a conversation, eventually a relationship will form completely on its own.

Not to be mean, because I have plenty of faults with my OWN swing, but I always find it humorous when you see a player cock his wrist in a strange way, or sway backwards before he takes the club back, or do something a little weird which seems to switch on a little voice in your head that makes you want to spew out something reminiscent of a swing thought to help them out. Mr. Country had a bad habit of swaying before he took the club back. In fact, it was the swaying motion which took the club away from the ball in the first place.

“Hey Tom? Why is my ball going in all directions?”

“I don’t know. But it’s a gorgeous day, isn’t it?”

Yes, it was a cop-out. But I just didn’t want to fight that battle today.

Then, on 13, one of the rarest of anomalies occurred before my very eyes. The fabled “triple-hit.” It came without warning. One minute you have a player on the back of the green chipping for 3, and the next minute they’re on the other side of the green putting for 6. Come to think of it, in the spirit of Mr. Country, I think I’ll sing a little ditty about it.

Oh I lost my wife and my dog and my car and my house…

Wait. Maybe we won’t go THAT far into country-song lingo. Let’s start over.

Oh I was playin’ a round with my buddies three,
Three ugly lookin’ guys are my posse,
The round was goin’ swell till we hit 13,
And my partner hit the weirdest freakin’ shot I’ve ever seen.

Oh kiss my grits and call me Sally!
I was playin’ spring golf with a few of my pallies!
Smoked so much refer I can barely see!
But that sum-bitch was penalized 3!

So he grabbed a club he called his own,
A gift from his kid whose almost grown,
Lined up his shot like ‘em boys on tour,
But the resulting shot wasn’t anything pure.

Oh kiss my grits and call me Sally!
I was playin’ spring golf with a few of my pallies!
Smoked so much refer I can barely see!
But that sum-bitch was penalized 3!

He took the club back all full of hope,
Lord in heaven he’s been smokin’ dope,
The club came through with a mighty swing,
And all I could hear was bing bing bing.

Oh kiss my grits and call me Sally!
I was playin’ spring golf with a few of my pallies!
Smoked so much refer I can barely see!
But that sum-bitch was penalized 3!

…

Alrighty then. I’ll stop there because honestly, if I don’t, I don’t know if I COULD stop the song. But what I saw was unbelievable. The club came through, click. The club came up a little more, click. And then, as if the player was afraid the ball wasn’t going to go anywhere, it looked like he purposefully snapped his hands forward and around to slap the ball onto the green in the hope that the ball would land SOMEWHERE near the hole. But it didn’t.

“He just double-hit that Tom?”

No. It was a triple-hit. And it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.