http://www.thedailybeast.com/beast-board/item/1214/gerald-posner/book/?cid=hp:buzzboardpick2

My sister and her husband own a century-old golf shop (family biz) in Chicago, so I suppose I could have her replace my set with something pretty economical, but I never quite recovered from the loss and I have been playing tennis instead.

Wear jeans. Bring a pair of gloves with your windbreaker, and your beat-up “Lady Hogans”.

Being late in the season, I try to lose all my old balls; and they stay dirty because the ball washers have been put in storage.

We’ll make do.

My first bag of clubs was donated from my then new mother-in-law: a set of Ben Hogan women’s irons, a driver, a three wood and a five wood (which were actually wood).

After it finally stopped raining the first month we lived in soggy, green Asheville, I submitted to golf lessons from my 3-handicap husband. Not a good idea.

Not only did I have clubs just a few notches above the Flintstones, I didn’t have spikes or the right clothes, and was tossed a few cut or scuffed balls from the bulging pockets of my groom’s golf bag to use during our matches, as he mumbled, “Don’t lose those!”

We played in a golf league together that year. I was only one of two women. Evidently some other poor schmuck was stuck with his wife, too. After the first few rounds I was granted a 30 handicap. This was their first big mistake, but hey, I don’t make the rules.

Toward the end of the season, several of my opponents watched me like a hawk, convinced I was cheating when I would par a hole or two-putt on the green when they routinely overshot the hole. It was really my short game that killed them. While I had very little power off the tee, I could chip and putt fairly well, which I attribute to a particular finesse I acquired from years of tennis, croquet, badminton and wiffle ball games in the backyard. Never underestimate a woman with athletic genes!

We won the league.

Only days before the banquet in September, the committee that organized the league had to make a last-minute change to the trophies. Someone had to run out and buy a new trophy for me with a girl on the top. The buzz around the office was that I was the first woman to win the league in its proud (and now sullied) twenty-year tradition.

Thanks, Retz …

Let’s face it, golf is the last of the elite WASP refuges, a “sport” that didn’t break the “color” barrier and still has few minorities that rise to the top. How dare the first mixed race star sully the sport.

For me, his story is just another addiction story. Same disease, different drug of choice.

As you know, W.T., the Scottish game is still played on public ground. You can (for a very fine fee) play most of the British Open courses.

Anyway, blah blah. As I say, I walk out to the first tee and see who’s there. I don’t ask about ideology or sociology. Just as you hit good shots and bad shots (usually more bad than good), you meet people you like and respect as players and as people. Or you don’t. Just another “slice” of life, if you’ll pardon the pun.

About your archery image, I once talked to a guy in a pro shop about some clubs I was interested in. I told him how long I’d been playing and said I could still get into the 70s if I played for two or three days straight. We joked about all the chatter about equipment and today’s freak clubs and get-ups, marketed and sold to average golfers. And he said: “Well after all, it’s the Indian not the arrow, isn’t it?”

As I tried to say up top, using the Tiger scandal as a hook, the game, shorn of the rubbish strewn about by people who don’t know it, is exquisite. It’s a never-ending challenge; and it is, playing within the rules, a test of character, where you find quite a bit of philosophy you can use.

Hogan was a pure product of the game, an ordinary man who became great at what he did.

I tell ‘em it’s a bit like Zen archery, and in its pure form, requires the same discipline. That generally shuts ‘em up, although I doubt they believe me. As for inclemencies, I once heard it put this way. When there’s nae wind, and nae rain, there’s nae golf. Tiger’ll be fine, once he grows accustomed to the lack of pixie dust.