Remembering Murphy’s Laws!

I am always on the lookout for interesting aspects of golf that most medium to high handicappers can relate to when they reflect on their game. Here are Murphy’s 10 laws of golf that you may have encountered along your never-ending journey for perfection.

1. You finally shoot your best round of golf and feel great about your game and can’t wait to tee it up again. The very next round you shoot a terrible score.

2. Brand new golf balls are attracted to water, trees, sand and cart paths.

3. One of your buddies, (who plays with a high handicap), thinks he is a qualified instructor, especially after you drive your ball into the water or three-putt a green.

4. Every par 3, no matter where you travel to play golf, has a secret desire to humiliate you.  The shorter the hole, the more humiliation you suffer.

5. Every birdie you make will be offset by a triple bogey, sometime during the round.

6. Sand has magic powers. It can make you talk to yourself numerous times during your round. Wet sand is even more powerful! It grates on your soul.

7. At the farthest point from the pro shop your cart will have a problem and die or (Law-7a) your GPS keeps giving you the wrong hole distance and wants you to call ahead for lunch.

8. The player in your regular foursome you hate to lose to, will beat you on the final hole by one stroke.

9. Your score is great for the first 15 holes, but the last three holes in your round will adjust your score to match your handicap.

10. When you get home and unpack your clubs, you urgently call the pro shop to see if anyone turned in your sand wedge, which you left near the trap on the 18th green.

Score yourself on how many laws you have experienced.

1-3 Golf is still fun for you on a regular basis, but you need to buy a cold beverage from the cart girl at least four to six times a round. 

4-6 You should consider miniature golf as a way to still enjoy the game and reach for a new level of skill.  Concentrate on the clown’s mouth, a hole-in-one may be in your future!

7-10 You should take up bowling. It’s cheaper than golf; you can rent your shoes, the ball comes back to you and you push a button when you want a cold beverage delivered to your air-conditioned foursome area.

Now that you are totally depressed about your golf game, let’s move on to something more interesting to uplift those spirits again. Relax, golf is only a game. Don’t take yourself so seriously, no one else does! If you struggle to have fun at golf - take two weeks off, then quit.

19th Hole Trivia (important golf facts you can’t live without)

• The average size of an 18-hole golf course is 50 acres.

• The winning golfer in a PGA tournament receives 18% of the purse. The golfer who finishes in last place receives .02%.

• The Llanymyneck Golf Club in Wales has 15 holes on the home course, two in England and one on the border.

• The word divot means “piece of turf” in the Scots language.

• In 1986, Bernard Langer, winner of the 1985 Masters, selected Wiener schnitzel for the Masters Champions main dinner entrée.

• Just in case you happen to win the Masters someday, and want Wiener schnitzel, it is a piece of fried breaded veal or pork, usually served with a sauce or gravy.

• The winner of the 1954 U.S. Open, Ed Furgol, sustained a terrible arm injury as a teen that made his left arm approximately six inches shorter than his right arm.

• During World War II, the British golf courses had special temporary rules of play, one of which was, “a ball lying in a bomb crater may be lifted and dropped no nearer the hole without penalty.”