Tales from the first tee
Stories about my life experiences and others as I work at one of the premier golf clubs in Charleston, SC. Interviews with golfers around the world that have one thing in common...the pursuit of excellence on a golf course and everything else that happens along the way.
Tales from the first tee
The Polar Plunge and Other Adventures
Rich shares stories and rants about everything from the exhilarating Polar Plunge at Sullivan's Island to confronting an entitled golfer on the course, weaving together observations about social norms, trust, and life's peculiar challenges.
• Experiencing the Sullivan's Island Polar Plunge with thousands of costumed revelers diving into 59-degree water
• Examining political dishonesty through the lens of George Santos and questioning why politicians face fewer consequences for lying than law enforcement
• Exploring the psychological challenge of hitting golf shots over hazards and how acknowledging the "angst monster" can improve performance
• Questioning why feminine hygiene products remain taxed when items like condoms are tax-exempt
• Navigating emoji communication challenges when there's no tutorial for proper usage
• Confronting a "RoboGolfer" who broke golf etiquette by walking past the group without asking permission
Join me next month for more tales from beautiful Charleston, South Carolina, where I'll continue sharing stories that make me rant.
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Welcome to another episode from Just Tales, a monthly hybrid of fictional and non-fictional stories that compel me to rant. There'll always be a golf story or two laced into my blog because, well, it's where I spend a good amount of my recreational time. So, whether you're a golfer or not, if you're a skeptic, doubter or open-minded, this is the place for you. So kick back and listen. Well, welcome to the new year. And I don't know the expiration date on when you stop saying that, but I think it's pretty close to now. In this episode, I'll rant about the disquieting feeling of hitting shots over hazards in golf Emojis where the heck do you go for training? The intractable geodesic curve on the greens at Charleston National, because, there's no denying it, there's not one straight putt on any of those greens. Liar, liar. George Santos is on fire. The untrustworthy food pickup service. A quick story about the selfish, remote-controlling moron and his chance meeting with cloudy graves. And, oh yeah, I'm fostering a rescue golden retriever, anatolian Shepherd, who has all the indoor characteristics of a golden and the outdoor behavior of a wild shepherd. Wolf, mix Great with other dogs and people, which is really fantastic, but more stubborn and independent minded than a Taurus. She came to me with the name Tatum, but I got to tell you the name does not roll off my tongue, so I think I'm going to rename her Curly. But first my experience at the 2023 Polar Plunge on Sullivan's Island.
Speaker 1:New Year's Day. New Year's Day New Year's Day for me, historically, has been a hangover management filled with football games and greasy food. In recent years, I've given up on waiting for the ball to drop in Times Square. As most boomers would probably agree with, I need a special event, not one manufactured or traditionalized, to keep me up late, maybe because morning is my favorite or certainly most productive part of the day day.
Speaker 1:When I worked for this company back in the 1990s, we had an annual New Year's Eve party in exotic destinations around the globe. Example Rome, sydney, australia, vienna, kona and Paris. It was the highlight of the year, where we took busloads of our best customers to celebrate the week after Christmas, ending in a gala event on New Year's Eve. This one trip to Paris started in Cannes and Monte Carlo, and in Monte Carlo, where you'd venture into these casinos and can clearly see people that are far better dressed than those that you see in Las Vegas. It ended up. This trip ends up in Paris for the big event Black Tie Affair with Can-Can dancers a 12-piece orchestra and a Maurice Chevalier singer impressionist.
Speaker 1:Sometime around 11 pm, the waitstaff started distributing party favors to the round tables of diners. In the party kits were hats, exploding confetti, noisemakers and a six-inch tube with balls to use as projectiles. They were like spit balls without the spit. Mistake number one was distributing the party favors to a drunk crowd too early. Mistake number two were the tubes in the balls. At around 1130, this Maurice Chevalier character walks on stage and starts to sing with the band. Sometime after his first song. Most of us in the crowd started to play with our celebration toys, shooting confetti, twirling the noisemakers and someone in the crowd spit the ball, spit one of the spit balls at the singer's head. That was the beginning of the end. Now most of the guys and some of the ladies started competing to see who could pelt Maurice Chevalier in the head while he was in the middle of a song. It was like Spanky and Our Gang. I'm the barber of the field. I'm the barber of the field. I'm the barber of the field. I'm the barber of the field.
Speaker 2:My references go deep.
Speaker 1:But so everybody is pelting him now with these spitballs. It's embarrassing. It was such a non-French thing to do and Maurice was just getting pissed while he's ducking and head bobbing and singing. So now it's 1145 and the place has gone nuts. 1145 and the place has gone nuts. The Maurice guy turns to the band and signals them to start playing. Old anxiety. He calls midnight at 1145 and he starts yelling happy new years and he runs off the stage while people are trying to pelt him. But now they're trying to lead him like a shotgun and people are shooting it in front. He's running into the stream where they're shooting the spitballs. So now he goes off the stage. It gets crazier and our customers are now pelting their partners and anybody else at the table, or three tables over, with spitballs. The next thing, you know, cake was starting to fly. It's a junior high school. Food fight breaks out until security shuts us down. Yeah. So since then most of my New Year's Eves have been tame.
Speaker 1:I can't think of any New Year's Days that included heavy partying, until my friend the llama told me about the polar plunge on Sullivan's Island every New Year's Day. Now, I had heard of the plunge from other friends. But I always pictured maybe hundred people smeared with animal fat. I mean that was the thing they used to do in New York City plunging into the ocean like a Tony Robbins firewalking. Test of mind over matter. But man, was I mistaken?
Speaker 1:I get to Sullivan's Island around 1030 and park in my secret spot. Nope, I'm not going to tell you where it is. I proceed to walk down the beach and notice a lot more families than I've ever seen since July 4th. I mean it's January 1st. It had to be 50 degrees outside. I mean it's like this whole New Year's Day at the beach is a thing here in the Lowcountry. I mean, who knew Apparently everybody but me. So as I get closer to the station that leads me to downtown Sullivan's, I see more tents and clusters of people. The density was thickening. So I walked to home team and met the llama at Dunleavy's, which, by the way, is the heart of the pre-party Lots of Boilermakers, depth charges and all kinds of other drinks.
Speaker 1:So later we walked through a parade of costume party animals out towards the beach where thousands that's right, thousands of families and heavy lubricated Charlestonians and guests were getting psyched up for the plunge. So now between 1.30 and 2 o'clock in the afternoon. It was a mad scene of singing, chanting, national antheming, yelling and laughter as all of the plungers got ready for their shocking experience. And you have to get psyched up for it, because 59 degree water temperature is cold and the outside temperatures are in the 50s. So you need to be lubricated, psyched up. Whatever you have to do for your mindset, you've got to go all in.
Speaker 1:So as the clock got closer to two o'clock, the ambassadors from Dunleavy's, dressed up in their white suits, look like white tuxedos, would walk up and down by this police tape that held everybody back from running into the ocean and they would just spark people on, ask them if they're excited, and people would yell and scream. It was pretty cool. So now comes the moment of truth. The Dunlevy's guys start counting down by 10, 9, 8. Well, the crowd starts counting as well and as they're getting down to the last few seconds, all of the police tape is pulled down, exposing all of the beach goers. To be able to run down to the beach, you'd think everybody would wait until 1 or 0, but you know how it is in a crowd Everybody's drunk.
Speaker 1:By the time they got to 5, people started running down the beach. You know, I had this guy in an ape suit with this other guy in this dinosaur suit standing like pretty close to me and running down to the beach. You know, I had this guy in an ape suit with this other guy in this dinosaur suit standing like pretty close to me and running down to the beach, and so the crowd was so deep that it probably took a good minute or two for everybody in the back of the crowd to come up to the front and start going in the water. Meanwhile you've got thousands of people already in the water that now have to leave the water while other people are starting to come in. So it's kind of a clusterfuck is what happens. And you'd ask yourself well, how deep did people go in the water? I mean, there are a million stories in a big city. Some people went in ankle deep and they're like that's enough and start running back.
Speaker 1:Others just kept running, dropped their heads down, their shoulders down, got into the water, stayed in for a while and then started coming out. I mean there were just thousands of different scenarios, so I would just say most everybody coming out of the water looked wet, refreshed and desperately looking for their towels, robes or any clothes to warm up because it was freaking cold. You know, and I heard, they did the same thing over on Folly Beach as well. So here's my takeaway Charlestonians and guests who participated are fun and my kind of people. Number two people who wore costumes are just creative, fun and also my kind of people. And number three don't be surprised if you see me and a posse of fun-loving adventurers next year making the plunge. I mean, who knows, I gotta pull out my pirate suit sometime.
Speaker 1:Liar, liar. George Santos is on fire. Did you know that it's not just okay to lie, but it's become the fashionable thing to do in American politics? Whether it's fake news or I did not have sex with that woman, or read my lips, no new taxes, it's just become commonplace that we accept that politicians lie. Once a politician or a political candidate gets elected to congress, the house could only prevent him or her from taking office if they violated the constitution's age, citizenship or state residency requirements. It's not illegal.
Speaker 1:To lie about your background Might be unethical, it might be immoral, it might be unjust, but it doesn't prohibit you from taking office. I mean, that sounds outlandish, right? Did you know that at the street level of law enforcement there's a shit list that you could earn your way onto by being deceitful or dishonest? It's the Giglio or Brady list. Once you fail your way onto that list, you're blackballed for life. You're done, finito Kaput. It is a career-ending indictment, and even a transfer doesn't get you off of the list. Not even priests accused of sexual abuse get that moniker for life. So why isn't there a Giglio list for politicians? I think you know the answer. There'd be nobody left standing. Everybody would be on the list, and you know.
Speaker 1:As it pertains to George Santos, what's ironic is the GOP leadership praised George for bringing diversity to the party as an openly gay Jewish Republican educated at Baruch University. But here's the irony he didn't graduate from Baruch University, he's not Jewish, and one of his biggest supporters is Marjorie Taylor Greene. That's not ironic. So he lies about his heritage. He lies about his education, even his professional pedigree. I mean, how do voters in Nassau County on Long Island let this slip by? I guess the same way that Sam Bankman Freed Elizabeth Holmes, lance Armstrong, nixon, bill Clinton or Trump did it. They just lied. Straight-faced, bold liars that could deflect accusations like nobody's business. God. What does that remind me of? The following is a public service message from Pathological Liars Anonymous.
Speaker 2:Hello, my name is Tommy Flanagan and I'm a member of Pathological Liars Anonymous. In fact, I'm the president of that organization. I didn't always lie. No, when I was a kid I told the truth. But then one day I caught stealing money out of my mother's purse and I lied. I told her it was homework, that my teacher told me to do it, and she got fired. Yeah, that's what happened. So after that, lying was easy for me, lied about my age and joined the army. I was 13 at the time. Yeah, I went to Vietnam and I was injured, catching a mortar shell in my teeth, and they made me a three-star general. And then I got a job in journalism running for the National Geographic. Yeah, I was making $20,000 a month. In fact, I won the Pulitzer Prize that year. Yeah, that's a ticket. And then, and what hasn't this guy lied about? In fact, I won the Pulitzer Prize that year. Yeah, that's a ticket.
Speaker 1:And then, what hasn't this guy lied about? And I'm talking about George Santos? In July of 2021, he claimed that 9-11 claimed his mother's life, but months later it was revealed that his mother died in December of 2016. Who lies about their mother's death? He had a renega claim about his net worth several times, depending on who's asking the question. He's been accused of writing thousands of dollars of bad checks using a checkbook from a deceased person in Brazil, of bad checks using a checkbook from a deceased person in Brazil which he's admitted to. How can voters trust this guy? I think this is what happens when local newspapers go defunct or get absorbed by bigger corporations. You just lose that hungry investigative reporter who likes to get at the truth locally where they live. Santos went unchecked until his story started to contradict each other.
Speaker 1:During the McCarthy Speaker of the House 15-vote sessions. Santos sat alone as the GOP party distanced themselves from him. I mean, could you imagine how bad it must be for any of the two parties to shun one of their own? Well, I guess Kevin McCarthy knows, because it's all about trust. Yeah, and talking about trust, have you ever paid for a food order online, like at Chipotle Verde Panera Bread? Gone to pick it up at their holding shelf. And it's not there, it's gone.
Speaker 1:There's a growing dilemma at most self-pickup joints where people are stealing meal orders. The honor system sounds like a convenient way to expedite your order, to pick up speed when you're time starved. You order it, you go to the place, you walk in, it's on a shelf, you see your name, you pick it up, boom, you're gone. But here's the dilemma there are George Santos-like people everywhere that exploit opportunities. Look, we all want to believe that everybody's as trustworthy as we are, only to discover your meal is no longer on the pickup shelf. Personally, I like the convenience of ordering online driving up to, let's say, a Verde salad restaurant, walking in, seeing my name on the to-go package, picking it up and walking out. It feels like the future is here today. But caveat emptor, there are scoundrels everywhere looking to beat the system. I'm sure, if this becomes a bigger issue, that some whiz kid will come up with a technologically safe way to validate a pickup. You got to believe that, right, you know. I think it's just that sometimes technology is faster at creating fixes and solutions than the human factor can adjust to, and that factor is that there are douchebags everywhere that look for different ways to cheat the system. I mean those kind of things make for a great Jules Thief movie but makes for a really shitty lunch when your pickup order just left with those two kids on bikes.
Speaker 1:That disquieting feeling you get in your gut every time you're about to take a golf shot over a hazard. If you've ever played golf and are confronted with that shot over a hazard to get to a fairway or a green, you're going to relate to this. And for those of you new to the game of golf or haven't played, the hazard I'm talking about is like the body of water in front of and the left side of the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach. The 16th tee box at the Ocean Course in Kiowa Island with that par 3 over a lake. The marshland in the low country in South Carolina. Like three out of the four par 3s at Charleston National. The desert transition areas between the tee box and the fairways at most courses in Arizona and Palm Desert. The black rocks in the island of Kona protecting greens and fairways. And, by the way, do not take a black volcanic rock home from the course as a souvenir or you'll be witness to the wrath of Pele.
Speaker 1:Look, I'm certain you have images of thousands more hazards that separate you and your ball from the next target area. The visual appearance of these architecturally daunting hazards can be consuming and disruptive to your flowing swing. They purposely can create angst in your nervous system, causing you to jerk, quicken or make an unsure swing at the ball, usually ending up in a golf ball donation to the course. And why? All? Because you lose a stroke or two. The sheer penalty of one or two strokes throws us into this apoplectic state of just being unsure. Meanwhile, when you're in the middle of a fairway or you have an open shot with no trees, you swing with ease. Yeah, so why am I bringing this up? I'm playing around a golf with Dr Payne, mike Kay and Southern Brad the other day and noticed that all of us well, maybe with the exception of Dr Payne, who brought his effortless, silky, smooth midsummer Buckeye blast to Charleston All of us found that angst monster around some of the hazards.
Speaker 1:Mine came in the bunkers and theirs found their way into their swings over the marsh, theirs found their way into their swings over the marsh. Somewhere in the middle of the round we all decided that the angst monster was rearing its ugly head, speeding up jerky swings. So we faced our demons and in our pre-shot routines where the marsh or the sand became a factor, said out loud hey man, no angst, slow it down. And, believe it or not, 50% of those shots went extraordinarily well. For the other 50% let's just say work in progress. They say the first step in solving a problem is recognizing that you have one. So at least three of us recognizing we might have had a problem that day were actually saying out loud slow it down, no angst. We'd even laugh about it. But some of the shots were pretty good. And for Dr Payne, he didn't need that mantra that day because he was playing Gumby golf all day long.
Speaker 1:Hey, what's with the tampon tax Music? If you're a guy, unless you live with a feminist or have spent a good amount of time with them, you might not even know that in most states feminine hygiene products, particularly tampons and pads, are taxed. So you might be saying, yeah, so what? Well, if that's the case, you've been able to insulate yourself from the other 50%. Good luck with that. Or you're saying everything is taxed these days. Why should that be an exception? Well, here's a list of non-taxed items. They're like necessities food products, clothing, footwear, toilet paper. And then there's condoms. Condoms are classified as a Class II medical device and are not taxed. Doesn't that seem ironic to you? So a guy buys condoms Now I could see a guy, because I've been in the industry and I know that most condoms are purchased by males. So a guy buys condoms primarily to avoid his partner from getting pregnant. You know what that means More periods and sales of taxable tampons. You know what that means More periods and sales of taxable tampons. And for most females it's 40 years of taxable tampons.
Speaker 1:My guess is that state lawmakers are confronted with two major deterrents and why they don't include tampons and non-taxables. Number one is the biggest how does the state make up the shortfall in taxes when they move feminine hygiene products to the non-taxable column, like in South Carolina? That would be over $7 million in taxes that they'd have to make up. And number two whenever a bill gets written, it includes more and more items that just muddy up the bill. Just more fat Lawmakers use that as an excuse not to sign it. So what's my solution? Why do I always have to have a solution? Anyway, elect more Congress people that are personally familiar with the issue and find other sources of revenue to make up the difference. And, by the way, george Santos would not be that guy texting emojis as a form of shorthand.
Speaker 1:I am a self-proclaimed shitty texter. I'm often curt with my communication or try to be humorous. In the absence of facial expression or comedic timing, it comes off badly. The proliferation of emojis help to communicate the emotional undertones. I particularly noted that when communicating with the opposite sex, certain emojis help me come off less like a serial killer, but sometimes more like an ass clown.
Speaker 1:How is it that my daughter, the last of the millennials, knows exactly how and when to use emojis? Was there an emoji tutorial that I missed in the last decade? My iPhone houses over 1,600 emojis and I have no idea what 50% of the facial expression emojis signify. I tend to overuse the laughing emoji with tears, the wide open round eyes and the dude with sunglasses because I am so cool. So I consulted this Emojipedia for guidance and all it did was describe the emoji face Melting face, face holding back tears, smiley face with smiley eyes. Yeah, I can see the face and see that it's a face with tears or smiley eyes. I get it. What I don't know is when to use them and what they really mean. Somebody sent me an emoji the other day that I thought was an emoji for a hangover. Now, after all this research, I learned that the sign is for somebody who's being sick. Not like sick, like hey, that's a sick bike, you got there More like I feel like shit, yeah. So maybe she attended that emoji class that I just missed At the end of text. Many of my female friends and family will drop a few emojis at the end to underscore how they're feeling. Sometimes I look at the emojis before I even read the note to create context for what I'm about to read. That's because I still think I'm at the sixth grade reading comprehension level.
Speaker 1:My last several years in corporate leadership, I had a sift through no less than a hundred emails a day, and those of you that are still working could be even more than that. In my efforts to be fast and efficient, I would speed read through all of the notes so that I could respond, delete or file them in a expeditious manner. The only problem is that I'm not a speed reader. I have a friend that could read a 300-page book a day and be able to talk to the details of that storyline. My brain doesn't function that way. So when I speed read I miss crucial elements, like when I was in business there'd be a paragraph I'd miss. Because of these reasons, we no longer want to do business with you.
Speaker 1:I had a note like that one time. It was buried somewhere towards the end of this letter. I didn't even read it, I didn't see it. So I acted like they wanted to keep doing business. Or, as a result of our investigation, we feel like there's not enough evidence to pursue this matter Again and I just kept texting back or writing notes back and forth. And where are you with this? Where are you with this? I'm an idiot. I mean. Those are some pretty heady conclusions that I might have missed on heavy email days. So when I get those long texts, I look for emojis at the bottom to see if the note was written with love, hate, humor or disinterest in their hearts. That informs me how to approach it. But when I can't fully understand the facial expression or meaning behind it, I won't speed read the text. And when the text is only an emoji, I'm fucked.
Speaker 1:The geodesic curve. On the greens they say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. That makes perfect sense on a flat two-dimensional area In golf, particularly the greens at Charleston National Golf Club, there are no straight lines longer than, let's say, a foot. The putting surface, by design, has remarkable curvature, undulation and Bermuda grain which causes your golf ball to curve off of a straight path. This is the geodesic curve at its best. The shortest puttable distance between your ball and the hole is some type of arch somewhere between the two. Good putters who play Charleston National often are good imagining the arc and executing a stroke that rolls the ball over the arc. That will curve the ball into the hole. Most amateur golfers under read the arc, causing the ball to break well before the hole and miss. And in the winter time down here in the low country, ryegrass overseeding to keep the color of the greens green, it's harder to see the discoloration that would normally signal you that there's a change in undulation. It's geodesic curve.
Speaker 1:It's difficult for me to read the green with the flagstick in the hole, since most of the time I'm not aiming my putter head at the hole. I don't want the flag stick position to enter into my thought process unless I'm so far away. That distance is more important than accuracy. I'd rather focus my attention on something on the green a discoloration, an old spike mark, a leaf, whatever that is. That would be on my intended path that curves to the hole. If I happen to see the flagstick in the hole when I'm looking down at the ball, then it is going to get into my calculation and, regardless of what other target I set out to hit, that flagstick gets in my head. I know it's a problem, right, the selfish remote-controlling moron. This last segment happened this week after I had already outlined the topics for the episode, but I felt compelled to talk about it. Every once in a while. Even down here in the low country, where polite, kind and community describe most of the golfers I meet, there's always an asshole just waiting to be discovered.
Speaker 1:I'm playing our Thursday morning match with Billy the Kid, cloudy Graves and Guns, the Scandinavian sharpshooter. We had the first tee time, so at 7.28, we hit our ceremonial first drives and started our match. We play a two-man Nassau with a twist two points per hole, one for low individual, one for low total. Now, most golfers that I play with play a Nassau, but they only count one score of the two people. On a team. It's typically the lowest net score against the lowest net score of the other two players. So if you and your playing partner score the lowest net score on the hole, your team gets a point. The team with the most points at the end of nine holes wins the front side, you do it on the back and you do it on the overall. I think you get it One point per hole. In Billy the Kid's game, the individual players with the lowest net score get one point for the team. But there's also a second point for the aggregate net score for your team, which means on most holes everybody's putt is meaningful, which can slow down the match a tad.
Speaker 1:That being said, this group always tends to play at or below the prescribed two hours and 15 minutes per nine holes. So why all the context? We're playing the first hole without any delay. We get to the second hole it's a par three and we get up to the putting surface, and maybe one or two of us might have been a little bit off, so it's taken us a minute or so. We notice that the foursome behind us caught up. They're standing on the tee box and some of them have their hands on their hips. You know what that is. That is the international sign of hurry the fuck up. I don't think we were slow, but playing a two-point game can at times slow it down. Maybe the guys behind us were fast players and maybe they're giving each other five-foot putts on the first hole, but hey, they're behind us and they're standing there, so we putt out.
Speaker 1:We now get to the third tee box, hit our drives and while we're heading out to find our balls, one of the golfers that was in the foursome behind us decides to leave his group and pass us and play in front of us. Here's where the plot thickens. He's walking and he has one of those remote control push carts following him in the fairway. Now we're going to find our balls, get ready to hit our next shots. But we can't hit our next shots because RoboGolfer walks in front of us. He doesn't ask hey guys, do you mind if I play through? Hey guys, I've got to do this or that, doesn't ask anything. He doesn't even look at us, he just keeps walking. So RoboGolfer walks in front of us and then he walks past all. Golfer walks in front of us and then he walks past all. He doesn't play the hole and he walks to the side and goes to the next hole. He doesn't make eye contact, he just walks.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm thinking a few thoughts here. Number one is is this guy a douche? And the other one is hey, maybe he lives on the course and this is the quickest way for him to get home, because something just happened, something unexpected, and now he needs to get home. And maybe he didn't want to confront us with it because it's not something that you want to talk about. That's a possibility. But then, as he passes us and the four of us get up to the green, we all look at each other and we had the same reaction. What the fuck?
Speaker 1:Most golfers that are time starved and want to play ahead approach one or a few of the golfers in the group ahead of them and ask hey guys, do you mind if I play through? And almost all the time you grant them their wish, unless the course is packed and there's really nowhere for somebody to go and all they're going to do is get in front of you and hold you up even more. But that wasn't the case. This guy ignored us and was walking, which meant he was going to get in our way, at least for the next hole or two, because he's walking and there happens to be the path between the third hole and the fourth hole is like at least 400 yards. It's a long walk. So Cloudy Graves is a rules follower and always knows the right thing to do. So this entitled robo golfer puts Cloudy on tilt and just rubbed him the wrong way. So now we get done with the whole.
Speaker 1:Cloudy and Billy the Kid have fast electric golf carts. Guns and I were walking, so when we put it out on three, the two of them get in their golf carts. They headed over to the fourth tee box and I think both, or at least one of them, wanted to have a little conversation with RoboGolfer. So as Guns and I are making this walk together and it's kind of a circuitous kind of walk, we kind of go through woods, we go around a turn and as we come around a turn there's probably another 50 or 60 yards before we get down to our tee box, and we could see that Cloudy and Billy were having words with this golfer. You know, first of all, walking Charleston National might be a good exercise, but there are just too many holes where the distance between one green and the next tee box is hundreds of yards away, robo golfer picks one of those holes to pass us, leaving him a long walk to get to the fourth tee box, enough time for any golfers and golf carts behind him to catch up.
Speaker 1:Number two that's what happened. Cloudy, rightly so, thought this would be a good teaching moment to let this juvenile senior golfer understand the right thing to do. And if you know Cloudy, like we do, teaching moments can be painful for the student, particularly if they think they're in the right. I think it was fortunate for the robo golfer that Billy the Kid was there to help, shepherd him away from Cloudy before things got out of control, because this guy was resisting. He's fighting back and whatever Billy said, the guy turned around and started walking and is having his little cart behind him, robo cart behind him and, I guess, after the conflict with Cloudy, made the best decision of the day and skipped the fourth hole and went on to the fifth and got out of our way.
Speaker 1:Now here's a lesson for all of you, novice and experienced golfers.
Speaker 1:If you feel like the group ahead of you are playing too slow, wait for the ranger, the marshal, the customer assistance personnel and share your concerns with them.
Speaker 1:Now, if there's no golf course personnel in the area and you got the right guts, feel free to ask the foursome in front of you if you can play through. Take your chances and let the group decide. And if you're a walker and you want to play ahead of people that are in carts and most golfers have carts, particularly at Charleston National then here's what I recommend Get the first tee time or show up early and see if you can negotiate getting out in front of the other groups. Most people let you go, but in no circumstances should you cut in front of people without talking to them and hope that they're just going to let it go, because I can assure you one thing they won't and you might not have a plan for the outcome of your indiscretion. Just saying you've been listening to another episode from just tales. I'm your host, rich easton, telling tales from beautiful chareston, south Carolina. Talk to you soon.