There are STILL those men who think women should not be allowed to play golf on "their" golf courses.
And then there are the more "enlightened" ones who think it's OK for ladies to play, as long as it's not on weekend mornings, on "Ladies' Day" (which seems to universally be Tuesday) and as long as they keep to themselves except for "Couples" events which are really more about drinking and socializing than golf.
And then there are those who truly enjoy playing with women, appreciate the LPGA...and OK, let's be real, fantasize about Paula Creamer playing in a thong.
For the golf-challenged or golf-blivious amongst my readers, there are (to completely oversimplify it) two ways to play golf. Stroke Play is what you mostly see on TV. Tiger shoots a 69, Phil shoots a 70 and some guy you've never heard of shoots a 71 and they place first, second and third. Match Play is used in the Ryder Cup and other international team events. In Match play, you win, lose or split a hole. So if Tiger makes Birdie and Phil makes Par, Tiger wins the hole. If they both make Birdie, they split the hole and are "all square" until someone wins a hole and goes "one up".
The interesting thing about it is that if I shoot a 9 on the first hole and my opponent shoots a 5 (which happens to be par on our course), I lose one hole...I'm not four shots behind after one hole. For years, the men in our club have had an annual match play tournament. Brackets, kind of like the NCAA basketball brackets, are set up based on one's handicap...the 8 seed plays the 1 seed, the 7 seed plays the 2 seed, etc. For each round of play, the men have two weeks to set up and play the match. So, in a strikingly unmanly fashion, they call each other, e-mail each other and come up with a convenient time for both of them to play. It's kind of like women do EVERY DAY OF THE EAR trying to balance kids' sports schedules, homework, laundry, getting together with friends, etc.
So, a few weeks ago, I said to one of our pros, Dave, "Hey, why don't we have a Match Play tournament for women?" Dave, who doesn't realize that I take EVERYTHING as a challenge, said, "You could never get enough women to play." Ahem...you are about to learn with whom you are dealing. "How many do we need?" After his response of 16, I said, "Ten bucks says I'll have 16 signed up by tomorrow."
And now, here we are, in our second round of play with a field of over 20 women and we are HAVING A BLAST!!! We are learning more about a golf format that we have rarely been exposed to. We are well-matched because we are playing people who are within 8-10 strokes of our own handicaps. We are challenged because we aren't "getting strokes", so if we are pitted against a better golfer, the bar is raised and we have to play our strongest game if we want to move on to the next round.
We had one round that was not decided until the 18th hole. We had one round that had to go to a play-off hole. I personally lost a hole because I inadvertently hit my opponent's ball...a big golf faux pas to begin with, but an automatic "loss of hole" in match play. We are trash-talking. We are sitting around on the clubhouse deck dissecting our games hole-by-hole, just like we used to roll our eyes when they guys did it. So next time you hear "don't play with matches", think again. It's fun!
Di
Comments