By the time I had found my golf bag, low scudding clouds had turned the beautiful summer day into something else. The wind was blowing about fifteen and rising. My golf bag was in my workshop, behind the outboard motor and under the pile of wood scraps from the table saw.

We live on an island in the Pacific Northwest in the summer. Elmo lives on a nearby farm that is down in the hollow near the dump. This is fine with everyone in the neighborhood because he raises about fifty hogs and it is a toss-up which smells the most, the dump or his hog farm. He usually meets me at the end of the road in his ‘53 Ford pickup so his wife will think he is going on his daily trip to get all of the garbage from the restaurants on the island for his hogs.

Golf here on the island is expensive. It’s gone all the way up to fifteen dollars for nine holes or twenty dollars for eighteen. I never carry enough golf balls to last the eighteen holes, so Elmo and I usually play only nine, and sometimes less when we run out of balls early.

In the muddy parking lot of the golf course I changed into my golf attire. As I tried to step into my golf shoes, they sure felt different than my ski boots. I looked inside. Whoops! The last time I wore the golf shoes was in October, and it was raining then. After the October round I had tucked my grass covered, wet socks into the golf shoes, and there they had rested, wet, all winter.

Standing there in the parking lot on this summer day, I took the socks out and tried them on again. They were tight because of the gray green moss that had spent the winter multiplying. And there was plenty of moss in the shoes, too. I dug most of the moss out of the shoes with my rusty putter and put them on.

By the time Elmo and I got to the first tee, the wind was blowing twenty miles an hour. We spent a little while practicing putting while the foursome starting ahead of us got their act together. They were all members of overeaters anonymous on a weekend trip to our island. I don’t know how clothing manufacturers can make a pair of pants that can hold 315 pounds of cellulite without exploding.

In the first par-five hole, the people ahead of us took at least ten strokes each to get out of Elmo’s range off the tee. He hits about two hundred yards shy of what Tiger Woods can do, and Elmo sure looks weird driving golf balls in his canvas overalls and logging boots.

My eleven stokes for the first hole included continually lifting my ball from deep, lawn-mower tracks filled with rain water. By the time we got to the third hole, heavier rain was falling and I had gone through (lost) my first half-dozen golf balls.

By the fourth hole my feet were sopping wet; I hoped that the water would help dissolve some of the winter moss and fungus that I didn’t get to with my putter.

Coming up on the sixth hole I was dangerously low on my twenty-four recycled golf balls and the rain was now coming down like it meant business. Elmo suggested that a cup of coffee might be a little more fun than doing the last four holes.

The question was, what would we do about our “official” handicap if we quit before nine holes? We were obligated to enter our score on the big board in the clubhouse. Since we usually “adjusted” our scores anyway, I agreed we should cut the game short. We splish-splashed back to the clubhouse and found it closed with a note on the door. It said the owner had gone home and to call him in the morning if we wanted golf lessons. He left his number. I guess he had observed us playing.


Editor’s Note: This is one in a Tahoetopia series written by Warren Miller, legendary ski cinematographer. For other columns by Warren, click on Warren Miller. Also visit www.tahoetv.com.

0808