Pink on the links — for a good cause

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/08/2010 (5596 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As you read this, I am bravely striding the links at Niakwa Country Club in an electric-pink shirt, filling my lungs with the morning air and carrying out one of the most manly duties a guy like me can perform on a golf course.

Of course, if you are reading these words at midnight, there’s a good chance I’m in bed snoring, but for the purposes of today’s column, let’s assume I’m on the golf course, where, without concern for personal safety, I am caddying for a group of four fabulous women in Manitoba’s largest women-only golf tournament.

If you drive by the course right now, I will not be hard to spot. This is because I’m wearing a shocking pink golf shirt my wife bought for me in 2008. This shirt is so frighteningly, catastrophically pink that if you were to look at it directly without the aid of sunglasses, your eyeballs would spontaneously burst into flames. It is pink to the point where circus clowns would refuse to wear it on the grounds it is beneath their dignity.

But I am proud to don the pink shirt again, because it symbolizes that for the third consecutive year I’m taking part in the annual Casinos of Winnipeg Pink Ribbon Ladies Golf Classic for Hope. Now in its 14th year, the Pink Ribbon Golf Classic has raised more than $365,000 for CancerCare Manitoba’s Breast Cancer Centre of Hope. Is that amazing, or what?

I am again caddying for a group of women known as the Twisted Sisters. Each of the 40 four-women teams is assigned a token person of my gender to do their bidding.

As you can imagine, being a male caddy at a women-only tournament is extremely demanding and requires a great deal of sensitivity and expertise. In addition to looking like giant pink nightmares, we are expected to keep score, fetch errant golf balls, hold the women’s cocktails while they line up their putts, share amusing non-sexist anecdotes, and be as alluring as possible in a middle-aged, overweight kind of way.

As a seasoned caddy, I embody the one quality female golfers look for in a man — I’m not their husbands. The other thing I have going for me is that I understand the huge differences in how men and women approach the game, differences such as…

1) TALKING — Unlike men, women encourage talking on the course. Your standard female golfer would find it hard to hit a ball without the constant drone of conversation behind her. The only thing women do NOT talk about on the course is golf. Accepted topics for conversation include:

a) Shoes, especially “really super cute shoes”;

b) Chocolate, which is preferred over getting frisky with one’s spouse, even if he is the sort of guy who is willing to wrap himself up in tin foil and pretend to be a giant Hershey’s Kiss. Not that I have ever done this;

c) Babies, specifically women who are expecting babies, or have just had babies, or really should have a baby soon because, let’s face it, the clock is ticking, or whose husbands and kids are even more demanding than babies, but not nearly as cute.

In contrast, men violently discourage talking during golf. Golf is like an 18-hole funeral, only more serious and without a eulogy. If a guy hits a lousy shot, it’s always because his friends, insensitive jerks who do not understand the rules of the game, were “breathing too loudly” during his backswing.

2) GOOD VS. BAD SHOTS — The basic rule of thumb is: female golfers do not hit bad shots. Ever. For example, let’s say a woman wallops her ball into a tree, causing it to ricochet backwards and slam into the forehead of one of her innocent golfing companions. The moment — and I mean the very moment — the beaned woman regains consciousness, she will look at the woman who hit her and say: “Nice shot!” And she will mean it.

In contrast, even if a male golfer smacks a 400-yard drive that lands softly on the green, the other guys with him will roll their eyeballs contemptuously and point out that his ball ended up “on the wrong side of the flag.” Then they will share their innermost feelings via the technique of insulting each other’s haircuts.

I’d like to share more personal insights with you, but I have to deal with a golf emergency — we’re on the eighth hole and we’ve already run out of chocolate.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca