Cow Pasture Pool

By:  Garland Davis

Golf:  Why did the Scots call it Golf?  The words SHIT and Fuck had already been used.

I didn’t play the game of golf.  I never had the desire because I was not interested in the game and I felt that I could better use my time and money drinking beer and chasing women. Golf is a costly past time that I really could not afford when I was a young sailor and now that I can, I am not interested in playing the game.  I am told that it is a frustrating game and a very miniscule number of people possess the ability and talent to become really good at it.  Realizing that my talents at sports were sorely lacking, I decided to give golf a pass.

Although we did have a skipper in Yokohama who would permit a two-hour lunch period to anyone who used the time in a physical pursuit.  We discovered that we could go to the driving range waste ten minutes hitting a bucket of balls and drink beer for the rest of the lunch period.  That is about the closest I came to the game.

I was told many times that it is an excellent venue for networking.  I was led to believe by my contemporaries, while on active duty and after I retired, that I could further my career by playing with the boss and other influential people.

I remember a new Commanding Officer reporting aboard the Oiler I was in, with a set of golf clubs.  The Captain was an avid golfer, and apparently good at it.  Within a week, CPO berthing resembled a club pro shop with golf clubs and golf bags taking up every empty space.  Junior officers were carrying golf clubs on and off the ship so often that one could have thought that it was part of their uniform.

When the Captain went to play, just by coincidence, there were CPO’s and officers from the ship at the course waiting for a start time.  They were all vying to have the CO join their group or to be invited to join his group.  The brown nose and suck were operating at maximum torque.

We left Pearl Harbor for WestPac with golf clubs stored in every available space.  Golf tournaments were planned for Subic (the only holes I was playing there were surrounded by hair or lipstick), Hong Kong, Japan, and every other port.  The Chief Radioman wrote messages arranging golf tournaments and reserving tee times for each port.  He became the de facto “Golf Officer and the CO’s (to use a term from Dickens) ‘lickspittle’”.

While they were out in the hot sun making their points and searching in the weeds for a little ball, I was usually in a dark cozy bar with a frosty in front of me and a hottie by my side.  If I had played their game, perhaps I could have retired as a Senior, or even Master Chief. But, I always felt that doing my job as best I could would be enough.  I don’t believe that playing golf made a difference.  I tend to think that someone who rises to the rank of Captain in our Navy has the ability to see through a bunch of phony assholes.

Now this doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy watching the LPGA and Michelle Wie bending over to study the green and the lie of her putt.  I get much enjoyment from watching the LPGA tournaments.  Not so much the PGA!

If any of you are golfers, I apologize.  I didn’t write this to piss anyone off.  Just expressing my opinion about the game and relating the events during one short period of a thirty-year career.

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A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.