My friend Bert is a notorious ball-finder. You would think that he is part bloodhound, the way he can sniff out lost golf balls. Next time you lose your ball in some tall, thick rough, or deep in the middle of a hardwood forest, you will wish you were playing with Bert. Bert would find your ball for you, no doubt about it. One time, I hit my tee shot so far into the woods on a par-4, I figured I would need a battalion of Green Berets to help me bushwhack in far enough to find it. I gave up without even looking for it, and was ready to take a drop, when out from the forest trudged Bert, not only with the ball I just hit in there, but an armful of other formerly-lost balls, as well. Bert is also a notorious ball-seller-backer, and he instantly came over and tried to sell me back the ball I just lost for the not-so-cheap price of $3. Can you believe he would try sell me back my golf ball for $3? What a jerk! I told him to take a hike, which he did, right back into the woods where he found another couple dozen lost balls. Once, I actually had to pay Bert the ransom that he wanted for my lost ball, since I didn’t have any other balls in my bag. But I have since learned better, so now before I play with Bert I make sure to shovel enough golf balls in my bag to last several lifetimes. I will never give him the satisfaction of making me pay for my own golf ball again!
One time, Bert’s zeal for finding lost golf balls almost cost him dearly. We were playing in a charity tournament at a ritzy resort course high up in the Adirondacks. Several holes seemed to be perched on the side of sheer cliffs – we could look out from several vantage points on the course and seem to be looking face-to-face with fluffy white clouds and pointy treetops. Bert spent much of the day scrambling up and down the jagged mountainsides, gathering up golf balls that others had hit, but were too scared to climb down and retrieve. Bert wasn’t going to let a little thing like gravity get between him and somebody else’s lost golf ball, that’s for sure. He took great pride in going where no others dared to tread in search of lost balls.
One particular hole placement was especially precarious, with the green situated a mere foot or two from the side of the cliff. On his way up the fairway on that hole, Bert had found a veritable mother lode of hiding places for lost balls: a huge, scraggly bush that was planted right on the edge of the cliff, presumably to catch golf balls before they plummeted over the edge to their death. This bush must have been 50 feet in diameter, with thorny branches reaching in all directions. Dozens of golf balls were visible deep within the scraggly bush’s inner diameter. Obviously this bush was doing a wonderful job of catching golf balls before they flew into oblivion, but the thorns and incessant tangles of branches had kept most golfers from retrieving their ball. Bert merely looked at this as an interesting challenge. He had never let a bush beat him before, and he wasn’t going to start now. Ten minutes, and a couple hundred thorny puncture wounds later, Bert had extricated at least 30 or 40 golf balls from this lone bush. Since I was tired of watching him search for other people’s lost golf balls, I had taken our golf cart and moved towards the green. Without a cart around to dump his newfound golf ball treasure, Bert decided to stuff them all in the pockets on his cargo shorts for the time being.
We got up to the green, and Bert’s own golf ball sat about 75 feet from the pin, in the miniscule amount of rough that sat between the green and the cliff. Between Bert’s ball and the cup sat four or five large mounds, meaning once Bert’s ball started rolling on the green, it would break right and then left and then back to the right so many times we would lose count. It would be a miracle if he was able to get the ball to rest within 15 feet of the hole. Bert took out his trusty 6-iron, his chipping club of choice, lined up his shot, took a few practice swings, and made a smooth swing on the ball, which flew about 15 feet in the air, bounced sideways off of one of the mounds, started rolling left, then right, then back to the left again as it maneuvered around the other mounds, and plopped directly in to the hole for a birdie 3. Bert started jumping around and whooping and hollering out of pure joy, but he forgot all of the golf balls packed into his pockets. One of his back pockets, which held about 20 golf balls itself, contained so much weight that when Bert started jumping around, the mass of golf balls got moving so quickly from side to side that it created a sort of fulcrum effect that pulled Bert and his weighted-down shorts right over the edge of the cliff. I would love to be able to put into words how I felt when I saw my old friend go from a look of utter elation after making that chip shot, to a look of total panic as he went sailing over the edge of the cliff. It’s hard to remember exactly how to describe something, though, when you’re watching it with tears in your eyes – tears from laughing so hard you almost got sick. Needless to say, Bert was fine, except maybe for his pride, which was slightly bruised. He only fell about 5 feet before he landed in the branches of a small pine tree. He was able to climb back up to safety, and I think he only dropped two or three golf balls in the process. You’d think an episode like this would have taught Bert a lesson, but no, he’s still up to his old tricks, and he even tries to sell me my own golf ball every once in a while. Hmmm, maybe I should take him back out to the Adirondacks again some time….
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