The Rake Magazine

Tag: golf

  • Golf Sex

    On a recent sunny afternoon in Minneapolis, four fabulous looking ladies put some serious sass into the usually bland game of golf. As the young fasionistas shimmied across the grounds of the Walker Museum’s new Artist Designed Mini Golf Course, the women combined ample cleavage and golf putters to make the fantasy of millions of American males finally come true. Astroturf never looked sexier.

     

    The gorgeous golf girls, who were all in their twenties and in ridiculous high heels, casually flitted around the unique sculptures/golf holes that were on display, even occasionally trying to hit a ball. On Hole Two, where numerous empty glass bottles hung from ropes over the putting green, the group giggled lightly as one of the women jokingly did a sexy come hither burlesque walk through the bottles. Ten feet away, a male golfer in a classic visor and Dockers nearly swallowed his tongue.

    Immediately following the four sultry women, my son and I stepped onto the golf course and the whole sex vibe instantly died. I’m a stocky Barney Rubble look alike and my son is Bam Bam dressed in Gap Kid clothes. There is no greater buzzkill in the world than a four year old boy wielding a golf club. With his index finger rammed up his nostril, constant barrage of mind numbing questions, and possible hot pile of poop in his pants, my son is two legged anti-Viagra.

    When the four hotties sauntered off to Hole Three, we moved onto the platform to the Hole Two bottle fun. Without a single word of instruction from me (I’m about as good at golf as I am at speaking Mandarin), Murphy drew the club back behind his ear and violently slap shot his golf ball all the way across the frame and out onto the lawn. The sex kittens playfully giggled as my son tore off into the bottle maze to find his ball. Within seconds, he couldn’t navigate the bottles dangling from above and soon looked like a drunk staggering around in a house of mirrors. I reached in and lead him out. After he retrieved his ball, he promptly slam dunked the thing into the cup and raced to the next hole.

    The course was at times difficult and at others just plain odd. With the sports aspect taking a back seat to wenches and weird metal roosters, at times I felt like it was something Andy Warhol probably came up with in gym class while all the dick hard jocks were tagging him with dodge balls. But each hole was inspiring and unique and the entire local artist congregation designed environmentally sound and challenging pieces.

    There were holes with water towers, giant carpeted waves, Paul Bunyan, and even one where we shot our balls into Teddy Roosevelt’s mouth. And amazingly, they were all made from recycled or reused materials like crushed glass and rubber tires. We spent a solid ten minutes at a hole where we had to peddle a stationary bike backwards to shoot our ball into a giant pinball machine, then use the hand brakes to move the flippers, and finally had to putt our balls through a labyrinth of slots.

    We finished golfing and took a nice leisurely stroll through the Sculpture Garden across the street. With the heat slowly fading away and the blue sky just beginning to fill with stars, we walked hand and hand under an awesome summer sky that was filled with both day and night. We playfully chased each other into a grove of trees where our innocent Father and Son moment was punctured by the sight of two young people dry humping the bejesus out of each other on a secluded bench.

    After I saw my son’s worried expression, I told him, “Those people are just wrestling.”

    “Like those two bears at the zoo?” he innocently asked.

    “Ugh, yep.”

    (I chuckled because every time we see two living creatures engaged in foreplay or intercourse, whether it is two horny twenty-somethings fresh from two-for-one drinks at Liquor Lyles or mating grizzlies at the Minnesota Zoo, I always tell him that they are just wrestling. And I don’t know why I do this. Maybe it’s because I went to Catholic school for thirteen years and was told that God would send a plague of locusts after me if I had premarital sex. The whole wrestling excuse seems to cover all the logistics of the situation. But I can’t help but think that when my son has his first sexual intercourse experience [when he’s married of course!] he will greet his partner with a flying forearm shiver as he leaps off the bedpost.)

    We quickly left the happy humpers and returned to the golf course to eat a small snack from the golf shack which featured food from Wolfgang Puck’s Gallery 8 Cafe. Darkness was just beginning to cover the grounds and the downtown city lights twinkled in the distance. The course was now bustling with a whole legion of people on dates. There were straight couples and gay dudes, all noodling each other as they swung golf clubs around. As we walked to the car, you could feel waves of summer loving wafting off the golf course.

    Who knew that a sport normally reserved for rich white guys could be such an aphrodisiac?

  • My Friend Larry

    Larry Berle is perhaps the friendliest guy on the planet. He seems to know everyone I know, plus most everyone else, too. He accomplishes this in a couple of ways. He gets you to introduce all your friends to him, and then he actually remembers their names, what they do, where their kids go to school, and genuinely is interested in learning more about them.

    And he plays golf.

    The first characteristic he seems to have been born with. The golf I blame on his wife. Annie is just like Larry, except she’s probably a better golfer. (Her given name is Ann, but she’s so damn exuberant all the time you can’t help but use the diminutive.) When she and Larry started dating eighteen years ago, she introduced him to the game. She still plays a little, but not as much as Larry, mostly because nobody plays as much as Larry.

    Larry’s in his early sixties, but looks like he’s forty. I have an idea how old Annie is, having been to a birthday party or two, but let’s just say she could easily pass for twenty-eight. I attribute their youth to their health, and their maddeningly consistent buoyant outlook on life.

    Larry sold his business three years ago to concentrate on playing golf and making friends. Annie still works, so that cuts into her time to indulge his obsession. They do spend a lot of time together, though. They have gone hiking nearly everywhere in the world. Egypt, Papua New Guinea, Mount Kilimanjaro, and Patagonia have all felt their footprints.

    But eighteen months ago, their life as they knew it came to an abrupt halt. Larry had been out riding his bike, and when he didn’t return home Annie began calling his cell phone. Then she began calling police precincts and hospitals. Only after Larry had been missing for eight hours did she find him at Hennepin County Medical Center. Somehow he’d fallen off his bike and cracked his head, hard, on the concrete. He doesn’t remember how this happened, and while somebody called 911, no witnesses were there when the ambulance arrived. At the emergency room, they were so busy trying to save him that they hadn’t thought to call any family. Annie finally talked with someone treating Larry, who told her to hurry because he wasn’t expected to make it.

    He did make it, with extensive surgery that included temporarily removing a large piece of his skull, which allowed his brain to swell. He also made it, I’m convinced, due to the prayers and good wishes of his thousands of friends who set up a phone and email network that provided daily news of his condition. We friends also took care of Annie, which mostly involved not talking constantly about Larry and concentrating instead on dinner and wine.

    A few years before his accident, Larry had embarked on a quest to play Golf Digest magazine’s top hundred courses in the United States. A few of these are public and relatively easy to access; however, most are exceedingly exclusive. If you aren’t the guest of a member, you’ve got no chance to play unless you make the PGA Tour. And since the tour doesn’t take high handicappers like Larry, his only means of playing many of these courses was to make about a hundred new friends—friends who happened to be members of clubs like Augusta National.

    Of course, Larry did it. He worked his extensive list of friends to make contact with members who’d be willing to play golf with a stranger. Sometimes, he simply cold-called people, introduced himself, and wrangled an invitation.

    Over the course of nine years, he finished the list. Then he figured he had to write a book about it. He plunged into a task he knew nothing about, and was about two-thirds of the way through his first draft when he fell off his bike.

    Six months after the accident he was back at the book. He was suffering from some of the common side effects of a brain injury. His concentration and patience were both shot. He’d lost the ability to perform simple tasks such as balancing his check book. But the same determination that got him onto the courses got him to finish A Golfer’s Dream. In fact, he says finishing the book helped “bring him back.”

    For avid golfers, the book might be a slight disappointment. It’s not about the golf per se so much as it’s about all the friends he made on his quest. But that makes it even a better read, because when it comes to making friends, Larry is Tiger Woods.