How to Win at Golf

By the time I was in college, my golfing routine with Gumpy had changed.  I went to the farm once a week during the summer, so I only had the chance to work on my golf game once a week.  Gumpy, however, practiced almost everyday.  While I had the strength and size advantage, he countered with superior knowledge of the course and cunning.

That cunning manifested itself in the form of big chores for me.

One morning, Gumpy decided that the tree on the edge of Shaytown Road on the old fence row next to the chicken coop needed to be chopped down.  It wasn't much of a tree and it was too close to the field for Gumpy's comfort.  We quickly got to work with his old Stihl chainsaw.  The tree came down pretty easily and the branches were trimmed off quickly, so we decided to head to the golf course.  Gumpy won pretty easily because my arms were shaking so much I couldn't properly grip the club.  

Having not learned my lesson, a the next summer we decided to break up the concrete floor in one of the barns before our golf game.  He wanted a new cement slab to park his truck on while my grandparents wintered in Florida, and to accomplish this, the old floor needed to go.  Woodchucks and raccoons had compromised the old floor by tunneling underneath it, so breaking the old floor apart sounded like a pretty easy job.  All it required was a jackhammer.  

By this time in Gumpy's life, he wasn't much good for heavy lifting.  In his words, he was too heavy for light work and too light for heavy work.  So I hoisted the rented electric jackhammer into the back of the truck and we drove back to the farm.  

The actual breaking of the concrete floor didn't take as long as either of us had estimated.  Once I figured out a rhythm, the jackhammer worked slicker than the hair on a schoolmarms leg.  A project we both figured would take at least four hours was done in one hour.  It opened up plenty of time for a quick nine holes of cow pasture pool.

Feeling pretty strong, I was confident I could take the old boy, so I agreed to go to Mulberry Fore in Nashville, MI with him.  It was our secondary course.  We both loved Centenial Acres in Sunfield but we decided on Mulberry Fore to avoid the golf leagues.  Playing on the new nine at Mulberry, our first hole was a nice 350 yarder.  Nice and straight with open grass on the left and a tree line on the right.  Gumpy stepped up and stroked his trademark straight-as-a-string 180 yard tee shot.

I confidently approached my tee shot.  I knew if I killed it, I would be able to drive close enough for a nice chip shot onto the green and a shot at a birdie.  I wound up and took a hefty swing.  When the club hit the ball, I yelped in pain and almost lost my grip of the club.  My forearms were so tight and sore from controlling the jackhammer that I could barely stand the pain.  Needless to say, my approach to the game was much different that day!

I think I beat Gumpy in golf once or twice in my life.  We played a lot of golf together but he always seemed to be a little sharper in the short game than me, or a little more prepared than me.  But most of the time he won because he was just a little too clever for me.