Golf, very similar love is everywhere. My dad plays golf, Cameron Diaz plays golf, even the guys at Penny Arcade apparently play golf. Not only that, but golf is accompanied by an electronic spectacle of related devices and/or gadgets. Very bright!
And yet, I have resisted the crushing pressure to take up the cudgels. I think it’s a resentment left over from my childhood. At any given time on Sunday afternoons, three stations were broadcasting golf tournaments. Of approximately five. This was before cable. So I settled for the Sunday comics, wanting to be entertained by unsophisticated pranks, only to encounter the dreaded Golf Joke.
BC invented golf millions of years before the Scots. Dagwood took time out from his bulimic sandwich binges to hit the links. And Snoopy – Snoopy! Instead of killing imaginary Germans or making Linus’s life an unrelenting hell, he would be playing golf with mysteriously acquired beagle-sized clubs. I jumped to my feet and shook my fist at the sky in a now-clichéd gesture, swearing that once I found out what this golf thing was, I wouldn’t play it.
I guess that’s why I recently decided to try the hippie sport, the hippie sport of sports, disc golf. Because it’s not really golf.
I wouldn’t have expected disc golf to be a geeky activity – it involves fresh air and sunshine, it never appeared in trip to the stars – but a surprising number of my geek friends have records. Not as in, “I have a promotional A&W Frisbee in my closet,” but like official, PDGA-approved golf discs.
(Yes, PDGA. There are professional disc golf players. I know, I know. I imagine you think the same when you hear there are professional video game players.)
I suspect the expensive official records are part of the appeal.
Buying precisely engineered, high-tech versions of things most people buy in garage sale quarter boxes is part of the geek lifestyle or “geek style.” There are dozens of discs with various aerodynamic properties made from a variety of interesting materials.
Some are even named after fantasy characters, such as the “Orc.” Imagine trying that with golf clubs: “This driver is called the Nazgul 3000. It’s a great club, but I wouldn’t use it near a water hazard! Heh, you see, because of the magic horses of the elves in the river. When the The hobbits were…hey, come back!”
