We All Need Role Models

Golf
has never been one of our top shelf competitive activities. It seemed
to us to be mainly an excuse for paunchy white guys to get out of the
house dressed like pinps and spend a few hours strolling over carefully
manicured estates. Rather baronial, somehow, and hard for the Dowbrigade
to group with "real" sports requiring a certain degree of athleticism,
like football, soccer and bowling.

We were never even able to muster much enthusiamism for Tiger Woods,
the One-Man Melting Pot. He seems like something that came out of a media
laboratory in the bowels of the United Nations. However, we just read
in the Miami
Herald about a golfer we might be able to get into, Chris
Smith, whose main claim to fame is having been beaten in a tournment
by Divot the Clown and not retiring in shame…

First-round leader Chris Smith
sank — having nearly as bad a Friday as Martha Stewart
— which was too bad. If I were rooting
any harder, I’d have been dogging the players who surpassed him Friday
and loudly mock-sneezing on all of their backswings.

One reason is that Smith, while on the developmental Nike Tour in
1998, was beaten in a pro-am ”skins” game by Divot the Clown, which
begged
elaboration.

‘I’m like, `This can’t be happening,’ Smith said, recalling the horror.
“He’s in full clown garb. He had the big shoes on. The big red nose,
the wig, everything. I was bitter at Divot the Clown.”

Another reason I rooted for Smith is that, in the PGA Tour media guide,
under ”special interests,” he lists the following four hobbies, and
I quote:
“Rodeo, whistling show tunes, bowling and Internet checkers.”

A clown after my own heart.  From the Miami Herald