“But that’s outrageous!” cried the golf course owners, waving Want to Buy contracts in the faces of property owners. “We don’t have that kind of money to throw around.”
“We know,” said the neighbors, “but we now own Super Blasters ourselves and will continue to shoot record low scores on your once-heralded golf course.”
Each time a course owner knocked on a homeowner’s door, someone came to the door brandishing a brand new Super Blaster, a tactic which infuriated the golf course owners to the eighteenth degree.
The official rules committee of golf, the USGA—who had approved the Super Blaster for use—were of no help at all to the course owners. This was because the manufacturer of the Super Blaster had delivered suitcases of cash to each member of the USGA rules committee, a bribe of monumental consequences.
What no one knew—there was much speculation on this matter—was who was behind the manufacture and sale of this golf-ruining new product. Was the Super Blaster conceived by a brilliant Chinese inventor in Beijing? Was it a consortium of European business leaders? Or perhaps a sports-minded Jamaican who, while smoking something entirely illegal, had dreamed up the Super Blaster beneath a palm tree? Surely it wasn’t Nike! Or TaylorMade. Or PING or any other top golf company. No, it was none of them. In fact, none of the golf companies had a product to compete with the Super Blaster, and so these companies began losing out big time—losing sales, customers, even employees.
Especially female employees.
The manufacturer of the Super Blaster turned out to be The Progressive Golf Company, based in Charleston, South Carolina, which was owned and operated by Lin Givens. Lin was a radical women’s rights leader, public speaker, man-hater, and fairly good golfer herself (though sometimes she cheated).
Lin had hired top scientists from all over the planet—all of them females—to design and build a product that would make the sport of golf so easy, so absolutely boring, that men would quit the game, resign from male-dominated country clubs, and allow her and her rich female friends to take over. Lin even formed a sales company that she called the Super Blaster Corporation.
Millions of women from across the country were enticed to join the Super Blaster Corporation as independent sales reps, much like Mary Kay salespeople, although Lin would never give a pink Cadillac to anyone, because in her view the color pink was sexist. So she promised successful saleswomen a navy blue Hummer with front license plates that read “EVE RULES!”
One of the few women in Charleston who did not sign up to sell Super Blasters was a slender, thirtyish gal, single and with a big smile, who showed up at Hack’s Golf Learning Center on a Wednesday night during Happy Hour when large buckets of balls were two for the price of one. She spotted a sign propped up on the driving range fence: NO SUPER BLASTERS ALLOWED AT THIS GOLF RANGE! This was because the handsome young owner’s fence only extended 315 yards, thus any club that would propel a golf ball 400 yards in the air would inevitably send all the range balls over the fence and out into the woods, causing no shortage of growls and complaints from the eccentric old groundskeeper, Cack, whose name just happened to rhyme with Hack.
“Why,” asked the beautiful single woman, “don’t you allow Super Blasters here?”
“Because they are killing the sport of golf!” the handsome young owner replied, rubbing sunblock with an SPF of 40 on his muscular arms.
The beautiful young woman came closer and flashed a friendly smile. “Ya know, I agree with you.”
Suspicious, the handsome owner replied, “Don’t you own a Super Blaster, ma’am? All women have one now.”
“Oh, surely not!” she replied. “I would never own one. In fact, I hate Super Blasters. They’ve put my father’s golf course out of business. It’s made the sport too easy, and now everyone shoots a low score and quits the game out of sheer boredom.”
The handsome young owner moved closer. “My thoughts exactly, Miss . . . Miss . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“Molly,” she said, extending her hand. “Molly Cusack.”
“Did you say ‘Cusack’?”
“Yes, I said ‘Cusack.’”
The handsome young owner smiled, as he knew that such a poetic name must be fate. At a range called Hack’s, on the night of Whack the Cack, I meet Molly Cusack, and I should never turn back . . . to look at any other woman . . . ever again.
His quickly conjured rhyme made the handsome young owner smile.
“What do you do for a living, Molly?” he asked her.
“I’m in advertising, in charge of national ads for an Internet company.”
“So, you can impact what people think about a particular product?”
“I do it all the time,” she said and pulled her Nike 3-wood from her golf bag. She teed a ball and took a practice swing. “Why? You want to advertise something?”
The handsome young owner put a finger to his lips, said, “Shhh,” and motioned for her to huddle with him to discuss a new ad.
During the next half hour, at the private end of the driving range, the handsome young owner and the beautiful young Molly came up with a plan—a plan to restore dignity to the grand game of golf.
The next day, on every TV network and nationally syndicated radio show, the facts hit the proverbial media fan: Super Blasters contain plutonium alloy compounds, which cause cancer of the hands and make your fingers rot off!
The following day 3 million, nine hundred and ninety-eight thousand Super Blasters went on sale on eBay from a nickel to three dollars and forty-five cents. No one would bid, though, even when prices dropped to two cents each.
The day after the news ran on TV and everywhere else, the handsome young range owner asked Molly for a date. At an outdoor café they shared a pepperoni pizza. Molly ate three slices. He ate five.
The handsome young range owner married Molly the following summer, a June wedding on the eighteenth green at Pebble Beach, where they were given a lifetime membership for saving the grand game of golf. They honeymooned on a sailboat in the Fiji Islands. Cack was the best man.
Lin Givens was forced by the government to refund all monies to former Super Blaster owners. She declared bankruptcy and was convicted of fraud and reckless endangerment of golfers. She was banished to Siberia, where even today she is forced to make snow cones for eighty hours a week and serve them from a wooden shack to cute little Siberian children. Every day Lin sits by herself in that cold, cold shack and pours the same pink syrup over crushed ice and makes pink snow cones, the very color that she loathes. The cute little Siberian kids wonder why she never smiles.
The end.
“Has everyone completed their papers?” Lin asked the class. “Hurry please, ladies. Only two minutes left. Next week I’m going to read these back.”
I passed mine into the growing pile and muttered, “Finished.”
6
LESSON FOR TODAY
When competing in a team event (or when getting to know a new love interest), it is usually wise to allow your partner to play to his or her strengths. This strategy can reap unimagined benefits for the lesser-skilled partner.
At closing time on Thursday, Cack and I gathered on opposite sides of the counter and checked off items from our nightly to-do list: Equipment cleaned and prepared for the next day. Carts filled with gas. Range balls picked up and fed into the washer. Automatic sprinklers set for night watering. Grass seed spread over fresh divots.
Today had been slow, and now I toiled over a half-empty register, counting bills while Cack counted the coins.
“Too many kids paying with nickels and dimes,” he muttered. “We should figure out a way to solicit wealthy folk.”
After stuffing the money into deposit envelopes, we hung around the shop and talked about the grass wilting in the left corner of the range and what could be done about it. Cack said his solution depended on the weather, so he turned on our TV mounted on the wall behind the cash register.
The ten o’clock news blare
d, filled with crime sensationalized, sports overdramatized, and politics politicized. After the weather report—low 80’s and sunny for the balance of September was the weather girl’s giggly estimate—Cack grabbed a Mountain Dew from our fridge and said he was done for the night.
“Be thinking about that sickly Bermuda,” I said.
At the front door he raised his drink can in acknowledgment. Or perhaps the gesture was his toast to another day well lived. You never knew with Cack. Without further communication he pushed open the glass door and departed.
I looked up from my labors to see the TV anchorman welcome a guest to his news desk. It was Molly, easing into a chair on the studio set. She sported the kind of light blue outfit that flatters ninety-percent of the population, especially those on television. She looked prepared, professional, and ready to engage.
The anchor—a man whose hair looked glued on and who went by the name of Dirk Denmark—introduced her and asked if any new trends had emerged in the election battles. The question sounded loaded, though I had no idea just how loaded, or in which direction the political pistol might be aimed.
Molly flirted with the camera and said, “Thank you, Dirk. It seems in this election year, the economic division of America has become a huge issue. Higher wage earners benefit more from across-the-board wage hikes, and of course real estate prices bolster the upper class even more. And who can afford ten dollar movie tickets every weekend for a family of four?”
This didn’t sound like any new trend to me.
Dirk Denmark interrupted my thoughts. “It seems, Molly, that not only has housing and entertainment turned a cold shoulder to the common man and the disadvantaged, but certain segments of the sports world have followed suit.”
Please mention golf. Please please please!
Molly took the bait and ran with it. “Right again, Dirk. And the sport that embodies this division the most is golf, traditionally the sport of the rich. Nowhere would a policy of inclusion resonate like it would if people of all races, creeds, and social status were encouraged to participate at a golf course.”
Dirk’s next line was an even juicier form of bait. “And have you discovered a course or a country club in the Charleston area that actively supports such inclusion?”
Molly adjusted the mic on her lapel. “Perhaps not ‘actively.’ But one enterprising Charleston golf range owner has figured out a way to profit from the divisive and sometimes angry nature of American political discourse. He encourages folks from either side, whether conservative or liberal, to come out and whop golf balls at their taunting opposition, who insult them from inside a caged golf cart.”
Love the phrase “taunting opposition,” Molly, but please mention Hacks!
Dirk Denmark feigned shock. “Molly, are you saying that political opponents can actually hit golf balls at each other?”
Molly smiled into the camera and said, “Correct, Dirk. And the entrepreneur behind this new craze is one Chris Hackett, owner of Hack’s Golf Learning Center, who gave me a golf lesson yesterday afternoon. His plan is to open his range this Friday evening at six o’clock for all conservatives who wish to ‘Whop a Liberal.’ ”
It’s “whack” a liberal, Molly, not whop.
In a kind of mock surprise—this whole thing was so staged that it sounded quite cheesy, as if the station needed to fill two minutes of airtime on a slow night—Dirk Denmark’s jaw descended to his lap. And when finally he raised his jaw back to its original position, he managed to ask, “Is there a reciprocal evening planned for our left-leaning viewers?”
Molly nodded with courtesy and professionalism. “Why of course, Dirk. Glad you asked. Saturday night Chris invites all who lean left to bring their clubs—or borrow some of his own—for a round of ‘Whop the Conservative.’ Range balls are said to be priced as low as anywhere in the county.”
A photo of my golf range, then one of Cack’s custom cart, showed on the TV screen.
Yes!
When the photos disappeared and the live studio set shown again, Dirk Denmark was patting his hair into place. He recovered quickly. “And what, Molly, would this range owner say to the independents and libertarians in our viewing audience?”
She never flinched. “They’re invited to swing away on either night. Chris Hackett claims he has no prejudices, just thousands of golf balls at the ready.”
“No spin?” asked Dirk.
“Oh yes, the golf balls at Hack’s spin in either direction.”
“They curve both left and right, eh?” Corny laughter from Dirk Denmark.
Molly rolled her eyes and said, “You got it, Dirk.”
The publicity was overwhelming. Seemed half of Charleston’s Republican Party showed up Friday night, including candidates for the State House of Representatives, local Sheriff, and County Council.
Cack, wary and pessimistic, told me early that afternoon in the shed that getting involved in any kind of politics was a bad move. “Too much hysteria,” he said, helping me load plastic buckets with fresh-washed golf balls. “On both sides of the aisle.”
Nevertheless, by 5:30 p.m. campaign signs stood quivering in the grass around my property. Volunteers even handed out flyers as customers walked across the pea gravel. I imagined the customer’s surprise when they approached my golf shop—crunch, crunch, “Vote for Bill!”
For a moment I even considered changing my sign out front from HACK’S to POLITICAL HACK’S: Our Golf Balls Curve Both Ways!
Then there were the cameras. Political aides brought cameras of many makes, and flashes flashed as candidates took wild swings at independent golf balls.
Conservatives of all shapes and sizes occupied the thirty-six hitting mats and the natural turf. The people were loose, wired, ready for battle. I could not recall a single instance in my six years of owning the range where all the mats were full. Golf was a sport whose participation numbers had not grown at all in the past ten years. Despite the promotions and the space-age technology, the game still fought its image of being too difficult and/or too expensive.
But tonight was not about degree of difficulty, nor was it about cost; this was a kind of physical release. Political tensions expressed athletically . . . or non-athletically, if you could have seen the candidates swing. The guy running for State House looked like he was trying to smash rats in a phone booth.
All this even before the taunting began.
A horn honked from the maintenance shed, and Cack zoomed out onto the range. He had installed the horn that morning; he was always tinkering with his caged contraption. He’d even talked of installing chrome wheels, a 10-disk CD changer, and four speakers—a vision he referred to as “Pimp My Golf Cart.”
Through the wire mesh, all you could see was an Uncle Sam hat and the bullhorn he held to his lips. He wasted no time. “If you oil barons didn’t spend so much on defense, poor kids could play this game too!”
A mild beginning, sure, but enough put-down that golf balls flew in forty directions. Thwack. Duff. Whiff. Shank. Thud.
I wondered why Molly had not shown up yet, though I was too busy selling buckets of balls to give it much thought—or to pick up the phone and call her.
People who had never swung a golf club had come to take swats. And if they couldn’t hit the ball with their club, or were waiting in line at a mat, they mimicked the teenage girls and threw the balls overhand.
Then Cack got a bit crazy. Somewhere past the 150-yard marker, he stopped his cart, got out, and climbed on top of the steel cage. Light from tall poles illuminated him, and the customers gasped at this daring man in blue overalls. But with his Uncle Sam hat teetering on his head, Cack raised the bullhorn and shouted, “You Republicans couldn’t hit the Watergate Hotel if you teed up your golf balls on its front sidewalk!”
He ducked back inside the cart and took off.
Something odd struck me as I watched members of the right flail away, trying to gong the loudmouth. Amongst the eighty or ninety folks spread across the hitting
mats and taking turns, the candidates were the ones who took the most time between swings, as if their minds were clogged with political mush. From my perch at the pro shop window I watched them and tried to imagine media-savvy Molly giving them advice:
If you can get on TV at this golf range, and then utter a funny line about how your opponent on the left is so soft on crime that he’d build golf ranges for captured terrorists, you might sway the electorate.
While I was lost in speculation, a conservative teenage girl—who did not dress conservatively—ran into the pro shop. “Chris, please come show us how to hit the cart! My friends and I are terrible at golf!”
I followed her out to the twenty-first mat, where four of her friends were taking turns making awful swings, some throwing the balls harmlessly at Cack’s weaving Taunt-mobile.
“No charge for the lesson?” the blond girl asked, while the rest of us watched her miss the ball twice.
“Nope. No charge at all.”
With one of their clubs in hand I stepped up on the mat and explained how to hit golf balls at a moving cart. I told them that everyone makes the same mistake: they hit one ball, then reach out with the club to rake the next ball into position, and by the time they aim and strike it, the cart is out of range or has moved so far in the other direction that the shot has no chance.
In midlesson Cack came swooping around the 100-yard marker and said through his bullhorn, “The owner of this range is more crooked than Nixon!”
I ignored the insult as teenagers gathered around me. I told them the way to hit a moving cart with a golf ball is simple: You place five balls in a row on the mat and aim a few yards in front of the cart. Then you hit firmly down on the ball, move quickly to the second ball, and do the same. Then to the third and fourth and fifth. Rapid fire.
“Remember, girls,” I said in my most instructive voice, “you are the machine gun; the golf balls are your bullets.”
From behind the mat one of the girls said, “Show us, Chris!”
“Nah, I really shouldn’t.”
Par for the Course Page 6
