Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
Yabba-dabba Bubba
When a youth, growing up on the south side of the river in Edmonton, I wasn’t exactly a “guy’s guy”, so I wasn’t really attracted to the kind of physical activities that obliged one to engage in male bonding in a dressing room or locker room setting. Basketball, hockey, football, soccer, these were all out, even had I been athletically inclined. I preferred reading curled up in an arm chair, which accounts for my less-than-ideal posture and my somewhat premature back and shoulder problems (although hunched over a computer for hours on end could be partially responsible as well).
Despite my aversion to exertion, however, I was somehow persuaded by a couple of my geeky male friends to try a sport at which you really let nobody down but yourself if you play badly. My parents, as I recall, were quite enthusiastic at the idea of getting me out into the fresh air for a few hours at a time. So enthusiastic, in fact, that they actually purchased for me an eccentrically mixed bag of vintage golf clubs. No two of them were from the same original set, so rather than try to adjust my wonky self-taught swing to each one of a dozen, I eventually fine-tuned my game to where I really only played with four clubs - my driver, my five-iron, my eight-iron and my putter. Even when I later acquired a full matched set, I still kept those four clubs around, to rescue me when I was in real trouble. Still have the putter somewhere, I’m sure.
Anyway, I think it was the summer after Grade 10, when I was still judged too young for the labour force, and the cost of a junior membership at one of Edmonton’s beautiful river-valley municipal courses was something like $9.95 for the season, that I would arise at some ungodly hour almost every day if the sun was shining, sling my golf bag across my shoulders, jump on my bike and head over to Ted Gates’s place (he was Ted #1). Together we’d proceed to Ted Bergen’s house (he was Ted #2), and this Ted was inevitably pacing up and down his front lawn, working on his putting stroke. Off the trio would fly, down the steep hill to Riverside Golf Course, to spend the next few wonderful hours wandering the lush fairways and greens with our decidedly unprofessional equipment.
Now Ted #1 and I were geeks of the Nth degree (I think he’s now retired from a career as an engineering prof at the U. of Alberta), and weren’t particularly focussed on improving our golf games. Ted #2, on the other hand, was a bit of a perfectionist, even took a lesson or two that summer. Rare indeed was the time that Ted #2 didn’t have the “honour” on the tee (a result, for those of you unfamiliar, of having a superior score on the previous hole). As the summer progressed, in fact, he actually became quite consistent (a quality which is the ultimate dream in golfland) at hitting the ball where he wanted to. For me and Ted #1, it was pretty much a fluke if we pulled off a good drive, or managed less than three putts on Riverside’s massive greens.
The Teds and I continued to play a lot together on the evenings and weekends until we hit university, when we inevitably drifted apart. Then, until I left Edmonton after university and journalism school, I probably played an average of a dozen times a summer, and I maybe “broke 90” (a magic barrier for the casual player) two or three times in my entire life.
Over the last four decades, there have been periods (usually when I was performing in the evenings and had my days free) when I’ve reverted to my Grade-10 self and played almost every day. This frequency of play, of course, had next to no positive impact on my score. I would get a lovely par on the 7th hole one day and think I had it solved, and proceed to amass a quintuple bogey the very next day. A tad frustrating, but I was in the great outdoors, the score was largely irrelevant.
With the great abundance of wonderful courses within an hour of Uxbridge, I continued to play golf occasionally since I arrived here 15 years ago (I even had a membership one summer at Foxbridge). Of late, however, I find the game too frustrating, too expensive and too time-consuming (I find a long walk with my mutt Lacey more satisfying in a quarter of the time), so I’m afraid my clubs and I have pretty much become strangers, and I get my golf fix a different way, by watching it on television. Some of my friends don’t understand the attraction, but I enjoy it a lot, and I think I understand why. It’s because no matter how good these guys are, they’re still as inconsistent as you and me.
Take last weekend’s Masters, for instance. Louis the South African scores a double-eagle, which has only been done four times in 76 years (and which he’ll never do again), but it’s the only good thing he does all day, and it still gets him into a playoff. Phil, on the other hand, only hits one bad shot all day, but it’s really bad, and costs him the tournament. Bubba, who’s never taken a lesson in his life, goes into the woods on the second playoff hole, and is a right goner. Except he hits a totally improbable shot, it hooks 40 yards and ends up on the green. I hit a shot like that once on the ninth at Riverside, back in ‘65. Only time I ever parred that hole. Bubba will probably never hit a shot like that again either, but this time it won him the Masters. Gotta love that Bubba.
