Lee Geiger

If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.

Dean Martin

Sir-Lag-a-Lot, my erstwhile next-door neighbor, is the consummate golf consumer. The game is more than a hobby to my retired compadre; he’s obsessed, and there isn’t a training aid he won’t buy, or a golf video he won’t watch, in a Holy Grail journey to lower his handicap. He religiously practices every component of his game, from dissecting the intricacies of his full swing to tweaking his at-times very impressive short game. His ample golf bag incorporates the sexiest of clubs, all custom fitted with the latest technology, and he scientifically selects which golf ball he will play. His backyard features a perfectly leveled putting green, and his annual golf budget rivals the GDP of a small European country. When it comes to golf, it’s good to be him.

But here’s the thing—Sir Lag-a-Lot’s golf index, a trustworthy calculation because he posts his score after every round, presently stands at 9.3, and since the first time I watched him plugged a tee into the ground his index has wavered seasonally between 8 and 10 (full disclosure–he did recently knock it down to 6.9). He will occasionally shoot a score in the low to mid-70s, and he will go on streaks where he routinely breaks 80. But facts don’t lie: after nearly three decades and a commitment in both time and expense equivalent to building his own ark, Sir Lag-a-Lot’s golf index still wavers somewhere between 8 and 10, a malodorous return on investment that gets money managers tarred and feathered.

That’s him. And then there’s me.

I’ve been playing golf since the dawn of disco. My first rounds were at Indian Boundary near Chicago, a public course worthy of its $2 green fee. When I was fourteen, we moved to Carmel, where I honed my game at Rancho Canada, a snazzy facility featuring two 18-hole courses and pricey $8 green fees–but at least you could play every day. Then there was my senior year of high school, where I had the good fortune to shack up in a magnificent abode snuggled next to the first green at Pebble Beach. I essentially played Pebble, or parts of it at least, for free. I practiced all the time, and my scores back then centered around the mid-80s. My best round as a teenager was a scintillating 82 at Pebble Beach. Thankfully that day my big brother paid the $50 green fee, a prodigious amount equal to my monthly take home pay from Baskin Robbins.

Fast forward fifty years.

For the last dozen years or so, I have refused to practice, or hit balls before a round. As a consequence of my wanton laziness, my ability to find a fairway changes with every lunar cycle, and my short game bears all the characteristics of a lithium battery fire. I’ve played with the same set of irons since George W. was president, and my gloves are crustier than Keith Richard’s face. My golf shoes carry mud from three different countries and, quite possibly, four different states. And when it comes to golf balls, I’m completely ambivalent about what brand I play, and thus my bag is filled with plenty of equity and inclusion but not a single bit of diversity; every ball I fully expect to lose is white.

And guess what? My golf index is a solid 13,3, about where it’s been since Nixon resigned.

There are few people I’d rather play golf with than Sir Lag-a-Lot, but for the last few years he’s spent much of our rounds verbally thumping me like his personal piñata. After fluffing a chip, blading a pitch shot across the green, or snap-hooking yet another drive off the continent, he would shake his head and babble in his annoying Boston-baked accent, “Jesus, Lee! You’re too damn short. Get some freaking custom-fitted clubs!” Or, after four-jacking a putt from twenty feet, “Lee, you need to step up, or maybe even stand up, and invest in a real putter.” I absorbed his slings and arrows, but deep down I knew he was right. Plus, he owns neighborly bragging rights, dope-slapping me 6-4 the last time we played in a tournament singles match, a humbling beatdown which made me want to move.

Last year, I relented and signed up for a series of golf lessons from Sir Lag-a-Lot’s teaching pro; Tom Rezendes, owner of NorCal Golf Academy. How good is Tom and his team? Good enough for teenage golf sensation Asterisk Talley, who regularly makes the two-hour drive from rural Chowchilla, CA to work on her game. In less time than it takes to triple bogey a short par three, Tom discovered what was wrong with my swing; a lack of balance (i.e., none) and a swing that was so far inside I should have been dubbed The Happy Hooker. Tom, adroitly knowing his audience, gave me four simple swing thoughts to remember prior to hitting my ball—widen my stance a bit, close my grip a touch, position my ball slightly towards my left foot during setup, and make sure to take the club outside when I start my backswing. Tom hasn’t turned me into Tiger Woods, but I’m hitting more good shots and less awful ones. Tom’s teachings have made the game fun again, and now at least I feel I have a shot to redeem myself in a match against my demonic neighbor.

An upgraded swing, of course, requires upgraded equipment. Once again, I followed the lead of Sir Spend-a-Lot. He did his own research and concluded that a L.A.B. putter needed to find a space in his bag, and thus mine as well. L.A.B. stands for Lie Angle Balance, the latest technology in the world of rolling putts. It’s also short for expensive, but I will admit that the first time I took the $500 powder-blue miracle worker out for a test drive I made nearly every putt I saw. I’ve missed a few makeable putts since then, but my misses aren’t nearly so bad. Or embarrassing.

Gone are the dingy Ping G20 irons I bought on sale during the financial panic of 2009. Thanks to Tom’s professorial club selection prowess, they’ve been replaced by a sparkling set of custom-fitted Ping i530s with Fujikura 75R shafts, a combination a rocket scientist could appreciate. Deep in the belly of NorCal’s first-rate practice facility, while hitting balls into a mat which then displayed enough data to rival a NASA launch, the distance a ball travels with my new sticks is 10% longer than my old ones, something Tom said I needed to consider as I, um, mature. My golf ball traveling farther is an exciting development assuming, of course, it doesn’t go sideways. To quote the Zen master from the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, “We’ll see.”

As for my driver, I’m sticking with Ping G30, the most trustworthy club in my bag. We’ve traveled the world together, and I plan on being buried with it.

So, let’s do the math. A dozen lessons with Dr. Tom = $3000; a L.A.B. DF-1 putter = $500; and a set of Ping irons (5-9, pitching wedge + gap wedge) = $2,000. With tax the investment to reboot my golf game comes to nearly $6,000.  And what will I get for my investment? A healthy serving of grief from the other side of my fence, for sure. The nails-on-a-chalkboard cat calls from Sir Lag-a-Lot are already keeping me up at night. “Jesus, Lee, you’ve got to start doing this thing called PRACTICE!”

History suggests that no matter how much money I spend, or how much time I practice, my golf index will remain around 13, plus or minus a stroke or two. And that’s okay, just so long as I deliver my own dope-slap to Sir Lag-a-Lot the next time we have a match.