Non Playing Wives

By Joel Zuckerman

spend an insupportable amount of time on the golf course, and have born witness to literally hundreds of circumstances that can best be described as contemptible.

In the last fifteen years, thousands of rounds, ten thousand hours and fifty thousand golf holes there have been innumerable highlights, but plenty of lowlights (and lowlifes) as well.

I’ve seen club-throwers, turf-gougers, whiners, crybabies, sandbaggers, spike-draggers, excuse makers, cheaters and braggarts of every stripe. I’ve shaken my head at the foot-wedgers, mis-markers, change jinglers, shadow-casters, cart-gunners, scorecard-fudgers, club losers, divot leavers, ball mark neglecters and bunker rake ignorers.

I’ve observed the freak that walks off in mid round because of poor play, the meek that walk off the course at the first raindrop or rumble of thunder, and the geek who heads home at the first cell phone call from his wife.

I’ve seen par 3 tee shots leaning tremulously over the edge of the cup, an eighth inch from an ace. Skulled bunker shots that hit the stick at a million miles per hour and dropped in, and four putts taken from five feet.

I’ve played with fat guys who had suction cups at the end of their putter, and millionaires who played with range rocks. I’ve witnessed family members who whiffed five times consecutively, almost losing their bladder laughing in the process, and the perpetually flatulent who cannot take a swing or mark their ball without an ad lib.

But for all the weird and wacky, the peculiar and pathetic behavior I’ve been privy to, there is one thing that stands out from the rest. Non-playing wives who accompany their husbands on the golf course.

It’s a particular brand of vapidity that keeps these spouses in tow, sitting endlessly in the golf cart while hubby thrashes it sideways. Perhaps I’m missing something here, but one can only use their own frame of reference for any sort of comparison.

My own tennis playing, yoga teaching, child rearing wife wouldn’t deign to spend four minutes on the couch watching Tiger Woods, never mind four hours in a cart watching me stumble through the woods. That’s not to say she’s never ambled the linksland. As newlyweds, my fitness fanatic would shoulder the bag and caddy for me from time to time, including one particularly memorable episode in the tenth month of pregnancy when she went into false labor. But that’s another story entirely.

I’ve met up with these non-playing wives who are “just along for the ride” from time to time. But a spate of encounters in recent months, including a listless lady who was riding shotgun for the duration of a four day golf trip, really got me thinking. It’s not as if I ever had a bad experience in the company of a tagalong; none have offered unsolicited swing advice or squealed the brakes in my backswing. It’s just their presence, like knowing there are Pauly Shore movies available to rent at the video store, that bothers me.

I’m all for togetherness and close, caring relationships, but aren’t there fifty other more fruitful alternatives to lazing the day away in an E-Z-Go? Perhaps a movie, a tour, some shopping, a lunch date, a library or museum? Treat it like the kid’s soccer practice. Drop him off, and then pick him up later. If one insists on being attendant from the opening drive to the final putt, wouldn’t a book, a Gameboy, a Walkman, a Rubik’s Cube or pair of knitting needles help the time to pass?

Virtually every non-golfing wife I’ve seen (surely there are husbands out there as well, but I’ve personally never encountered one) is perfectly comfortable just spending time in the presence of the man she loves. Some might assist, however cursorily, in the search for a lost ball. Most are willing to drive the cart around to the back of the green, and all are willing to commiserate after the inevitable bad shot. Other than that, like the occasional one iron you see popping up in a golf bag, they seem to have no real purpose.

I was matched up recently with a struggling threesome consisting of two couples, minus a cart-warming wife. After inquiring about her non-participation, the husband told me, “she’s the smart one.”

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