By Larry Canning
What I want for Christmas –
I would love a driver that could actually drive me home. It’s no secret, I love a couple of beers after my rounds mainly because these days, they are usually that bad, I need some form of medication to prevent me from self-harming. The problem is, I then have to go to plan B to get home. Plan B usually involves my beautiful wife, who can suddenly turn quite unattractive when she pulls up outside the clubhouse with a look on her face similar to Linda Blair’s in the Exorcist.
The conversation on the way home usually goes a little like this – “………….”.
I haven’t heard yet but surely by now someone has invented a laser range finder that can upset a competitor’s concentration during their swing right after his ball has hit another tree and bounced back onto the fairway. Something similar to the weapons Captain Kirk used to fire at the Klingons. It used to make an absolute dogs breakfast out of those poor ugly bad boys who already had foreheads that looked like a green keeper had run over them with a Toro bunker raker.
I’d love a voucher to see a golf physio, who actually has a semblance of compassion. Has anyone else seen a physio recently? My aging back and even older front, recently decided to give up the fight and go into a series of spasm’s on the eve of an E-Z-GO Legends Tour event. I played 18 holes at Mollymook Golf Course during the NSW PGA Championship with a swing that must have looked like I had been shot with a Taser mid-way through. A half an hour later and I had my face wedged into a strange looking cushion with a hole in the centre staring at the floor while a physiotherapist went about trying to unravel the damage 40 years of bad swings had left. Actually it was a good thing my face was pointing to the ground half covered with a towel. He couldn’t hear what I was calling him.
I would also like a “tee” that gives me 20 extra metres. Well, I reckon I’ve squeezed every millimetre out of new clubs and balls and failing the fact that some genius may have created a glove that can increase my club head speed, the only thing left to try is a new tee. I remember once doing a radio piece on the Australian Golf Merchandising show at Darling Harbour and being told by the producer to find something gimmicky to talk up on air.
As you can imagine, there was no shortage of quirky devices scattered all around the convention centre but the one that caught my eye was sitting on the counter of a small stall stuck right back in the corner of the building. There was a bloke, who was the dead spit of Albert Einstein, sitting behind the counter promoting his new plastic tee which gave you another 7 metres. It looked like a small fluro weapon of mass destruction attached to a tooth brush.
Albert looked pretty convincing, and when I explained what I wanted to do, he was only too willing to enlighten me on the physics of his tee. By the time he’d finished and I had nearly passed out through excessive nodding, it was time to take my position sitting in a golf cart modelled on a US Army Hum-Vee and talk up this tee….. I’m sure it made for riveting radio coverage.
I kept the tee after the cross and couldn’t wait to see if it worked and my radio credibility hadn’t been permanently damaged. A couple of days later, I was at Mount Broughton Golf Course in NSW having a hit with two very interested mates and one slightly cynical one named Brooksy.
I tried my best to condense Doctor Einstein’s theory of relativa-tee, placed my ball on the device and proceeded to hit a raging snap hook straight into a hazard. The tee, on the other hand, took off like a miniature sky rocket and flew a good 25 metres into the 2 foot long grass in front of the teeing mound.
This was all the fuel Brooksy needed to come out with – “Wow Larry! You were right. That thing flew way further. Better keep in mind, you have 5 minutes to find it or you will have to go back and hit another one… Should we call the next group through?”
Merry Christmas everyone and may Santa (not Brooksy), bring you some nice new tees.
