Golf Fore the Good

While every thing is sugar and spice and classically nice in Augusta this Master’s week, my rounds of golf game will likely be a little less gentile. Ready for battle, I’ve packed up my sticks and headed south. I’ll be teeing it up with my brother not far from the hallowed fairways beyond Magnolia Drive. All in good fun, we’re prepared for a marathon three round golf match, winner to assume full bragging rights until whenever the next time comes that we can arrange to hit the fairways together.

Half the fun is just playing golf. together, a game we both enjoy. The rest is pure and simple sibling rivalry, something that you rarely leave behind when you carry the baggage of growing up in a family of nine children.

Just so you can understand what I’m up against for my next three rounds, I’ll give you a peek into his thought process via an email I received from my dear sibling last week.

My pre-match confidence was labeled ” whining and false bravado.” We’ll have to see about that, my friend, right after I finish begging for strokes and I try to sneak up to those forward tees.

My brother outright admitted to a secret meeting with his so called impartial referee, a clandestine plan launched in the deepest, darkest aisles of their local grocery store. While my brother is trying to convince me that jet lag may come into play in our first round - Cape Cod to Atlanta certainly feels like light years apart- I’m more concerned he may have purchased some odd mushrooms at that market to slip into my lunch and mess with my finely tuned game. I may have to insist on a food taster for my pimento and cheese sandwich at Augusta.

After all, this is the guy who suggested my flight would go smoother with some Dramamine or perhaps some Nyquil, just so I can ‘relax’ and exit the flight in tip top condition for the tee time he has arranged, 12 and a half minutes after my flight lands. Just concerned about my welfare, so he says. Ummm… sure; isn’t it nice that he’s planned enough warm up time for me to get the kinks out before we tee off.

While he has been enjoying practice round after round in lovely spring weather, I’ve been scraping ice off my pitching wedge. Not that I’m worried, mind you, but the gates get a bit rusty up north in the cold.

Time to start my pre-round warm-up. It will strangely resemble a Hertz car commercial as I dash for the luggage carousel at the airport, but I’ll take what I can get.