Yes, this is about golf.

But first it’s about the death of Nancy Griffith. She was a singer who died recently. She didn’t mean a lot to me, but I did see her in concert in the 90’s and it was okay. She had some nice songs. The main one I remember is “From a Distance”.

This is the most paltry eulogy you will ever read.

Nevertheless that song reminds me of a short piece I wrote about golf.

Her song might have been in the back of my mind when I wrote it.

Watching so much amateur golf at a distance I often wonder why the players don’t get more upset when they mess up their shots, which, allowing for statistical outliers, they do exclusively. I know if I were playing I would be throwing almost constant tantrums, albeit quietly, with occasional bitter remarks and a few bizarre, self-inflicted injuries. Then today I saw a man with a ball on the rough. It looked like an easy chip to the green. He was quite close and had to have been at least a little happy with the approach that had left him there. He just had to pop the ball up a little and softly place it on the green. Alas, it did not go to plan. He failed to get under the ball and so sent it on a short line drive tearing on past the hole. I don’t even know where the ball ended up as it scudded too far away for me to see. The golfer stood there for a second and then hurled his iron high into the air. I watched it sail above him, peacefully flipping end over end. He watched it too. I realized a little bit before him that the club would be landing on him if he didn’t move, but he caught on in time, though he was forced to take an undignified skip to vacate its landing area.

And finally I fully recognized myself; oh, that is what agony looks like from a distance.

Golf is a peaceful game, but like everything else down here, only from the clouds.

Music