Golf In The Cactus State

Or, Who Turned Off The Heat?

By Kim J. Harmon

 

If someone had told me it can get cold in Arizona, then I would have re-thought the way I packed my suitcase. I probably would have brought more than just a few pair of shorts and four short-sleeved shirts.

But on Friday, February 27, it was not only drizzling but it was maybe – maybe – 50 degrees out. As we waited to tee off at the Arizona Golf Resort in Mesa, some wiseacres from the pro shop got the starter on the walkie talkie and said, “Hey, Gus, we have a bet in here … is the guy wearing shorts from Wisconsin or Minnesota?”

In other words, they assumed I was a snowbird (which pretty much passes for a curse in Arizona, where the year-round residents continuously grouse about all the northerners who spend the winter down there … as in, “get out the way you @#$% snowbird!).

So, yeah, there I was expecting to be sweating but instead I was shivering. Hey, who turned off the heat?

Cold aside, I played well. At Superstition Springs Country Club (the nicest course I have ever been on, period) I shot a 94 (not bad for me) and at the Arizona Golf Resort I shot a 90. But there I was on the 18th at AGR, with a two-foot putt for par and a chance for my first legitimate 89 and I miss to the right.

Yeah, it’s going to be that kind of year.

“In baseball you hit your home run over the right-field fence, the left-field fence, the center-field fence. Nobody cares. In golf, everything has got to be right over second base.” - Ken Harrelson

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I had to let a couple of people know last weekend that I was heading up to Coginchaug High School for a CIAC Class LL state tournament girls’ basketball game and the universal reaction was, “Where the heck is that?”

If I hadn’t been there some years ago for a state tournament soccer game, then I would have asked the same question. According to a hiking website I stumbled across, the word Coginchaug – meaning, “big swamp” – was coined by the Mattabessett Indians, who came down from the Middletown area to hunt.

So, that’s your history lesson for today.

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The horn in the Coginchaug gym was a little loud, huh? I wonder if that first blast (to signal the start of the game) registered on the Richter scale.

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One of these days I am going to have a knock down, drag out battle with this one particular swimming official who is refuses to let me – or anyone else, for that matter – use flash photography during a swim meet.

His reason? The swimmers will be snow-blinded by the flash.

Anyone who was at the South-West Conference swim championships last Friday at Foran High School in Milford will attest to this, as the official got on the speaker and specifically said there was to be NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY! This edict came a few moments after the man accused me of using a flash during the previous event despite the fact that I showed him my camera with no flash attachment on it.

Most officials (and nearly all swimmers I have ever talked to) don’t care about photographers using a flash, but I realize what an official says goes. On that particular day, he is the boss.

I will admit, though, that I cheated last week ... which isn’t like me, I swear. But I had to do something – the Foran natatorium is like a closet for crying out loud! So, crouching down on the opposite end of the pool, I took a couple of flash pictures and waited for the man to come chew me out or, worse, throw me out.

I managed to get away with it.

Phew!

“You can say something to popes, kings, presidents, but you can’t talk to officials. In the next war, they ought to give everybody a whistle.” – Abe Lemons