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CHANGES TOO CONFUSING
When I was a youngster and some food was put on my plate that I didn’t like, my father would say, “It’s good for you and will put hair on your chest.” When you had hair on your chest you were considered as having reached manhood. If there was any way to fertilize it, I am sure that I would have. What a great day it was when a few stray hairs started showing up. I will never know if it was the advice my father gave to me or maturity.
Today on TV you will see a man on one of those torture exercise machines. He will not have a hair on his body, however, male models and celebrities, all must have a 5 day stubble of a beard on their faces in order to make them look masculine. Isn’t it much easier to remove the hair on a face, than the entire body? This man will now have to put on his clothes therefore nobody will know that he has no hair on his body. If he does not keep it hair free daily, it will probably itch him to death. Does it require a hair free body to use one of those machines? I have yet to see a hairy man on one.
A person who is new in golf will have the same misinformation and confusion with all of the commercials concerning the new fantastic clubs that do everything but hit the ball for you. Since the game was invented, the search for the fountain of youth and the perfect golf club and swing have enjoyed similar success.
There is only so much you can do with this stick with a head on it that hasn’t been tried before.
If you go to the Golf Hall of Fame, you will see that nearly all of these new clubs have been invented years ago. Manufacturers will take that old club, add a few exotic metals, dress it up and for 3 easy payments with your credit card you will now have another club to take out of your bag and put in your garage in order to make room for that new guaranteed club that you have just purchased. Please keep buying those new products ,as it helps keep our economy rolling. One day you might find one that really helps you, or was it as the hair on my chest, your game has matured?
We go from big heads that look like a shoe box on the end of a reed, to small heads that seem smaller than the ball.. Springy faces to extra hard faces. High center of gravity to low center of gravity. Extra long clubs that will allow you to hit the ball further into the woods. etc. The same applies to golf balls: High spin, medium spin, low spin, etc. On the PGA Tour in a field of 150 players, 100 are under contract to play a certain ball. The odds are pretty great that one of their players will win the tournament. Does that make it the best ball? Unlike years past, there is no such thing a bad ball on the market today. If you took the top advertised balls on the market and hit all of them several times, the longest drive you hit each time will probably be with a different make ball. Your best bet if you are a high handicap golfer, is to reach in that used ball bucket in the golf shop and grab a handful.
Juniors, who have high expectations and hoping to receive a golf scholarship in college, have to work very hard on academics while in high school. Golf is not a money maker, as is football, and your golfing skills are not the only thing considered. Football scholarships have long been suspect, and we have been getting accustomed to recruiting scandals. I can't understand why colleges don't recruit in the same manner that the coaches in the Big Ten used to do back in the thirties. They would ride out into the country and when they would see some strong looking boy plowing in a field, they would ask for the direction of the nearest town. If he pointed with the plow, he would be recruited.
Gambling has been around as long as man, and it has so many double standards involved as to who can, and who can’t, that leaves us confused. In the Nineteen thirties and forties the golf business was in its relative infancy, and golf pros had to eke out a living by giving lessons, repairing club, and maybe selling a few clubs. The big thing was the golf ball slot machine. Just give him a ball slot machine and he was happy. You put in a quarter and you could win one ball, five balls, or twenty. Nobody bought balls over the counter, but played the machine instead. At one club we had brothers who played it every time they came into the shop. One of them would put in ten dollars worth of quarters and win only a couple of balls. One day the other brother put his hat on the floor under the machine and with one quarter won the jackpot of twenty balls. He put in another quarter to take the hit off so that the next person in the shop would not get frightened off. That quarter won five more, and he took that off, and won another ball.
I was an innocent at the time and thought the machine was legal. It seemed that all of the pros had one. Each summer we would have a cook-out and party for the State Police and everyone played the machine. One day the pro was away at a tournament and I was alone in the shop. A call came from a State Trooper telling me to get rid of the machine because some criminals had been caught in a robbery and confessed that they had planned on hitting the Country Club to get the money from the machine, and that the police were coming to confiscate the machine. It was a big machine attached to a stand. I was trying to take it apart when the police arrived. They took it apart for me ---with a sledge hammer. That was one mad pro when he came back.