Golfing With Frank

You know how there is that fine line with alcohol and playing pool?  You play well buzzed up to a point, but if you cross that line you start to suck?  When I shoot pool I like to have a couple of beers, but I have to nurse them along if I want to play well.  I play more relaxed and much better with a slight buzz…up to a point…but if I cross the line and have too many beers my play suffers noticeably.  Well golf is the same way for me.  A few beers are fine, but if I get too buzzed I begin losing care and concentration and start slicing the hell out of the ball into the adjoining fairway or I top it and watch it limp up to the ladies tee.  It was a slight problem when I first started playing, but now I have a system.  I just keep the beers to one every 5 holes…1^st, 5^th, 10^th and 15^th tees.  I’m relaxed, I’m playing up to my abilities, and I’m having fun. 

I have a friend who does not have a system.  Or maybe his system is flawed.  Or maybe his system is perfect if his goal is to get trashed and play horrible golf.  My buddy Frank ‘The Tank’ Hoffman loves golf but his love of beer usually trumps the golf.  Let me quickly describe Frank.  He is a large man who gets into the gym a couple of times per year whether he needs it or not.  He has a passion for tacos, chocolate, shots, and German beer.  Sometimes his passions get the best of him, like the time we went to see Robert Plant on Frank’s birthday.  We met up for pre-show drinks, which turned into numerous shots and soon he was hammered.  We eventually get to the theatre, but Frank did not have enough left in the tank as he was fast asleep in his seat a couple of songs into the concert.  Frank LOVES Led Zeppelin, but Plant proved to be too mellow for him that night as he nodded in and out the whole show, not fully awake until the encore.  I asked him, “WTF Frank?!  How could you pay $125 to sleep through an entire Robert Plant concert??”  He replied, “Well I didn’t know he was going to be playing lullabies all night.”  Frank is actually a pretty smart guy, but he makes mistakes like the rest of us.  Here is a good example:

One time at work he had been emailing his wife Sarah back and forth…nice husband-and-wife emails that as you know can sometimes get a little bit saucy.  While emailing Sarah however, Frank had also been emailing back and forth on a work issue with another workmate…a woman from the other side of the building in another department that he knew only through work emails.  Intending to wrap up her conversation with Frank, this other woman writes him:  “Is there anything else I can help you with?”  Getting confused by the two email conversations that he is simultaneously engaged in, and thinking that he is responding to his wife, Frank responds to this woman’s final email with a simple one-word answer:  “P*ssy.”  And then Frank logged off and went home.  This was on a Friday afternoon.  Not only was this email out there for the rest of that day and then the whole weekend, Frank also happened to have Monday and Tuesday off.  He comes back to work on Wednesday and was going through his old emails and deleting them when he happened upon this one.  (OH MY GOD!!)  He calls me and says, “Sneaks, I think I'm in real trouble this time.”  This woman does not get an apology email from Frank on Friday…not on Monday…not on Tuesday.  It is now Wednesday and the “P*ssy” email been out there since Friday!  The poor woman must have thought he meant it.  Holy crap!  Frank quickly emailed her an apology that Wednesday morning and she said she'd let it go, but he spent an entire tense day at his desk anyways, expecting every phone call or email to be from his boss with word of his firing. 

So anyways, when we golf Frank likes to play the front nine with a new beer on every hole.  Soon his already questionable swing degenerates into complete hopelessness.  It looks like the swing of an axe-murderer who has set his sights on killing the ball.  Here is a typical scenario for him teeing off on the par three 8^th hole:  Slam the rest of his beer from the 7^th hole.  Crack open a new beer and take a huge swig.  Grab his driver, ball, tee and slowly approach the tee box.  (The driver is his favorite club and he uses it on almost every hole, including the par 3’s.)  So using his driver as a crutch he leans down and puts his tee into the ground on a 45 degree angle.  Because he too is bent over on a 45 degree angle the tee looks perfectly straight up and down to him.  Then he stands up, retrieves the ball from his pocket, and bends down again to place the ball on the tee.  Of course the ball just rolls off the tee, over and over and over, until eventually I go and straighten it out for him. 

Then with eyes narrowed to slits and murder in his heart he backs up and eyes the ball as his mortal enemy.  He steps up, raising the club high above him in anticipation of crushing the offensive little white globe, and releases down in a murderous axe-swing of death.  If he happens to make contact with the ball, it occasionally will go screaming down the center of the fairway low and hard.  “Holy sh*t, nice shot Frank!” we all say.  But usually he tops it and it goes maybe 20 feet, or skips off to the right and hits the golf cart or the adjoining lake, or the ball just gets pounded into the ground and bounces straight back up.  After a few mulligans I’ll just tell him to drop his ball next to wherever mine landed and we move on.

It is important to note that every single shot by Frank is immediately followed by a volley of cursing…an extremely loud string of swear words that would make any sailor proud is a typical response to almost any swing while smashing his club repeatedly into the ground.  Or sometimes when the mood is right he just goes with a simple:  “Fuuuuuuck!” followed by 3 seconds of silence and then a:  "Goddammit!"  Besides the curious stares from adjoining tee boxes or fairways, there of course have been a few incidents.

One time we were on the 17^th tee, golfing with Mitch Manson and Ernie Hagen in one cart, and me and Frank in the other cart.  Frank, Ernie and I had already teed off and we were waiting on Mitch.  Ernie was sitting in the front cart, Frank was sitting in the cart behind him, and I was standing next to the carts as we all watched Mitch getting ready to tee off with his slow approach and numerous waggles.  Frank was of course wasted by now, out of beer, and getting impatient as he sensed the clubhouse full of beer was near.  Mitch was still waggling on the tee box when all of a sudden Frank lost it.  He couldn’t take it any more and yelled out, “Hurry up g*ddammit!” as he stomped down on the accelerator of our cart, mashing the pedal all the way to the floor.  Well the cart jumps up like a rocket and the front right tire is somehow propelled up and over the back left tire of Ernie’s cart and onto the actual cart itself!   “Whoa ho hey!” shouts a startled Ernie as the two carts were now one.  “Frank’s trying to kill Ernie!” I yelled out while Mitch and I ran over to help Ernie lift Frank’s cart off of his cart.  I am not sure Frank was even aware of what he had done as he just sat there waiting impatiently while tapping his toes.

Another time we were golfing with Mitch and Ernie again and we were heading to the 16^th hole to tee off.  Frank was pretty loaded by now, even for his standards.  When we pulled up to the tee box in our cart Frank mumbled that he had to pee.  We got out of the cart, I pointed to a port-a-pottie about 20 feet away, and I gave Frank a little push to send him in the right direction.  Me, Mitch and Ernie all teed off and then it was Frank’s turn.  “Where’s Frank?” said Mitch.  I motioned behind us to the port-a-pottie and then we all turned around to see what was keeping him.  Frank was not in the port-a-pottie.  He never quite made it.  Right next to the port-a-pottie was a large tree and Frank was standing next to the tree, leaning forward, balancing himself with the top of his head on the side of the tree, penis in hand, sleeping.  He must not have seen the port-a-pottie and decided to use the tree instead, and then fell asleep before he could put his friend away.  Of course there was a foursome at the adjoining tee box and one of the ladies had come over to use the port-a-pottie but was unsure about it with Frank standing there.  “Frank!”  we all yelled.  He awoke with a start, leaned back, put it away and walked back to tee up like nothing had happened while we were all rolling with laughter.

Why would you even want to golf with Frank you may be asking.  Well in my circle of friends who golf, none of us take ‘golf’ too seriously.  We are just out there to have fun with our friends, swill a couple of beers and get away from the real world for awhile.  Golfing with Frank can be frustrating at times as he staggers across your lie on the green, or he’s standing over a divot pounding it over and over deep into the fairway with his 5 iron while cursing violently and the group behind us watching in disbelief…but it is never boring golfing with him.  Plus Frank is a good guy, a good friend and a good father.  Despite his complaints you can tell that he has almost as much fun raising his numerous kids as he had making them.  And at least once a round he will actually make a great shot…then he’ll look up at you with a huge smile and say, “Isn’t this fun!”  That makes it all worthwhile.