This is the beginning of a post that will explain why golf is one of the greatest games on earth and one of the dumbest at the same time.

Reasons why golf is great:

1. It is hard. So hard that when you make a good shot, you really feel like you accomplished something.

Why golf is stupid:

1. It is hard. So hard that unless you spend an inordinate amount of time and money playing the game, you will never get better. There are very, very few natural golf players, primarily because the tools they give you to accomplish a relatively inane task (putting a ball into a hole) are vastly inappropriate for the job.

Why golf is great:

1. It is quiet. A well played round of golf is a nice, relaxing way to spend the afternoon (or all day). There is no loud Rap music meant to "hype" me up to play golf, no screaming crowds unless you make a nice hit and are a PGA tour member, and whistles or coaches screaming at you.

Why golf is stupid:

1. It is quiet. There has never been a grimmer, more somber game ever invented (except maybe for chess, in which ultra-nerdy announcers commentating on a game will wet themselves over a seeminly innocuous move such as "He moved his knight's pawn to Bishop rank file 3! That is a grievous error, and the crowd looks for Yuri Oskori to hang himself after such a dunder-headed mistake!") There is no cheering. You must not talk. You must not breathe, no matter how far away from the "action" you may be. Tiger Woods got all poopy at the Masters the other day when someone on a tee box 100 yards away happened to drive the ball at the same time he did. The other player's PING-sound messed Tiger up, he said, and that was the excuse he used for shanking a 300 yard drive into the next county. Boo-fricking-hoo.

Why golf is great:

1. It is slow. It forces you to concentrate. Every shot counts. If you walk the course, you have time to clear your mind and focus on the task at hand.

Why golf is stupid:

1. It is SLOW. Watching paint dry can be more exciting to the outsider. Watching some players play (high school and up) is like watching a 40 hour documentary on the mating ritual of the three toed sloth. They get behind the ball, look at the hole, take three practice swings, pull out another club, take three more practice swings, then adress the ball. Aim. Take a practice swing. Re-aim. Reach down and pluck the leave ten inches in front of the ball that could not in ANY WAY affect their shot from the earth. Bend over, settle into their stance. Bend their knees. Re-aim. Finally, they swing. The ball goes three feet because they topped it, and the process starts all over again. No sport should take 6 hours to perform an average of 90 swings of the club. No way. I have ADHD when it comes to golf, because honestly after 9 holes, I'm bored and ready to do something else. A nice round of golf for me should take 3 hours, possible less. But not golfers. Nope.

Why golf is great:

1. It is a great game to play with friends. Even friends who are terrible golfers. Several hours on the golf course is a great way to catch up on news (gossip), to reminesce, and to just play in a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere.

Why golf is stupid:

1. It is a terrible game to play with strangers. Put a random group of people together on the golf course, especially men, (this rule does not apply to women, who can have fun no matter where they are doing no matter what), and they will immediately go stone silent and puff their chests out. It is time to go to work. It is time to be serious. Golf amongst strangers, especially rivals, is a bloodthirsty, cutthroat affair. Now to be honest, this rule doesn't apply ALL the time, but a great deal of the time, at least as it comes to SEK League coaches. For some people a round of golf is a test of manhood, as silly as that may sound. To me a more logical test of manhood would be to wrestle a bear, or engage a band of ninjas in hand to hand combat or to climb a sheer-rock faced mountain with out any rappelling gear. Nope, to these guys your validation as a man depends on how far you hit a little white ball. Every guy on the first tee takes about a million practice swings, gets up, and swings as hard as they possibly can to see who can outdrive each other. There are some big hitters in the league, there are some finesse players, and then there is me. So when these pissing contests (my blog, I'll say it if I want to, because that is what it is) begin, career golfers tend to frown upon beginners, forgetting that they too were newbies at one time.

Why golf is great:

1. The clubs, man! The clubs! All different colors, shapes, sizes.....you could literally spend ten hours a day reading about new clubs, new technologies which allow the creation of golf balls which, if hit properly, could reach orbit, deposit an independent satellite manned with three astronauts and a monkey named Otto, then return for a soft two bounce landing on the green AFTER it stops to pose for a photo with Tiger Woods at Augusta National. I only have a cheap set of clubs, because Natalie said I can't buy new ones until I can hit the crappy ones I have. Besides, as Kyle Anderson told me, he could hit the tar out of his $19 Wal-Mart Driver, but when he bought a $400 Cobra, he couldn't keep it in the fairway. (That's a phrase I like to think sounds dirty but isn't. "Keeping it in the fairway." Heh heh.) Newer expensive clubs can mask some problems with more forgiving sweet-spots, but they can also make your mistakes catastrophic.

Why golf is stupid:

1A. The clubs, man! The clubs! I did an ebay search for golf clubs for sale this morning, and the search results generated 6,626 items for sale. I looked at a few of them- you know, honestly, to the average golfer, one club is just as good as another. But it's not about the club- it's about the STATUS, man, the STATUS. Just as a guy pulling into our school parking lot in a new 2006 Mustang GT Convertible is sure to get some oohs and ahhs, a guy with a new Titleist 100000 cc Mega-Death Howitzer Fairway Raper driver is sure to have people flocking to him, begging to touch the club, hold the club, take practice swings with the club, and, if it is his birthday, bar mitzvah, or a national holiday, actually HIT A BALL with the club. Instant 15 minutes of fame. When I'm with the other coaches swinging sets of clubs that are far more valuable than my car, I always feel a little inadequate pulling out my set of "CrapMasters." I shouldn't, because when I hit my clubs well I hit them just as well as those fancy-pants guys.

1B. The balls, man, the balls. There are more brands of golf balls than you can choke a whale with. The differences in the balls vary, including weight, dimple distribution, 2 piece and 3 piece constuction, soft feel, hard feel, long, hi spin, lo-spin, side-spin, blah blah blah. Now, to really good golfers, this really can make a difference. Absolutely it can. But I just nearly die of laughter when I see some of our high school golfers ramble on about the attributes of each ball and then proceed to whack the ball all over the course. It doesn't matter a single lick at this level. Not a lick.

1C. The clothes, man, the clothes. Why in the world are you required to dress up to play a game? That is retarded. You could argue, I guess, that it is no different than baseball uniforms, but the requirement most courses have that all shirts have collars is simply ridiculous. WHO CARES if there are collars on a shirt? Not this man. I could play in over-alls, hiking boots, and a wifebeater T-shirt if it wouldn't set off the fashion alarm of every sensible dresser in the county.

Why golf is great:

1. It is exclusive. It is kinda nice to know that when you go out to play golf you will only be joined by people who WANT to play golf. No crying babies, no screaming old people, no REALLY drunk folks (some regular drunks, but generally no obnoxious drunks wanting to start fights).....no mall rats, etc......kinda nice.

Why golf is stupid:

1. It is exclusive. Golf is (and let's face it) a middle to upper class white guy's sport. In a financially depressed area like we live, your average lower income guy or gal is not going to drop the $20 on greens fees to spend an afternoon playing golf when they can instead grab their pole, dig some worms, buy a six pack of the beverage of their choice, and spend several hours by a pit, creek, pond, river, or fish hatchery. The only way I get to play golf in the off season is to make an EFFORT to save my pennies and pony up for the greens fees. The golfing community is a tight knit yet welcoming one; however, it is still less than inclusive.

I really like the game- don't get me wrong about that. But there are lots of things I DO NOT like about it, like golf tournaments (at least the ultra competitive ones- but that is my view on everything- once you get ultra-competitive, it loses the fun.) Most golf tournaments I've coached and witnessed, you have 54 VERY GRIM and angry boys moping around the course in a constant sour mood. They may be happy when it's over, but is 10 minutes of happiness worth five and a half hours of grimacing? I don't think so. Other sports have moments of celebration, yelling, a way to let off steam after you make a particularly great play. In golf, unless you are willing to risk a disqualification, you must pretty much remain near-silent as you play. There's a reason golf claps are quiet people. Hard to get excited with golf claps.

Oh well. Time to get ready for a golf tournament!