Sometimes on the course, you’ve just got to call the golf police. Try not to be a perpetrator.
FAIRFIELD, CALIFORNIA, couldn’t have been more beautiful on Friday. The sun beamed, a breeze fluttered, the fairways beckoned. Temps in the 80s, no humidity, no office, just a nice day on the golf course. Except for those guys behind us hitting into us.
Several times during the course of the round, we’d be standing in the fairway over our shots and hear a drive landing perilously close behind us. One of their drives even flew a golf cart that was moving with two players inside. On par threes, we took to running off the green before they began to fire at us.
And here’s the thing: We were usually waiting for the group in front of us to clear the fairway or clear the green before we took our shots. We weren’t holding up the fellows behind us, yet, clearly, they had someplace more important to go than where they were. (And that’s not to say that such an attack would be justified even if we were clogging up the course.)
On the back nine, finally I began to turn around and hold up my hands, like a marshal at the U.S. Open, when someone in our party was hitting or putting. A couple of times I saw one of them standing over a shot preparing to fire at us and I hollered, “Wait!” As the only woman in my group, I felt they’d be less intimidated and testosterone-overcome if they heard it from me rather than one of the guys.
But I can’t say it helped much. They hit into us on 18 as well. What I would have liked to have said was: Is wherever you have to go worth risking jail time? Because I guarantee it, if someone beans somebody in my party with a golf ball just because they can’t wait for us to clear out of the fairway or off the green, I’m calling the police.
That’s assault, gentlemen. We’re not wearing helmets, and when we’re standing over a shot in the middle of the fairway or a putt in the middle of the green, we’re as vulnerable as can be. And if you fire at my group in those circumstances and hit someone, I will see that you are charged.
Up here in Washington State, that sort of behavior doesn’t occur very often…but during the last round I played where the jerks behind us kept hitting into our twosome, yelled warnings had no effect. The third time we took indirect fire, I casually strolled over to the near-miss ball and wedged it into the middle of a water hazard. When the next shot banged off the top of my clubs, I calmly repeated the “lob into water” shot. By the time the green in front of us cleared, I had two good practice shots in my muscle memory bank, which enabled me to hit my own ball to 3 feet from the pin. (Yes, I know I would have incurred penalty strokes if this had been a USGA-competitive or handicap round.)
Best part of this story: The offending Adam Henrys confronted me and my buddy, waving their putters and threatening to beat us up. We smiled, showed them our big ol’ police badges, and asked them which hospital they would prefer the ambulance take them to, after we dealt with their threatened assault. For some reason, they instead elected to head back to the tee and “replay the lost balls”. (Sometimes, there IS a cop around when you need one!)
Good that the course had plenty of water hazards too! Thanks for sharing.