We are on the fairway of the 11th hole at Glen Dornoch in Myrtle Beach with my middle brother Ron in the golf cart with myself on a beautiful bright September morning, when a group of four golfers behind us hit their drives about 10 yards just short of us. We both jumped a little bit at the sounds of the golf balls landing behind us; they never yelled “fore”. On the very next hole, the 12th, they did the exact same thing driving their tee shots just behind us, again not yelling “fore”. By now I’m getting a little pissed at those guys, because it seems to me like they are trying to push us from behind and we were not playing that slow, but rather we were keeping pace with the group in front of us. Then on the 13th hole they again drove their tee shots this time over our heads as we were getting ready to hit our second shots from the fairway, which really made both of us flinch. Now, I’m really pissed off and I tell my brother to get into the golf cart. I wheeled it around heading straight back to the tee box, driving directly to the four jerks that are now getting into their golf carts, without a single care in the world just puffing away on some really bad smelling cigars. I jumped out of the golf cart just madder than hell, stormed up to those four golfers, pointing my finger right in theirs faces, while swearing at them for hitting into us the last three times and not even once having the decency to yell “fore”. What the hell were these gumba’s from Jersey thinking?
I am 60 years old, 6’1″, 225 pounds and in fairly good shape, being raised in the streets of Chicago (okay, maybe the suburbs of Chicago), I learned very quickly not to take crap from any of the jerks that I would run into. Most of the time I would just get the living crap kicked out of me because I always managed to pick the biggest and meanest guy to disagree with. So here I am, a crazed loony acting as if I were in my 20s again, not very smart on my part.
Now, I’m yelling and staring down these four guys, three of them appear to be in their early 30’s, with the fourth looking like he’s in his late 50’s, probably the father of one or two of these buffed flat belly golfers that look like they all work out at least five or six days a week. All four of them are about 6 foot tall, 190 to 200 pounds appearing to be all in good shape. These guys are now starting to apologize to me about hitting into our group, stating emphatically that they were not pushing us at all, but rather just have happened to hit career golf shots not realizing that they flew the golf balls over our heads. They appeared to be pretty nervous, as they frantically apologized to me.
By now, I am slowly starting to calm down a little bit, especially after the four of them really seemed to be fairly sincere in their apologizes, as they repeated that it will not happen again. My brother is standing right behind me about 5 to 8 yards totally out of my vision. Sensing that he is behind me and knowing that he has my back covered, I feel pretty invincible, just in case these young goofball gumba’s decide to beat the living crap out of me or burn me with those ugly crooked black cigars.
For that one brief moment in time during the encounter, I flashed back to how it was when we where kids in our early 20’s in the streets of Chicago, being in the hood, ready to dance with the hommies from the Cabrini Green projects. I believe that this was one of my problems on why I had trouble getting dates for Saturday night in Chicago, at least repeat dates. It must have had something to do with me parking my car right in the middle of Cabrini Green with my dates, in order to save on the cost of a parking lot down on Rush Street. I guess my dates did not have that spirit of adventure.
Ron is four years younger than I, so he’s 56 years old, over 6′ 3″ tall, about 235 pounds, also in very good shape and looks like he was at one time a real mean middle linebacker for the NFL 30 years ago. What I did not know because he was behind me, was that he had grabbed in one hand his two iron, in the other hand he grabbed a three iron and started pumping them in unison like the pistons in an old car with his eyes popping out more crazed than I was. All of this was just one big act that he was putting on, since he’s really just one big soft teddy bear that would never hurt anyone, but those guys did not know that. This whole time I’m thinking these guys are backing down because of me, when in reality it was really my crazed brother “Mean Joe Greene” looking at splitting their heads wide open with his Ping irons while showing no mercy.
I finally turned around heading back to our golf cart with my chest all pumped out, feeling pretty proud of myself for a successful confrontation. I sat down next to my brother who was already in the cart just waiting for me. We then just headed back down the 13th fairway to resume play, only to find out that our playing partners were watching all of these antics from about 50 yards away. They obviously wanted no part in these shenanigans, seeing me just snap like a branch on the tree in a wild wind storm. As we got to our golf balls for our second shot my brother finally turned to me and said, “what the f–k were you thinking! Those young 30 year olds could have beat the living crap out of us any day of the week. We’re so old that we could not have thrown a punch if we tried and if we did, it would have been so darn slow and so darn soft that maybe those guys would’ve hurt themselves by laughing so hard. Don’t ever do that again because the next time I’m parking myself 50 to 60 yards away from you and I’m going to watch the living snot being beat out of you. You’re nothing but a big stupid and that’s what I’m calling you from now on.” To this day he still calls me affectionately the “big stupid”.
Great story!!
Thanks so much.