A secret language!

If you missed my column last week, “Golf Without Holes,” I will give you a mulligan (a free stroke without a penalty) on your score card. But don’t get that confused with an ace (hole in one) or a dogleg (right or left bend in the fairway) or frog hair (slightly taller grass next to the apron).

Last week, I blamed the Scots’ invention of golf for the agony that modern weekend players suffer today, but to add insult to injury, if you don’t learn to speak the secret language that all golfers speak, you will become a lost ball in tall grass.

Let me give you an example: You get your “driver” out of your bag and approach the “par 5 tee box.” You place your ball on a “tee” and “address” the ball. Your “takeaway” is “inside the line” and your “wrist-cock” is too steep in the “backswing,” causing you to “cast” your “downswing” and “cut” across the ball, resulting in a “slice.”

Your ball lands in the “rough” and is “OB,” so you take a “drop,” “punch out,” and “chili-dip” a shot into the “beach,” where you hope you don’t have a “fried egg lie.”

After hitting a “hooded” sand wedge to “chop out” the “fried egg,” your dream of a “sandie” doesn’t come true and you “three-putt” for a “snowman.” You now are the proud owner of a “triple-bogey.”

Now if you are confused about what I just said, I recommend you take up bowling, where the ball returns to you and your expenses are limited.

One of the best side effects of understanding and using the secret golf language during a round is participating in the group therapy or camaraderie which a foursome will develop over the years. Often a foursome might actually be seven or eight friends that can’t play every weekend but fill in for each other when they can.

Country singer Willie Nelson owns a golf course in Arkansas, where a posted rule states, “No more than 14 players in your foursome.” Willie understands that friends need to share time together and golf is a good excuse for a large group to have some fun.

The foursome takes on a life of its own over time. Friendly competition, conversations and problem-solving discussions may take place over a period of two or three golf outings or over a period of years. Golf outings and good friends will always fit together on any course.

Golf Instruction Made Easy!

I recently saw a golf instruction manual with a fictitious table of contents that every frustrated golfer can relate to their game.

Chapter 1: “Which No-Smudge Pencil Eraser is Best for You?”

Chapter 2: “How to Regrip Your Ball Retriever”

Chapter 3: “How to Get More Distance off the Shank”

Chapter 4: “Using Your Woods to Dig Deeper Divots”

Chapter 5: “Hit a Titleist From the Tee and a Nike From the Rough”

Chapter 6: “Which Bug Spray Should You Use in the Woods?”

Chapter 7: “Why Your Wife Doesn’t Care That You Birdied the Eighth Hole”

Chapter 8: “How to Explain an Eight-Hour Round of Golf to Your Wife When You Call Her From the Bar at the 19th Hole”

19th Hole Trivia

Before I putt out and close this column, I would like to finish with a question and some trivial information. The 12th hole at which U.S. golf course is the longest hole in the Guinness World Records? (a par 6 of 841 yards (answer in a moment)

• When Clint Eastwood was starring in “Rawhide,” he had an 11 handicap

• Charles Boswell, blinded in World War II, took up golf after the war and shot an 81

• A few years ago, I shot an eight on hole 12 (par 6, 841 yards) at Meadows Farms Golf Course in Virginia. I had to take a penalty stroke when my fourth shot hooked into a fenced pasture near the green. The sign on the fence read, “Danger: Bulls Will Charge, Retrieve Ball At Your Own Risk! (A mean looking bull with sharp horns hoped I would climb the fence. I didn’t, and he kept my brand-new Titleist).