A MONTH OF UN-DAYS

A LOT OF PEOPLE DIDN'T THINK I'D MAKE IT THIS LONG, and I confess, I had my doubts. Particularly when I've squandered aimlessly instead of effectively repurposing those dearly departed hours on the links. 

I keep wondering when I'll actually sit down and start working on my next book. When will I pick up my 6-string and give it a long-overdue tune-up? When will I actually master the little things, like chords on the piano? When will I just quit fooling myself and put the Cobras, Titleists, Clevelands and Eidolons back in the trunk? 

If the answer is "when hell freezes over," I'm afraid we're almost there. The course was blanketed with frost this morning. But with the economy flown south for the winter, another kid going off to college next year, and a bailout of the ad industry nowhere in sight, who has time for golf anymore anyway? No wonder the book isn't written, the guitar's out of tune and the piano is merely a piece of furniture in my living room. All I do is work these days.

But I guess it beats the alternative. 

Or does it? 

RETREAT, YES. SURRENDER, NO.

FORGIVE ME FOR NOT WRITING. It's difficult while wearing a straitjacket. I have to peck the keys with my nose. The spacebar's a bigger target and I can use my chin, but capital letters are a bitch requiring simultaneous strikes of the chin and nose. 

Speaking of big targets, they were blowing the leaves from the 16th green this morning as I sucked down a cup of coffee on my deck above a hundred feet above. I wondered if the jump would kill me. 

Then Fletcher called to inform me that the forecast for tomorrow is 71 and sunny and suggested I trade in the blog for a more desirable four-letter word. Fuck.

And then Mully and a couple of our coldblooded Canadian friends called from Vegas to let me know I was an asshole for not making the trip, and that they were off to play 36. 

And then Brain rang me and told me of his recent adventures at Pumpkin Ridge where he mercilessly drove a golfball into the chin of his cousin who had to have reconstructive surgery. 

Aha! Who am I to feel sorry for myself? At least I can still use my chin. Spacebar, look out.

THE TOUGHEST DAY YET

IT WAS AN ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR FALL DAY and worse yet, it was Sunday. I busied myself with work, bills, college apps, errands, garbage, recycling, running and email. I did everything but the thing I really wanted to do. Yesterday was a breeze because it poured. Friday was a long day of work that persisted till evening. Thursday I listened to my brother give an inspiring presentation on how you can fuel profits and growth while taking drastic measures towards corporate sustainability. The audience was enthralled, and it was not an easy crowd to enthrall. They were the top people from around the world who make up the 30-year old consulting firm PRTM. Their incisive questions showed how closely they'd been listening as my brother told his tale of elevating operations at Burt's Bees in pursuit of The Greater Good. It's constant innovation, and most everyone's inolved at some level. The kind of company you really want to work at, and feel pride about it. And because of this, their remarkable growth has seen an inverse relationship with their carbon footprint. 

Oh to be making my own green footprints along the 16th fairway below. But it seems I'm meandering toward my own greater good. 

OBAMA COMES TO OUR LITTLE TOWN

IT WAS AN HISTORIC NIGHT IN LEESBURG. And just when I'm wondering whether or not I can survive a year without swinging a club, the crowd erupts with a resounding  "YES WE CAN. YES WE CAN."

OFF THE BEATEN CARTPATH

I'M SURE AS HELL NOT ON IT.  And with each invitation to play I turn down, I become more painfully aware of the excruciating pang pang pang pang of withdrawal that tears at my psyche more violently than a four-putt.

Last week it was Nick inviting me to play Congressional. Last weekend I had to blow off a 36-a-day jaunt down to Raleigh with Randy and the boys. And I'm getting 16 emails an hour from that squeakiest of wheels Tracy who's doing his damnedest to cajole me into joining him and a dozen or two other lunatics for 3 days of golf, gambling and gars with comped hotel rooms and passes to The Big Smoke. What, no showgirls?

I'd be surrounded by fellow Golfoholics, but with one big difference - they'd be feeding their addiction while I'd be starving mine. Would I ride along and get vicarious pleasure, or hole up in my room with the lights off after losing my dry-fit shirt at hold 'em?

So I'm just a happy camper. Last weekend I stacked wood and have splinters and sciatica to show for it. Next weekend, perhaps I'll take up knitting. Because it is getting downright chilly around here. Hell, I could knit myself a fuzzy pink straitjacket. 

It's medication time Mr. Balata.

ONLY 51 WEEKS TO GO

IT WOULD PROBABLY BE EASIER TO GIVE UP SEX. I've resorted to dreaming about the game. And it feels like cheating. Even my morning run along the course gives me tinges of guilt. Particularly when I check out the pin position, choose a club in my mind, tee up a virtual ball and begin my backswiSTOP! This can't be right. Like Jimmy Carter, I have lust in my heart. Only it's for a damn game. Please don't tell my wife.

LOST WEEKEND

IT'S SUNDAY MID-AFTERNOON AND THERE'S STILL ENOUGH DAYLIGHT left to play 9. I question how much resolve I have to refrain from playing. What was the point of this pointless exercise, anyway?

Oh yeah.  To see what I can do with those 10 hours a week I'd otherwise be spending on fairways and greens (which probably wasn't close to 10 hours at all given the amount of time spent in fescue and bunkers and water hazards and somewhere over the rainbow and the out-of-bounds stakes).

So here's how it went. Woke up. Made coffee. Drank three mugs. Did some work. Went for a run. Made breakfast. Did some more work. Went to the bank. Then to Costco. Then borrowed a seen-better-days wheelbarrow from Scully. Tried to repair the thing. Then put on my golf gloves. 

But instead of reaching for a golf club, I reached for a log, and proceeded to unload a pick-up truck overflowing with a cord of wood that I then had to move from my front yard to my back and stack in neat little piles so that we can heat this damn house when I can no longer afford to pay the bills, which could be any day now given the economy. My repair job to the wheelbarrow gave way before the stack of wood did, and I was hard-pressed to get it moved before daylight disappeared and the chilly air of evening set in.

But fortunately I had a cord of neatly stacked freshly cut hardwood that I could build a nice fire from. After bringing a load up to the fireplace, it only took three newspapers and a blowtorch before I could coax it into flames.

My log supplier, The Woodpecker, clearly was not inspired by Gallo's old tagline, "We will serve no wood before its time." Fortunately I had a box of those fake packaged logs in my garage and I conscripted one to serve as nuclear kindling for my reticent hardwood. Before long my bride and I were hunkering down before our stone fireplace with a pizza, a bottle of wine and a chick flick that lulled me to sleep faster than a couple of Ambien.

That was yesterday. Today looked a lot like a repeat, only the wood hauling was replaced with helping my teenage daughter with an essay assignment that would have been considered extreme at Harvard Law. This teacher must have a grudge more sizable than the national debt to bear. This is not how I want to spend my former golf days.

I haven't touched the guitar, looked at the piano or dusted off an old manuscript waiting to be rekindled. But I did get a few miles in on the trail each day, and my knowledge of my daughter's high school government studies is probably at nearly 3rd grade level by now.

And if I hurry, I can still get 9 in. Or head on down to Home Depot and pick up a new wheel and axle and try to repair the borrowed wheelbarrow. Again.

Only 359 more days. But who's counting?

FRIDAY I’VE GOT MONDAY ON MY MIND

WHY THE HELL ISN'T IT RAINING? It's a lovely 65º Fall day, the kind that's custom-made for spending the afternoon knocking down pins and pressing bets. Quitting the game has been a cinch until now. Now the balata hits the cart path. And I've fought back by lining up Friday afternoon meetings far from the course.

Only problem is, after Friday comes Saturday. A day historically reserved for an early morning round with Scully or Tolle or Paulini or Palmeri or Wilber or Andreini or Quigg or Tanner or Regardie or Ebaugh or Vachon or Garcia or any of the hundred or so hopelessly addicted golf junkies at River Creek. Instead of digging up divots and repairing ballmarks, I'll be digging up the yard and cleaning the garage. Oh joy.

Not that I'd trade any of it for the perfectly struck 3-iron, the scent of a Davidoff, the $5 Nassau, or the trash talking pricks I call my golf buds.

Not when I can be washing out trash cans and planting petunias.

NOT THAT I COULD PLAY ANYWAY

It's not like there's time for golf right now, let alone showering and shaving. 

But it's the perfect time of year. The grass is green, the greens roll true, the leaves are like fireworks. Reminds me of my favorite passage from On The Road. 

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

So why am I wasting my time writing about giving up golf? 

What the hell am I going to do with the 10 hours a week I won't be squandering on the links?

I thought I might finally learn how to tickle the ivories of the black elephant that lies dormant in our living room.

I thought I might finally write the book that's burning a hole in my looseleaf.

I thought I might devote the time to getting Golfoholics off the teebox.

Barb thought I might at long last clean out the garage.

But my company had a different idea. Let's consolidate in DC. Double our footprint and hunker down under one roof. Great idea. 

Only it means 3-4 hours a day in the car.

Chauffeur wanted.

Or at least a few good golf audiobooks.

MY, HOW TIME FLIES

364 DAYS AND COUNTING. Boy, that was prolific. 

No time to write. Spent the day working and the evening letting the drummer kick with Citizen Cope at Strathmore when I could have been playing glowball with Freitas in my backyard.

The grass is always greener on the course.

DAY ONE

GOT THROUGH THE ENDLESS DAY without popping my trunk and reaching for my clubs. Spent it holed up in our Tysons office with my sun-damaged mug buried in my MacBook screen, immersed in a new business proposal. Surprisingly, I didn't feel a single pang of withdrawal until I pulled into the neighborhood.

Coming down Olympic Blvd, I found myself gazing longingly at the golfers coming up number 4. The green was lush and inviting in the sinking October sun.

As I drove by the 5th teebox, it was empty and exerted a familiar force that pulled me toward it with inescapable magnetism. I nearly drove my car into the water hazard where the fountain flirted shamelessly, whispering my name as drops of pondwater shot up into the crisp autumn air and cascaded back down dancing briefly on the surface before becoming it. 

On the green the flag waved. I waved back like a love-struck idiot.

Ah, the much-longed-for serenity of the course at the end of the day. 

I will miss it.

Damn, will I ever miss it.

TEE MINUS 16 DAYS

SOLO SATURDAY MORNING AT RCC. Just me, a coupla ProV's and a Perdomo Habano. A lonely round laced with a cloak of doom. Doom eminating from the ground, my stogie, the heavy air, the oh-so-down economy and the oh-so-near end of my golf days for the next 365.

I'm behind a foursome and in front of the women's member/member. It's slower than 95 at rush hour. To pace myself, I decide to play two balls: One from the back tees and one from the blues. After six holes, Mr. Tips is 1 up on Blue Man. 

I catch up to the group ahead of me on 7 and my next-door neighbor Randy offers to let me play through. I decline so I can better wallow in the gloom. I watch the smoke curl up from the cigar clenched between my teeth and the optimist in me wonders if my sabbatical from the game will lead to a healthier lifestyle full of running, weightlifting and yoga. 

"Keep dreaming," says a contrary voice inside me. 

Mr. Tips hits a 4-iron short and left of the green onto a strip of fairway, while Blue Man uses a 9-iron to put his ball on the dance floor. But just as it looks like the match will even up, Tips makes a nice chip and gets up and down for par. Blue three-jacks it and drops another hole. Two down with two to play. Dormie. 

That's what life feels like today. If you work hard and grind it out, you might get lucky and break even. Not exactly The American Dream.

As I wait on the 9th tee box, I wish I'd brought my fishing rod. A large bass leaps from Goose Creek into the Potomac where the river and creek meet at the confluence nearby. Mr. Tips hammers his drive left-center, and Blue Man bunts one out to the right side of the fairway. Both wind up bogying the hole, and Mr. Tips takes the match 1 up. 

Suddenly we are surrounded by a flurry of monarch butterflies clapping their wings in silent applause as if to say, "Lighten up."

Jack Nicklaus once said, "Resolve never to quit,

never to give up, no matter what the situation." 

But Jack never claimed he was leaving the game. Oh wait a minute....

Now, now. I know Jack Nicklaus. And I'm no Jack Nicklaus. 

I've got to go through with this. Four weeks from today will be my last round for a year. I'm committed. Or is that I ought to be committed?

Today I got an email from Eric Tracy a.k.a. The Mulligan Man (see themulliganman.com).

And it wasn't just any old heyhowyadoinwhassup? It was an invitation to go to Vegas in November, play golf for three days, and chomp on stogies for a night or two while sucking down copious cocktails and telling the raunchiest golf jokes our early onset plagued memories can recall with an accomplished crew of fellow Golfoholics.

How can I possibly go?

How can I possibly not go?

It's not even quittin' time yet, and I'm already losing my battle to overcome my addiction for a year. I've fallen off the wagon and I can't get up.

Can I grandfather in the weekend? We've been planning it since Mully called from Vegas after the last Big Smoke. I was walking into a Springsteen concert in DC, and Mully's passion for putting this weekend together matched the Boss's onstage. If you've ever seen Bruce, you know what I'm talking about. 

I can't disappoint him with a no-show.

I search my soul and wonder if I could possibly go and not play golf. 

The current odds in Vegas are 365 to 1 against it.

The ad guy in me takes solace in the slogan "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."

But the writer in me says "No way Jose, this is full tilt disclosure. What happens in Vegas goes in the blog."

I'm f#cked.

DAMN. One month left before giving up the game. 

I get the shakes just thinking about it. I'm going to need medication. Physical restraints. A straitjacket and a drool cup.

My golf buddies look at me like I'm 51 cards shy of a full deck. I used to be the king of clubs. Now I'm the goddamn joker. And I don't dare mention it in front of their wives or I'll never hear the end of it. Because neither will they. Their wives will hound them until they finally cry uncle and join me in my monastic pursuit of the bogey-free existence. And that's when I'll either need to hire a bodyguard or jack up my insurance. 

Quitting golf for a year is not going to make me a lot of friends. Whose lame ass idea was this, anyway? My wife likes to claim it was hers, and I'm all to happy to give her credit.

I wonder if she realizes I'm going to be around the house a lot more. In her hair like Dippity-do. She may live to regret this.

And odds are she will not be alone. 

ME AND MY BIG MOUTH

It was one of those Saturday mornings that was so damn beautiful you just wanted to make the clock stop. Or turn it back, in my case.

Barb and I were sitting on our deck sometime before 7 am drinking coffee and watching the world wake up. Looking over the rim of my mug I gazed wistfully, whatever that means, at the 16th hole stretching along the River below us. Clouds drifted by like mondo golf balls moving in slow motion. Beyond the pond on the green below, the flag on the pin flapped gently in the morning breeze. All I needed now was the Grateful Dead playing in the background: Walk me out in the morning dew....

She who shouldn't be ignored was onto me. She knew I was jonesing to spoil a good walk even though I'd played RTJ the day before and had a B-team match on Sunday. 

"You ever think about all you could get done if you didn't play golf?"

"Uh oh," I mumbled to myself. Don't go getting defensive, or you've lost the game before the ball is off the first tee.

"You know, I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I'm contemplating giving up the game and writing a book called A Year Without Golf."

Barb didn't hesitate. "I love it! You have to do it! That's such a good idea! You could learn to play piano or guitar like you've always wanted. Or clean out the basement like I've always wanted."

"Let's not get crazy now. If I did it, I'd have to do something meaningful, like take up guitar or learn to speak Icelandic. I'd sooner take up knitting than spend my former golf time cleaning up the garage."

"Fair enough. You can knit me a sweater for Christmas."

What the hell had I gotten myself into? I immediately fell into that state of mind that afflicts any addict contemplating withdrawal: The desire to OD before shaking the addiction.

"I guess I better go get it in while I can."

"Not so fast, balata boy. You need to start weaning yourself from the game here and now. Why don't you go to yoga class? Or get the garage out of the way so you won't have to clean it once you've given up golf?"

I grabbed my yoga mat and headed for the first tee.