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GOLF RESOURCE GUIDE:
Stuff and Nonsense
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 Lakewood Golf (which has nothing to do with the course in Lakewood) probably was played for the first time in Dallas in the 1940s. The rules are simple: You can do anything, at any time, to distract your opponent, apart from touching him or the ball he’s playing. Neither can you impede his swing nor the flight or roll of the ball. But that’s it. Anything, in this context, means anything. Conventional etiquette has little place in Lakewood Golf, and the possibilities are limited only by the depth and breadth of the players’ twisted imaginations. Among the evil stratagems that have been tried over the years: • Screaming, leaping up and down, flailing arms (traditional, but exhausting after a while) • Discharging air horns • Throwing firecrackers • Delivering the punch line of a particularly juicy joke at the moment of takeaway • Precisely timed rude bodily noises • Sudden partial nudity • Tending the flag and, as the opponent squares up to putt, slashing the flag in a long horizontal arc just above his head The coup de grace was apparently delivered on the legendary hustler Titanic Thompson who, late in life, rode in a golf cart during his rounds. When he was at the address, his playing partners would pile into the cart and drive it straight at him, veering off at the last second. It apparently had little effect. Thompson kept winning, and died in a nursing home in 1974. |
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