A Much Needed Vacation

I was fortunate enough to marry into a great family. One of the kinds that still goes on family vacations together and sends all members back home with nary a black eye or scratch marks or missing tufts of hair. Now that I’m officially a member, I was allowed to join for a week on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. While the girls (my wife, her 2 sisters and mom) took a few days to shop and get their nails done, my father-in-law and I took to following a little white ball around in the woods.

Golf might be one of the strangest events known to man. You can step onto the first tee box stressed beyond belief and walk off the 18th green loose and worry-free (even without having sent the “cart lady” back to the clubhouse to refill her adult beverage stash multiple times). On the contrary, you can plan on spending a nice, relaxing 4 1/2 hours in nature and end up with a bag full of twice as many sticks as you started with, only now they’re half the size they were when you started and you’re playing partners are afraid to speak to you.

We played the Hilton Head Country Club and the Golden Bear at Indigo Run. Both very nice courses, although the alligator I watched unsuccessfully chomp on a turtle after the very first shot of the week was a bit disturbing. Yeah, that’s what it was. That’s why I was off my game: I almost witnessed life being snuffed from a being perhaps due to my errant tee shot, angering the prehistoric beast and permanently etching the life and death dance in my mind brain…that or I hadn’t played in about 8 months. Surely it was the former. So the moral of the story is practice, practice, practice (and don’t anger the water monsters).