The seminar leader tells us to turn to page seven in our resource book. He’s drop-dead handsome with a full head of perfectly blow-dried hair. He wears a full frontal smile and a yellow short-sleeve dress shirt under an argyle sweater vest. His name is Troy Campbell. He’s holding a pitching wedge.
Troy says it’s a very hard quiz. My team’s question is a baffler about “loose impediments.” True or false: they are “natural objects such as leaves, twigs, branches, stones, worms, and insects, and nests or heaps made by them (provided they are not fixed or growing and are not solidly embedded).” Fortunately one of my teammates knows the answer, so we don’t have to kick it around much. Troy walks us through all the answers, then has us practice using the index in our official PGA rulebook, which we should always carry with us. He’s cable-TV smooth, making eye contact, modulating between soft-spoken sincerity and full-throttle enthusiasm, peppering his presentation with anecdotes from his experience in tournament play years ago. It occurs to me that this could be the only job in America Dan Quayle is truly qualified for. But he couldn’t do it better than Troy.
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“Jack.”
Troy warns against foul language: “When the Japanese came to America, they thought the name of the game was Oh Shit!” My classmates respond with appreciative chuckles. Next Troy cautions–at length–against throwing clubs. It seems an odd subject for would-be POWERGOLFERS. But there’s a bigger story here, and Troy tells it in hushed tones.
I flip ahead in my resource book and come across a section on “strategic questions” one might ask while POWERGOLFING. These include “Do you have any kids, Bob?” “How long have you been playing golf, Bob?” And “How is this economy treating you, Bob?”
I don’t think I’d be violating the copyright if I revealed that if you hit your boss up for a raise right after he’s blasted out of a sand trap and into a water hole, you need to do some work on identifying red zones.
