As you may have gathered from my last entry, I golf. It's a game I picked up, somewhat reluctantly, a few years ago. While I play fairly often, I have yet to achieve a skill level that would justify calling myself a "golfer", as opposed to "one who golfs." To be fair, the fact one can rarely be satisfied with one's level of play is a major driving force behind people's addiction to the game. I have been force fed more humility on a golf course than I had ever previously ingested on any other field of play. For that reason, you could say my experience with golf shares much with my experience as a gardener. However, this post strays a little from the theme of humility and addresses another aspect of the game: etiquette.
The rules governing the game of golf are at once maddening and refreshing. Love it or hate it, it is a game steeped in etiquette. Introduce yourself to your playing partners when you start. Don't talk during someone's back-swing. Don't step on someone's putting line. Don't leave the green until everyone has finished putting. Best score on a hole has the honor of teeing off first at the next, unless they choose to waive it. Even if you have an awful round, thank your playing partners before you leave the last hole. Above all, minimize your impact on the course...other people play here, too. No matter how frustrated you are with your bunker shots, rake the sand after your shot. If you're good enough to land your shot on the green, repair your ball mark. And, especially if you're a hack like me, track down the chunk of turf your iron carved out of the fairway and put it back where it came from -- replace your divots.
I thought about this on Saturday while rushing to put my border down before a late morning tee time. As I swung my pickax, carving out a sixty foot trench, I began to accumulate chunks of grass. My initial instinct was to dump them in the green waste bin and be done with it...but as I looked around, I noticed all the bare patches in my lawn that could use them. I'll just put down seed, I tried to tell myself. No good. I had living grass sitting there, a product of many days of watering, meticulously cared for by my gardener and his high polluting mower...it's very existence had already impacted the course everyone else has to play on. I couldn't let all of it go to waste. I had to replace my divots. Etiquette demanded it.
Though I knew it would prevent me from finishing the project in the time I had that morning, I started placing the turf in the bare patches of lawn. I became more careful about how I pulled the turf up to begin with, knowing I would be placing it somewhere else and not wanting to render it unusable. I was careful to not work too far ahead of myself, not wanting to pull up more grass than I could replant before I left. It was frustratingly slow, but it was right.
The job didn't get finished before I traded my pickax for a 4 iron and, even though I enlisted Sharon's help the next day, I ultimately wasn't able to save all the grass I displaced. But it put a change in my life in sharp focus. From re-using wood from trees I've pruned as fencing or arches, to trying to limit my water usage in the summer, to wondering where my meat comes from and trying to not buy unsustainable fish, I have suddenly become someone who gives a shit. Don't get me wrong, I'm no tree hugger...but I'm sure a lot of the guys who stayed quiet in my back-swing and shook my hand on the 18th green were no saints either. We're not always going to do the right things, but it's never a bad thing to remember you're not playing alone.
One final note: having replaced many a divot in my career as "one who golfs", I have always been slightly skeptical that putting a slice of turf back in a hole and stomping it down actually does anything. Having never returned to the exact scene of the crime, I had no way to know if the grass actually survives. As I had my morning coffee on the back porch, I noticed almost couldn't tell the replaced turf hadn't been there before. Replacing divots works. Who knew?
I for one like and appreciate that you give a shit. X
Posted by: Sharon | 02/15/2010 at 07:18 PM