Southwords

A Taste for Golf

Sometimes it just comes naturally

By Emilee Phillips

Golf and I go way back. My earliest memory of a golf ball was at my uncle’s wedding. It was held at a country club somewhere in Iowa. I assume it was flat and kind of cornfieldy. I was 4 and given the honor of being one of the flower girls.

During the rehearsal dinner, we were in one of the many swanky dining rooms in a confusing maze of swanky rooms that I’m still not sure were all dedicated exclusively to our party. Nonetheless, little ol’ me scouted out the place. After all, there were three flower girls, surely they didn’t need all of us.

Central to the decorating theme, there were golf balls on every table — but not just any golf balls. These were regulation-sized, pure white chocolate golf balls. There was one at each place setting in the room.

I’m not sure if someone suggested the idea, as kids do, or if I arrived at it all on my own, but I decided to lick one. Having once discovered the delectable goodness — of which there seemed to be an unlimited quantity — I made it my mission to taste as many as I could. 

Seeing teeth marks sunken into a golf ball may be something out of the fever dream of a high handicapper, but to my young eyes, the sight of my teeth carving a smooth path out of the dimpled outer shell was mesmerizing.

The trance was broken when my mother ripped a golf ball, a mere shell of its former self, out of my hand. By that point it was too late. I don’t know how many I had already bitten into, but I can tell you I know what it’s like to overindulge at the 19th hole. My “hangover” may have been sugar induced, but my head felt it all the same.

Looking out on the golf course the next day, I naturally associated feeling like garbage with the little white balls people seemed to take such delight in striking. Fists clenched, I said to myself, So that’s why they hit them so hard. And, yes, I still hate white chocolate.

My next run-in with a golf course wasn’t until high school, when I moved to Pinehurst. Like Starbucks in Manhattan, there seemed to be a golf course on every corner. 

While I still don’t know much about golf, I am learning. I know that there are 18 holes in a standard game of golf, and that the term “birdie” has nothing to do with fingers. Peak season in North Carolina is spring and fall, presumably because it’s not too hot or too humid. I’m also told that the tiny craters on a golf ball serve more than an aesthetic purpose and actually have aerodynamic properties to make the balls travel faster or farther, or whatever, through the air. 

I’m aware that being on a golf course is like being in a theater after the curtain has gone up. One should be mostly quiet and mostly respectful of those trying to focus on the task at hand. I’ll likely never understand what goes into a perfect swing. But I know it’s supposed to be repetitive, like eating every bit of chocolate in sight.  PS

Emilee Phillips is PineStraw’s director of social media and digital content.