My old man spent most of his retirement summers golfing, three or four times a week, for thirty years or so. With his old buddies, the Hammer Asses. That’s a lot of hammer-ass golf. Whenever I visited those summers, a middle-aged man, I would tag along for old man golf: gas-carted play from the white tees at special senior rates. They’re all dead now. And I’m the old man.
This summer, partly at my spouse’s behest, I’ve retaken up old man golf with a guy I met on ICE-watch over the winter. His posse includes a number of former seminarians, a couple of them in their 80s, so there may be less hammer-assery, but the game is much the same. We try to make decent contact with our drivers off the tee, and we do so maybe half the time. Good loft, good distance, good run. Up to two hundred yards or so down the middle. They’ll tee up a mulligan routinely, repeatedly, immediately after a duck hook, a shank, a scull, or foozle. I’m not there yet. Play what I hit. Winter rules in the dead of summer. Texas foot-wedge when appropriate. Score is not kept for the round, only for a given hole. No skins, though. Inside the leathers is a gimme. We tally only our pars and birdies, a prudent habit which keeps us coming back.
It’s not the old man’s game my father played: they kept score and awarded quarter skins. But something akin. I don’t know if I’ll ever develop the camaraderie that animated the Hammer Asses, but my old lady wants me to have friends and get out of the house.
P.S. Have made a few strokes with the hickory-shafted mashie niblick, ca. 1905 pictured here. Older than me. Older than my old man. Still playable.
