Deep South Dispatch #3: Of Golf and Gators

On Golf
In an ill-fated moment of adulthood I decided to take up golf. I should have known better. My father used to say that every golf course was a waste of a good pasture. My father-in-law  who tried to get a round a week all year long immediately warned me: "golf is a cruel mistress." A few years of pursuing the sport and, well, I can now say I know the truth of that axiom. The cruelest part of golf is that it is a bit like gambling. Every now and then you roll double sevens and it feels so good you have come back.

On Gators
I don't remember how old I was the first time I saw an alligator. They lived in the ponds of the plantation that surrounds our family farm. They lived in the neighboring Salkehatchie Swamp. To me a swamp without a gator population is no swamp at all. When I think alligators I recall with a certain nostalgia the one I nearly ran-over in the wee hours of the morning while driving home from the Charleston airport having just returned from France. There I am skidding to a complete stop with my headlamps lighting up the big fella shuffling across River Road in Beaufort County.  I thought to myself: Monsieur we are not Paris anymore.


Golf and Gators
Golf and gators come together these days everywhere within Alligator mississippiensis's range. So in a pretty good swath of the coastal Deep South you find gators putting the hazard in water hazard. In a recent story from The Coastal Observer they recount how 83 year-old golfer Galer Wright wound his way to the conclusion of a round at the Heritage Plantation course at Pawley's Island in October 2010. On the 18th hole Wright hit his approach short and his ball arced toward the pond protecting the green when - thunk - his ball bounced off a sunning gator and plunked down on the green leaving him a twenty-foot lag putt to the hole. Sadly, he three-putted.

The gator took no offense at the intrusion and stayed as he had been.