The critical opening phrase of this poem ..

At the club house the ranger ejaculated, "this is one of the loonies who played in snow last tuesday"! ..from crazies to loonies was quite an easy transition and later at the 10th tee the three loonies from last tuesday were evenly split between three foursomes to balance out the lunacy. While at the tee, waiting for non-loonies to tee off, the eloquant narration of golf swing, from Tin Cup swung into mind..

"The critical opening phrase of this poem will always be the grip. Which the hands unite to form a single unit by the simple overlap of the little finger. Lowly and slowly the clubhead is led back. Pulled into position not by the hands, but by the body which turns away from the target shifting weight to the right side without shifting balance. Tempo is everything; perfection unobtainable as the body coils down at the top of the swing. Theres a slight hesitation. A little nod to the gods. That he is fallible. That perfection is unobtainable. And now the weight begins shifting back to the left pulled by the powers inside the earth. It's alive, this swing! A living sculpture and down through contact, always down, striking the ball crisply, with character. A tuning fork goes off in your heart and your balls. Such a pure feeling is the well-struck golf shot. Now the follow through to finish. Always on line. The reverse C of the Golden Bear! The steel workers' power and brawn of Carl Sandburg's. Arnold Palmer! the unfinished symphony of.. [ Tin Cup]"

It felt good, it felt good just to be on the course, the grace, the smell of fresh cut grass, contours on the fairway and undulations on the green, the grim gloomy sound of ball taking a drink and the sweet sensuous sound of sinking the ball , the fore cries, the vast pictureque expanse, bell at the 7th, the solitude, the thud of a chunky shot and the melody of a crisp one, the sound of birds and the sound of birdies, the bogey woes and the par saves, the exhilarations, the silently vocal frustrations, the words of wisdom, higher aspirations all of it makes it simply great. Great enough to make one come back, time after time, to swing at a roughly 42 mm ball with about 400 dimples, repeatedly from tee to green, with persistance, character, pleasure and pain. Are lessons of golf, lessons for life?

The symphony began, bogey -doublebogey -bogey -par -bogey -triple-bogey -double-bogey -bogey -double-bogey was more of a cacophony and the only thing on the other side of the rainbow was pizza and beer and all the fun of trash talking at Time Out. and so we headed to the nineteenth hole in dim light and bright spirits. Keeping alive the annual tradition of beer betting this year, was the ping pong bets and it led to a title matches being scheduled at the "ping pong resort" in mentor ohio. A whopping wager of $1 each was collected, from the better lou and the betty lou, to seal the deal and washingtons, two of them, now rest in my wallet. Yesteryears bets of fame included basketball bets, racquet ball bets and last but not the least a bet to bowl cricket ball at 85 mph. The dreams of these bets never came true but they live, thrive and die in the noisy, non-smoking, often packed Time Out grill, while the scores are tallied and skins are won, tuesday after tuesday!