Deep thoughts while playing a 6-hour round | Raleigh News & Observer

I've had worse days on the golf course, I suppose, but the one that stands out is a round I played in a charity tournament a few years ago.

It was a captain's choice scramble in which one of my assigned partners had played once in his life and was playing out of his pal's bag and hit a house with one of his tee shots. Another of our partners said he had played either three or four times that year and you could tell it. Another partner drank eight beers. He wasn't much better than the other two but he was more entertaining.

The round lasted – I'm not lying – six hours. I spent most of that time wondering why I hadn't just sent in a check and gone to a school board meeting or something.

Playing a round like that, though, where you're waiting for two or three groups to clear the tee, you have plenty of time to think about things. Important things.

Like, why do golfers were white shoes?

Did knickers come before golf or after? In either case, why?

Is the lamest excuse in golf "I wasn't going to leave it short," after you've putted it ten feet by, or "I didn't come here to lay up," after drowning a ball that fell 75 yards short on a 225 yard carry over water?

Experts say you don't have to swing hard to hit the ball a long way, so why do those long-drive contestants swing so hard the wind can knock bystanders off their feet?

Does "changing the batting order" really help? Only if you think stepping on a crack will break your back.

Couldn't Phil Mickelson get up and down from a ball washer? From the deck of a burning ship? From the salad bar in the restaurant across the street?

From Rickie Fowler's hair?

Speaking of Rickie Fowler, do you think the kid can get a date?

When you hear a clown yell "Go in the hole" as soon as a shot is hit, don't you know he's taping the show and will go home to see if he can hear himself on the TV? And giggle. And call his friends. Both of them.

Watching most of us play, would you ever guess that about 250 books on golf are published each year?

If you could change one thing about golf, wouldn't you give some consideration to eliminating all downhill putts that break to the right?

Those guys who stand over the ball so long you wonder if you should call the coroner, what on earth are they thinking about? If I stand over a shot longer than five seconds, I start thinking about cheeseburgers.