Author: Tim Andersen

And The Chippy Goes To…
By Gold Medal Chip

It is time to review the best in golf. These are the reasons we spend our money, dress like pimps on a three day bender, and for sake our dignity. Roll out the red carpet, it’s golf and these are the Chippy’s.

Best 18th Hole: Half Moon Bay, Old Course. It has water on the right, O.B. on the left and a ravine in the middle. An aggressive second shot could land in a wedding above the green. Hopefully it is not of the shot gun variety. Second Place: Poplar Creek. Now if they could only do something with the other 17 holes.

Best 19th Hole: Major upset as Gleneagles overtakes the Cal Club for the top honors in the best watering hole category. The quaint, musty clubhouse is a welcomed port after a course beat down and a tough walk. The horseshoe bar at the Cal Club is under remodeling and currently of no use to the thirsty golfer. After a late night conference with the contractor, I learned the new bar will have 14 tap handles and be reopened by Super Bowl Sunday. I can not reveal the 14 beers as I was sworn to secrecy, but I can say each one is operational. Third place goes to the Champions Club in Houston where you can have a margarita delivered to the steam room

Best Turn Dog: Even though it is on the 11th hole and not a dog, the Olympic Burger wins for the 200th time. Nothing compares to it.

Best Female Bartender: Mel. Just like the burger dog, is without compare.

Best Restaurant: Sharp Park. They get it. A restaurant, bar and golf course all working together. New Poplar grill owners please reread this.

Best New Plaque: Poplar Creek for celebrating the good that was Ron DeVenchensie.

At the Chippy’s we do not rate or judge the mundane things like player of the year, best new course, and things that may actually be related to the game itself. We leave the other publications with their fancy three-digit and above readership to these non-essential categories. It is our exclusive clientele that allows us the freedom to judge the best in golf. So enjoy the telecast sometime this month or next on local cable channel 856 as soon as they get a FCC license.

Pro Shop Dangers
By Chip and Time

A guy walks into a pro shop and is instantly mesmerized. He begins to speak in tongues, muttering things like “more birdies” and “Cabo Nick has no chance against these.” Raise your hand if this has happened to you? Go ahead, admit it, we are all friends here. Now put them down, did you really think I’d have you hold them up for the entire column?

A pro shop can be a dangerous place to the family budget this time of year. Tiffany’s and Nordstrom’s have got nothing on a set of the latest PXG’s. Let’s see Macy’s compete with Titleist and Taylor Made on putters. It’s not the cute shop girl, most pro shop jocks look like cigar-chomping bus drivers from the Midwest.  It is the equipment.

The merchandise is laid out in an honest and straightforward fashion for golfers from Hackers to club champions to ogle. There are no hidden extras, like leather bucket seats or airbags on her side the car, to trick us.

It’s just chrome, gunmetal gray and milled black Calloway wedges that loosens our wallets. Try to resist the lure of the ten more yards from those pretty Ping drivers, I dare you! The difference between a kid in a candy store and any one of us, according to Ray Yoshak, is a kid will eventually get full.

This holiday season, be very careful around these golf emporiums and their magnetic pull. At the very least, before you succumb, and you know you will, shop for your wife first. If the kids are still a write off, they should be treated as such. If they are older, explain how these purchases may double their inheritance.

Merry Chipmas!

Morning Drive
By Motor Chip

“Hey Chip, why don’t we have hela-taxis from SFO to Poplar Creek? Imagine never risking missing a tee time or being stuck in gridlock traffic,” stated Randy G. “Uber Copters, their time has come,” replied my attorney Blue Moon Retainer. The more the drive dragged on, the more fanciful the ideas. It was at this junction that I began to study my car radio, its dial positions and how it represents the golf games of our membership.

Confused, trust me, it is less confusing than Bill Feeley’s underground express tubes and autopods idea. It all hinges on your clubhead speed and the existing radio programs at that level. If your clubhead speed is in the low eighties you fall into the NPR zone. National Public Radio. Your game is radically unpredictable off the tee. It is uncommonly left and almost certainly out of the money. A telethon is not an option.

Just up the dials are the sports talk shows and the Spanish language stations. Your game looks and sounds good on the range and you have great rhythm, but it somehow doesn’t translate to the course. “Y eso no es bueno mi amigo”. It boils down to too much talk and not enough game in any lingo.

Next comes the transition channels on your dial ruled by rap and pop music. Your game trends to the latest fads and what’s hot with the golf channel hipsters. You will find in your garage at least one flat billed Puma cap, an alien wedge, a white belt, a belly putter and one black and red collarless shirt. Luckily you will get older and outgrow this silliness. We, here at Chip, hope you never know the pain of sub fours.

At 100 or so on your dial, we enter the adult contemporary and cool jazz section. The middle of the road is where your game should be. The jazz adds swagger and a calming element that is not seen at the lower levels. Your game is effortless and boring, bordering on indifference all the way to your opponent’s ATM.

Top end is where hot country and packaged religion shows meet. Farm strong and religious purity, when your game is on, the angles join to sing in golf harmony. Long towering drives, majestic iron play, you have thoughts and dreams of course records. When your game has strayed from the flock, its all fire, brimstone, and
damnation. This music sounds more like a five-hour, fifth-grade band rehearsal.

I was snapped out of my silent reverie with a sudden break in traffic.  As I sped up to cruising speed, I found myself tuning the radio to 101.5 and steered to the middle of the road.

 

Editors Note: Willie Nelson released a new album two weeks after the last column was published. Coincidence?

Happily Living a Country Song
By Cow Chip

The sun shone brightly on this lively and unusually boisterous post-round affair. The boys, after all, had plenty to celebrate. The course and the greens were responding nicely to the work of our new Captain of the Grounds, Tim Powers. The club championship was on the near horizon, spirits were high. The stories and the wine flowed. All the PCGC greats were here working on their games and oral histories. Over in the corner, the Blues, Lou and Retainer, were busy dissecting the virtues of vitamin V and beer’s undeniable contributions to society. Cabo Nick, Randy G. Ray Yo and the rest of the band were singing to the choir. They sang songs of woeful short games, bad luck, and what could have, nay, should have been.

It was at this moment, I noticed two western looking fellows with large belt buckles and amused expressions approaching me. They said they were songwriters from Nashville and long-time readers of the column. I instantly recognized them of men of good taste, despite some questionable footwear decisions. The red-headed one with the braided ponytail said, we had to see this place for ourselves and find out where you get your material. This place is gold, far better than hanging out at the Greyhound station in Memphis, or some honky tonk in a one-horse town, drinking cheap beer, listening for stories. Hell, Chip, these guys are real, all we have to do to get back on the charts is add a little southern twang to their tales.

Kris, his buddy said, your guys are experts on everything from third world politics to the inner game of tennis. How is it possible that y’all* are living out a country song without the aid or benefit of a train, shotgun, or a guitar? I’ll bet none of you can ride a horse? Kris, things have changed since you lived here, but the simple answer is golf. With that, they both nodded and shook my hand. We bellied up to the bar for shots and beers and toasted the Duke.

Manny Castillo yelled out, Hey Willie, you can’t smoke that stuff in here!

 

 

* The Gene Autry Cowboy Dictionary had no meaning for this word