It’s Only Too Late When It’s Too Late

By Steve Carr

I’ll start playing when I get old,” has been my refrain for thirty-plus years when asked, “Do you golf?” I play tennis (and football with the kids on Thanksgiving). I like being active.

At the risk of offending readers, I’ve always thought of golf as a slow and tedious activity. I enjoy a certain amount of self-satisfaction when I say I am aligned with the poet William Wordsworth, who said, “Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness.”

Years of social small talk, at every conceivable function, have taught me a few lessons. First, never, and I mean never, ask an Idaho fisherman about his fishing trip. Second and almost as important, don’t engage a golfer about golf—unless the only other available person in the room is a fisherman and you are truly tired of standing by yourself.