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fore play
03/07/2008 = 09:36 AM

Whenever I see a golf story in the news, I wonder what my childhood writing mentor and idol, Lewis MacDonald Grizzard, Junior, a Great American, would have had to say about it, if he were still alive.

Since he isn't, I'll start with what I have to say:

Not all golfers suck.

I truly believe that, putting That Man of Mine into any context other than golf (if golf hadn't been an option for him), he would just as soon have made my nom de guerre Baseball Widow or Opera Widow, or however his particular "me-time" outlet happened to manifest.

Likewise, Tripp Isenhour strikes me as the kind of personality who, annoyed by a bird, would have shot it, thrown tennis balls at it, or put it into a pen with Michael Vick's dogs, if he hadn't had golf clubs and balls at his disposal.

In other words, blame the player, not the game.

That said, I'm no less disgusted with either one of them.

But I'm relieved that the worst thing that That Man of Mine has done, golfwise, was to play on our wedding day.

As he put it, "I only played nine holes."

And while he's hit a few birdies and at least one eagle* that I know of, he's never hit a living bird to my knowledge, and if he did, it was accidental, during game play, and did not involve the words, "I'll get him now," which was Isenhour's last comment before he deliberately aimed for the hawk that was pestering him during filming of an instructional video.

Of course, all of this thought lent itself to some brain confetti on my part, and a good thing too, because without brain confetti, how do you know it's me you're reading?

When I first saw the headline "Golfer faces charges for killing hawk," I automatically assumed it was during game play, and I thought, no, that's unfair; it wasn't deliberate.

When I read the article and found out that Isenhour was making a video and not playing a game, and that he had actually driven his golf cart closer to the hawk to get a better angle at it, I said, Fry him like a chicken.

I mean, that's not just cruel and stupid, it's against the rules of golf. Once you stop "playing the ball where it lies" and move to where you have a better shot, you're cheating. Which makes you not only a nasty person who would hurt a living creature because it was annoying you, it makes you a bad golfer.

I said, Damn, that's just so petty, and then I thought, no Richard Petty would never do something that classless, and then, because in my world, there's no such thing as "a little bit" of brain confetti, I thought, it's a good thing Isenhour didn't have a racecar, or he'd've run that hawk over.

Again, blame the player, not the game.

As to Isenhour's request that we be respectful of his family's privacy, well. Far be it from me, and all that.

They've got enough to deal with, knowing what kind of human being they've got hovering round their nest.

Having now coped with my own feelings on the subject, I can revisit my original question; namely: what would Lewis M. Grizzard, Junior, have had to say about all of this?

I feel fairly confident in my belief that he would have said, "Well, what do you want? The guy went to Georgia Tech."**

* To Indignant Animal Lovers Uninitiated in the Rules of Golf: "Birdy" and "eagle" are golfing terms for beating the average score on a given golf hole: a birdy beats the average score by one, an eagle beats it by two. No protected migratory species are injured during the shooting of a birdy or an eagle.

** To Indignant Georgia Tech Alumni: Before Lewis Grizzard's untimely demise in 1994, he was unapologetic in his fondness for the University of Georgia and his lack of fondness for the Georgia Institute of Technology. I personally have no bias either way, in that capacity.

Tags: Tripp Isenhour

drinking: coffee
listening to: Yes, Leave It
smelling like: menthol (new topical arthritis treatment. jury is out as to efficacy, but I feel minty fresh)