Dear Golf Bruh Who Threw His Club on the Third Green,
I’m writing this letter of gratitude in order to thank you for what ended up being an immensely satisfying round of Bandon Dunes golf.
Let me begin by thanking you for taking somewhere in the range of a full sixty seconds to prepare for your first putt of the round. After slope evaluation from multiple angles, six tiny practice putts, and several deep breaths, you sent your ball approximately twelve feet past the hole, ending up with an objectively harder putt than you started with. While I abhor glacially slow play, I do take some pleasure in watching glacially slow golfers – the ones who take their putts really, really seriously – ultimately miss by a mile.
Thank you for throwing your club in exasperation after (successfully!) extracting your ball from that bunker next to the third green. Admittedly, I was confused at this angry display, given this was the best shot you’d hit all round, but your father (that gem!) reprimanded you for your bad behavior, thus revealing to me a genre I hadn't known I was missing in my life: Fathers reprimanding their adult sons for bad behavior on the golf course.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity – after I topped my fairway shot for about the seventh time that round – to laugh blithely and declare within earshot of all: “Well, another bad shot, but I’m still a worthy person!” To be clear, I rarely decline an opportunity to make sanctimonious and didactic “life lesson” declarations in any context, but I especially relish this on the golf course to an audience of quasi-adults.
Thank you for spontaneously informing me that your wife had been planning on learning how to golf this season, but alas! You had surgery a mere six weeks ago and are already back on the golf course and this is probably why you’re playing so poorly and so, again, alas! Your wife will not be learning how to play golf this season. As a former college composition instructor who learned to revel in the analysis of logical fallacies, I delighted in the mental gymnastics involved in trying to understand just why exactly your injury that is not preventing you from golfing is – in fact – preventing your wife from golfing.
Thank you to your father (truly, a gem!) for telling me – somewhere on the back nine, while we patiently waited for you to complete your putt preparation routine – that your brother is the best golfer of all the family, in all the lands. Call me evil, but I did take some small pleasure in wondering if you missed your putt because of that comment.
Thank you for letting me know toward the end of our round that this – your last round of your four-day trip here – was the first round in which you just did not play well at all. I mean, to be fair, I wouldn’t expect anyone to really play well after four solid days of cart-less Bandon golf (and I’d also kind of thought we’d settled that you played so poorly because of your surgery that’s preventing your wife from golfing...), but I am grateful to know that despite what I saw on the course today, it is in fact possible to play "well" with a swing like…well…with a swing like that.
Finally, thank you for so clearly exposing your petulance by the end of the second hole that you sparked that special little flame of my husband’s, that flame that wants to prove to those golfers who take themselves far too seriously that it’s possible to par every hole (okay - he did end up shooting one over for the round) while laughing and having a great time and just…not taking yourself too seriously! I mean, I don’t really care how I myself play – hell, I don’t even keep score! – but I do enjoy watching my spouse outplay a golf bruh, especially one with a tendency to throw clubs.
Good luck fixing that swing, bruh!
Love,
The Woman Who (Seriously!?) Just Throws Her Ball Out of Every Bunker