THE OLD COACH

Teed Off At The PGA

Well, the US Open is around the corner, and weekend duffers everywhere have long since started  breakin’ out the rubber spikes and polyester pants and them open-neck shirts with the little freakin’ alligators on them. Bear with The Old Coach when he tells ya that them high-falutin’ nancy-boy pro golfers play a game that bears no resemblance to the game that was played when yer’s truly, The Old Coach, was a terror on the links at the old Greater Featherstone George S. Patton Memorial Public Golf Course.

You betcha, The Old Coach remembers when playin’ the once-great of golf was akin to jungle warfare. None of that sissy-pants knickers-wearing Volvo-drivin’ on my old stompin’ grounds, that’s for darn tootin’!  No self-esteemin’ hacker who ever navigated a public course that named itself after the great General Patton, God rest his soul, would even think of playin’ on some of them glorified old-fogie resorts that pass for “championship level” courses, an’ that’s what The Old Coach is speakin’ of!

Look at them groomed lawns, short-grass fairways, and puttin’ greens that are trimmed closer than Telly freakin’ Savalas’ dadgummed Kojak head!  Where’s the challenge in that?  Looks like the home where I dropped Mom off after she hit the three-quarter century mark, for cryin’ out loud. Back in the day, The Old Coach played on courses that got mowed once every spring whether it needed it or not, the fairways were full o’rocks and barbed wire and crap, and the flora and fauna indigenous to the area made the Serengeti look like a petting zoo, and if I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’, ‘cause that’s The Old Coach’s bottom line!

And all these so-called “professionals” askin’ the crowd to be quiet when they’re drivin’ an’ chippin’ an’ puttin’, does that make you want to puke or what? Hell, when The Old Coach’s foursome was out there on the greens and one of the boys was concentrating on a shot, we’d hoot and holler and throw things at him. I seem to recall the occasional discharge of a firearm here and there, but it was all in good fun and if you can’t take the heat stay outta the kitchen as my favorite president, ol’ Harry S Pershing used to say.

Then afterwards we didn’t have no stinkin’ brown-nosin’ banquet dinners under a Barnum & Bailey tent with speeches and tuxedos and frou-frou drinks, you can bet your last nickle on that, Bub!  We’d all just pile back into the Dodge and head to the pride of downtown Featherstone, Flo & Earl’s Main Street Tap, for one or twelve frosty glasses of Schlitz, a little pinball, and maybe a hot link or two. You want a good time? You look up The Old Coach, and I’ll show you gusto with a capital J, you mark my words!

Yeah boy, you take it from The Old Coach when he tells ya that none of them twerps would last the front nine at the old Greater Featherstone George S. Patton Memorial Public Golf Course. We’d take them wusses with their fancy titanium clubs and their personal caddies and their Nike swooshes and we’d eat ‘em alive! Maybe we’d let ‘em hit from the ladies’ tee just to make it interesting. Bring ‘em on!

And that’s the truth!  Tell ‘em The Old Coach sent ya…

©2001 Bill Klein. All Rights Reserved.