Good Friday, 2007

In the tradition of Good Friday golf, Den, Bob, Moe and several junior Cragin members met at Ives Grove Golf Course in Racine.  This was despite several daily weather updates from Moe that the temperature was going to be cold, that the wind would be coming from the north, and that in spite of the usual penchant for weather people to get the forecasts wrong, they were not going to be wrong this time.

Gregg Rossi showed up to drive around with his old golfing buddies.  After his gastric bypass surgery, Gregg has lost over 100 pounds.  He is nearly half the man we used to know.  Well, okay is is really 2/3 of the man we used to know, but what the heck, he is looking good, moving well and is well on his way to beating our asses into the ground on the golf course once again.  Who knows.  He might even get to play in the Cragin this year. 

It was cold out there on the golf course.  Whoever showed up was nuts and froze their nuts off.  The wind chills were into the teens.  Opening golf day, my ass.  Tradition of playing on Good Friday, my ass.  It was damn cold out there.  Den with a 90 won bragging rights until the Cragin in July.  Despite his best efforts on the back nine, Moe couldn't catch him and finished with a 93.   Bob, after setting a blistering pace with a 44 on the front nine, faded as well as froze with a 95.  The junior players in the crowd were even more frozen, and we won't embarass them by announcing their miserable scores.  Suffice it to say that the old farts, with our treachery and experience, handily kicked youth and exuberance.   Maybe it was because we played faster given the temperature, but we have yet to figure out why they finished three holes behind us.  Maybe they thought taking their time would make them concentrate on their shots better.  Hell, even penguins couldn't concentrate in that cold.

Gregg even tried a drive on one hole.  He waggled his now non existent ass, stuck out his tongue.  Waggled his ass some more, farted, and swung mightily.  The ball dribbled about twenty yards into a ditch and sunk below the weeds, lost forever.  Sorta like his golf game in  the last few years.  A club in Rossi's hand, though, is a dangerous thought, and if he does start playing again as he has promised, we can only imagine where the new golf technology will take his game.  Like all of us, it can't get any worse.

Speaking of worse and worser, the rounds at this weekend's Masters have been getting progressively so.  Going into the final round, nobody was under par.  This brought great joy to most normal golfers, particularly Cragin golfers.  Every time a pro dubbed a shot, every time they put it in the water, every time they left it in the sand trap, and every time they three putted from less than six feet away, we were able to say, "Hell, even I can do that!"

Tiger Woods kept a streak alive in the final round of the Masters.  He has never come from behind in the final round of a major.  He didn't again in the Masters.  At least he admitted that he played like crap in the tournament, having had way too many bogeys.  He comes up to the 17th hole needing two birdies to tie eventual winner Zach Johnson, and after hitting a drive in the fairway, proceeded to put his 9 iron right into the front side bunker.  He thought he hti a good shot.  It looked right at the flag.  The announcers thought he hit a good shot.  Then whatever wind he thought would take the ball, well, didn't take the ball, and it ended up on the beach.  In a fashion that would bring a smile to every Cragin player, Tiger could be heard to exclaim, "What the hell was that?"  Craginite have said the same thing thousands of times ourselves, usually in the same round, not over a four day tournament.

Phil Mickleson also kept a streak alive, that of being his usual doofus self.  Sometimes we just want smack that shit eating grin off his face.  Everytime he said, "I still have a chance." in his post round comments, I wanted to scream, "Hey Phil!  you're a bazillion shots behind!  Hell, I could play like that, too, and be a bazillion shots behind, too!"  He had as much chance of winning the Masters this year as I had of getting warm on Good Friday.