A Wonderful lousy memory
Late summer 1985 was too long ago for most to remember, but I shall never forget it. Yup! It was exactly 31 years ago when an unusual huckleberry year brought a never before seen migration of grizzly bears to West Glacier. They saturated the entire area. For this year’s Labor Day week, I am recalling a rare adventure that situation produced:
Griz Plop Golf
GOLF- “A game played on a large outdoor obstacle course having a series of nine or 18 holes spaced far apart, the object being to propel a small ball with the use of a club into each hole with as few strokes as possible.”
That is the short dictionary definition of a frustrating, expensive, time consuming, and intense human activity. You will note the use of the word “obstacle.” These are also called hazards and are personified by the “rough.” This is a jungle of thorns, poison ivy, wire brush, elephant grass, swamps, and quicksand which always lines one or both sides of the so called “fairways.” In the fairways we have “natural” hazards such as trees, rocks, lakes, streams, oceans, sand bunkers, wind, sleet, hail, fog, and sometimes snow.
There are also “man made” hazards such as cart paths, sprinkler heads, ground under repair, size 12 ladies in size 8 shorts, golf carts, etc. Balls which land on cart paths, sprinkler heads, and other infrequent hazards can be “dropped” without a penalty stroke. You may also remove dead “unattached” things like leaves, sticks, pine cones, and pebbles from around your ball, providing you do not touch or move the ball.
This brief background was necessary in order for non-golfers to appreciate the strange but true thing I’m about to tell.
I appreciate the ground rules at the beautiful West Glacier Golf Course which allow you to have a free drop out of elk and moose tracks, but this latest thing has me troubled. Saturday on that course, 200 yards our from the tee on the first hole, there were two or three large piles of fresh grizzly bear poo poo, about the size of a loaf of bread. No trouble for Arnie or Jack, but that’s about how far I drive so my ball bounced into one of those purple mounds. I was in a match with Dan Lundgren who plays there almost every day, and is normally a reasonable man; and I asked him what would be the local ruling with my ball in the bear “stuff.”
He said, “George, you know we play regulation gold here. You have to hit it out.”
“You mean to tell me that I can’t get a free drop out of that odiferous mountain of recycled huckleberries?”
If Dan was kidding, I couldn’t tell it. ‘No! We play it just the same as you would from a sand trap. Use a pitching wedge, aim about two inches behind the ball and hit down and through. You know! The explosion shot.”
“My friend, when you hit that kind of shot from a bunker, sand flies all over the place; therefore if you hit that kind of shot from a pile of grizzly poo poo... well... it will just be a lot different.”
There were 17 holes yet to play and I could see many suspicious mounds ahead. I wanted the issue settled.
“Dan, we’re only playin’ for two bits a hole, and there’s no one else close enough to see. Surely you wouldn’t make a fella hit a ball out of that stuff... would you? Besides, I’m wearing my new white Thunderbird golf shirt.”
“I’m sorry George, but I didn’t make the rules. You’ve played enough golf to know that if you start bending a rule here and making an exception there, pretty soon the game loses its most sacred aspect... integrity.”
I’d like to end this column by reporting I had to take three showers after the game and had to eat out in the yard away from the others at the Lundgren home. That would make a better yarn; however the truth is, I took a drop and Dan added two strokes to my score, one for the drop and another for putting a clean ball in play.
George Ostrom is an award-winning columnist. He lives in Kalispell.