Those who have endured my whirling dervish persona would never describe me as an evangelist for iron-willed sobriety - 170-odd Grateful Dead treatments had seemingly cured me of any tendency towards moderation, or moral probity where hottie hippy chicks were concerned.
The specter of testicle removal by Her Redness took care of the latter some years ago. For those in the know, Redheads are like dobermans, great protection - but they WILL bite their owner at the slightest provocation.
But my former vice of tequila - often followed by actions of questionable judgment - finally ended quietly last summer, meant as a demarcation of my new life, free of more than 16 years of ex-wife-driven litigation insanity. The driving force was my Armenian doctor’s query on how soon I wanted a collection of chopped off toes in a mason jar; evidently, my blood sugar numbers were even higher than my golf scores.
Mr. Booze actually did a tolerably good job of keeping the accumulated toxic terrors hidden, but sobriety churned up the poisons at the bottom the lake - and coming to grips with the reality of all those lost years nearly drove me over the guardrail and into the searing pit of perdition.
Since baring my soul to a sullen gaggle of chain-smoking bozos at an AA Meeting was never going to work, I opted for a return to my herbal roots and, to quote Harry Vardon “Just kept on hitting the ball.”
I’m not sure whether my tireless support of the blue agave industry contributed to my malady - or divorce case that never ends - but there is no denying the inexorable creep of "whiskey fingers” (read: yips) eventually migrated from delicate chip shots to shaky, electro-shock hands with the flat stick.
When (even) marking your ball for a 3-footer is a challenge, breaking 80 suddenly requires hitting 16 greens - since 36 putts somehow became a tolerably good day on the dance floor.
Cack-handed, claw, broomstick, lefty on right-breakers, righty on left-breakers - I tried everything but shoving the grip up my fat ass and wiggling my butt at the ball - primarily because my new putter grip was a horse cock without the foreskin.
Hitting nearly every fairway off the tee mattered not as I still finished last in the qualifier - a smooth 87, two years in a row. All future tournament or Member-Guest invitations were sadly relegated to the trash.
As it turns out, I’m more easily embarrassed in the throes of sobriety than one would think. By this point, my golfing Parkinson’s disease was bad enough for palliative hospice care - and even players in the lamplighter flights averted their eyes when I putted; some out of pity, the rest from naked fear of catching my incurable malady.
Cajoling me into one last quixotic run up the hill took some doing doing - along with a promise by the Tournament Chair of seeding down in the 2nd flight, where nobody would notice this former champion putting with a Scotty Cameron squeezed between his butt cheeks. That was my backup plan in case I five-putted the first hole.
Knowing the hitch-a-twitches get progressively worse the closer my ball lies to the hole, I never even attempted a pre-match three-footer - while trying to ignore my opponent sneaking a peek at my mini-seizures.
I bravely walked by the bar when my name was called - and although the allure of some liquid courage was impossibly tempting, the vision of playing golf wearing a Tom Dempsey club-shoe with spikes carried me past the danger zone. After a smattering of applause and the usual “Play well” niceties, I displayed my peerless muscle memory by topping a tee shot less than 100 yards down the bone-dry desert fairway.
Great, I thought, wondering why I did not pack my bags before leaving the Brawley Inn hotel that morning. “Plenty of golf left,” chirped my congenitally cheerful cart-mate, still in earshot of the snickering gallery.
“See what quitting drinking will do to you?” chuckled one of my former hickory shaft notches back on the 1st tee, doubtless proud of his rousing earlier victory with a bye.
A drop-kicked 5-wood, followed by a thin-to-win rescue club somehow tottered up four feet from the hole, leaving a downhill, left-to-right slider with nothing to stop it but a pot-bunker. The task at hand seemed akin to trying to coax a Flintstone rock into a thimble, so the last place I expected that pellet to stop rolling was gently over the front lip of the cup.
The guy I was playing has always been a morose twat - the kind who needs a tetanus shot to concede his grandmother a six-incher. “Nice putt,” he snapped, having mentally already won the hole - expecting my usual spastic, palsy 3-jab.
There was no doubt that Golf God was taunting me, because the next hole my chip-shot wandered past the cup - you guessed it - right to four feet. I considered that rock-solid roll on the last hole an impossible fluke, so was expecting a return to reality when I stood over that par putt.
Morose Twat (not his real name, but we’ll just call him M.T. going forward) ran in a snake from the other end of the world and celebrated with a soft-shoe, convinced he’d shown Ol’ whiskey fingers who was gonna be the Alpha Dog the rest of the match.
But damn if my Lady Precept (still playing them) didn’t chase his Calloway down the same rabbit scrape for no-blood. Two holes later, I confidently rolled a 20 footer in for a tweeter - and M.T. suddenly and has a look on his face like I just took a shit on his birthday cake.
My old Ping sand wedge, more skull than chip the last ten years, suddenly felt like a familiar friend instead of a live rattlesnake.
By the turn, I was comfortable hitting a flop off dusty hardpan at what looked like a manhole instead of a thimble. The Sergio re-grip, twitch, ass-wiggle and re-grip again had evaporated into the ether, with no explanation.
Needing only to two-putt from three feet on #16 for the match, M.T. grunted a concession, half-heartedly extended a clammy paw and drove off with his tattered tail in a twist.
Still reeling from what seemed an epochal intervention by a benevolent space alien, Cheerful guy (whose match also ended on #16) and I rode in silence back towards the clubhouse.
Stopping to watch the tee shots of a marquee match, still battling on #18, Mr. Cheerful looked carefully at me out the corner of his eye: “Pretty good shootin‘ for last year’s high qualifier.”
Having sheepishly apologized to my opponent when my third roadmap dove in the hole, I admitted having “No clue where it came from” - but terrified the magic would disappear as fast as it came.
Cheerful guy suddenly blurted out, “A year after I quit drinking and joined AA, my yips disappeared, too.”
There has long been an unverified rumor that some Senior Tour pros were instantly cured of the yips after a cardiac incident, but there is no real data to suggest quitting drinking somehow reboots your neurosynapses.
Yet, most top-flight amateurs and touring professionals I have known who slammed their drams eventually went out on a banana peel with the flat stick, once the gray started to poke out their skulls.
The idea I've inadvertently made a permanent Faustian bargain with the angel on my shoulder - who I’ve mostly ignored since pledging my fraternity in 1977 - is frightening.
If it means my next bite out of the forbidden apple (brandy) will shrink the hole back into a shot glass, what’s next?
There is no point in playing liar's dice at the 19th hole, especially if the prize is an unsatisfying Diet Coke with a squeeze of lime.
To me, golf and apres-golf conviviality, without the Devil’s poison, feels like a lifetime relegation to the Mormon table in the grill room; pussy and shank jokes are not as funny, standing around an unspiked punch bowl.
In my case, it is a Hobson’s Choice - but not one I accept gladly. For the rest of you, several questions:
#1. Does excessive use of alcohol eventually encourage the Yips?
#2. Absent booze, has anybody else had the same curative epiphany?
#3. If you had to pick - battling the twitch palsy forever . . . . . or wine, song and bong, which will it be?
For the first time in my life, I am have difficulty meeting my food and beverage minimums at the Winged O. The club is strongly considering an emergency assessment to cover the shortfall.