A Farewell to Summer

For the first couple decades of life, summer is the best season hands down. A time of liberation--liberation from the tyranny of academia, as well as the shackles of long-sleeves and pants. Summer is the time to gorge on sleep, and Vitamin D, watermelon and iced tea. The time to make big plans to do everything you'd wanted to do during the year but were too bogged down with stupid schoolwork. Then adulthood sets in and summer takes on a different feel. Mostly it's business as usual. But still, we cling to that euphoria, if only by habit.

As a golfer however, I've come to realize that summer is actually the darkest time of the year, emotionally. Summer is all about sweat; damp, sticky gloves; sun stroke headaches, overcrowing, long waits in the hot sun and the absolute dregs of golf course-society. For our cursed kind, it's actually a time to be endured more than enjoyed.

Summertime Blues

While the rest of the world frolics in the summer sun, my golf game exists in a state of hibernation. Actually there's a word for hibernation in the summer: estivation. Whatever. Subsisting on a meager diet of range balls, doled out in sad little portions, I conserve energy and lie in wait for the temperature to drop below 40ºF, at which time I'll come to life again. But just so I don't completely lose touch with the world of organized golf, I will make a grudging visit to a course, kind of like a half-hearted Protestant dragging his ass to church on Easter or Christmas.

Game under repair

This blog has not exactly been a hotbed of golf spirit and enthusiasm lately.

WTF: Your Summer 2014 Forecast

So I just read some disturbing "news". According to the morbid shit-rag known as the NY Post, this year's Farmer's Almanac is calling for a lot of bad summer weather in our region.

According to the Almanac, which claims an 80% accuracy rate and correctly predicted last winter's protracted misery, the Tri-State will be hotter, humid-er and thunderstormier than usual this summer. Already, online assholes everywhere have started to chortle about a "Solar Vortex"--sure to become the latest in face-punchingly annoying hashtag catchphrases.