Sunday, May 09, 2010

How to Die During Golf Without Really Trying

On Friday I did my mom a solid by taking her place in a local Parish's golf tournament. I played with 3 very nice ladies in a scramble format.  The first 9 holes went great and it was a 3 hours (yes 3 hours) well spent and we made our way to the first tee since we started on the back first. On this course the front and back nine are separated by a busy road.  On the fist tee the men tee off over this road while the women tee off across the street.  To get there you drive the cart down a caged hill (to avoid golf balls being driven into your skull) and stop at the intersection to venture across the busy country road.  As the nice lady drove us down the hill, in the back of my head I thought, wow we are kind of clipping along down this hill.  Which was the exact moment when she said, these brakes aren't working.  The rest can be best explained with the help of my Photoshop skills.
A. This is where I put down my snack and seriously noticed the speed in which our golf cart was going and became a bit concerned.
B. This spot is where I turned to see my golf partner and cart driver literally standing up on the brakes with no reaction whatsoever from the cart.
C. Thought of jumping out here when I saw the line of speeding car barreling down the country road.
D. Where the speeding car braked for a split seconded but the his angel slammed his foot on the gas pedal which propelled the car through the intersection crossing in front of our brake-less cart with inches to spare. Also the spot of a sign that warns to look for traffic, but was very blurry as we sped by making the warning unreadable.
E. Realization that golf, should be considered an extreme sport.
The lesson I walked away from my day of death golf was not so much to always wear clean underwear because well, duh, seconds would have made nothing about me clean. But I walked away remembering that we really never know the day or the hour, so "making every day count" shouldn't just be a saying on a fridge magnet.  Life is precious so check your brakes before you go down a hill.  The good news is that I was pretty calm when I thought my obituary would say I died golfing, probably because I've come close so many times before.