Jack Daniel's and Golf. Part 1: Golf

Two of my interests are Jack Daniel’s and Golf. I am very good at drinking Jack Daniel’s. I stink at golf. But my friends and I seem to make sport out of many things we do. O.K. - I know Golf already is a sport, but we made more of a sport out of the sport. You see, it wasn’t enough for us to just play some golf when we had the chance. We had to make a giant, countrywide game of chance out of a nice peaceful pastime.

The concept of the bet itself was quite simple:  First person to play golf in all 50 States wins the bet.  The Prize?  A "state of the art" modern home entertainment system.  Seemed pretty cool. An extra excuse to go traveling and a built in excuse to golf wherever you go.  Simple and awesome. Until my "recently graduated from law school" brain got involved. 

A myriad of inquiries developed in my head: 
What constitutes a round of golf? 9 holes? 18?  How will one prove he completed a round? 
Do Par 3 courses count? What about Pitch-n-Puts?  50 States of miniature golf, anyone?  
What's a state, really?  What about Puerto Rico?  What if Texas secedes? What if Disney buys Cuba and annexes it? 
What if it rains on the last hole? What if zombies swarm the golf course?  
How do we determine what a "state of the art" entertainment system is?  Can I get a holo-deck if I win?  
These questions and others resulted in my drafting a sort of rule book. I had never drafted any document in my life.  I spent most of my law school Contracts class doodling pictures of our professors.  But I put my heart and soul into imagining and analyzing the angles, predicting all the loopholes and drafting a Golf Bet Agreement that rivaled the Geneva Convention. Then I held a Summit for the potential participants: a gathering of the minds to review the logical answers to the questions and all the other statutory proposals set forth in my debut legal treatise; to debate the issues and suggest changes.

They didn't give a crap.  "Show me where to sign and hand me a putter" was the general sentiment. 

It started with six of us. Each around the age of 25. Each unmarried. Each without kids. Each of us publicly saying this would be a lifelong process but secretly thinking we'd wrap the bet up in a few years.   We had youth, freedom and male idiocy on our side.  

We started out strong. I put a big map up on the wall of our spare bedroom. I made a legend and used color-coded tacks to track each participant's progress. It was like a military war room. The cold war was dead but the golf war had begun!

The "war" started peacefully.  Some of us even golfed the first few states together, planning road trips just so we could golf.  One such trip included golfing at "Tom Mitchell's Golf Gridiron" in Maryland., a grassless unmaintained field with 9 holes run by a retired professional football player.  You could play better golf on I-95.  We all racked up a few Eastern Seaboard States and we had viable contest going.  However, as the months turned to years, the field soon narrowed and it became clear that this would probably be a 2 or 3 way race. It seemed that some idiots were just more committed than others.  Or maybe just more idiotic.

After several years, the three front runners remained fairly close in numbers.  But I gained a slight tactical advantage when my honeymoon conveniently turned out to be located in Hawaii.  What an exciting opportunity!  I picked a day, booked my wife at the spa and off I went into the brisk (85 degree) Maui morning!  Perhaps leaving your wife for a day during your honeymoon to boost your moronic almost unattainable quest to best your friends at something trite is not the best way to kick off a marriage.  And perhaps King Kamehameha's spirit or the tiki g-ds of Brady Bunch fame were trying to point this out to me when my rental convertible broke down on the way to the remote golf course, requiring me to spend several hours drinking iced Kona coffee at a gas station in the middle of a rainforest while waiting for the rental company to bring me out a replacement vehicle. But spirits and matrimony be damned, I carried on!  I wasn't going to squander the once in a lifetime opportunity to golf on a remote pacific island that my friends could not get to easily.  (I'm told it is also a beautiful tropical paradise back-dropped by wildlife, plantations, volcanoes, sparkling blue water and white sands.  Whatever.)

(Edit 4/26/2024: I also eventually obtained the tactical state of Alaska but as of 2024 the bet is quite stagnant)

A few years later, one of the other two front runners also planned his honeymoon in Hawaii, of all places.  How lame is that?  What an obvious copycat. 

More years went by and life happened.  The bet was slowing down.  The "war room" became the baby's room; the map replaced by a shelf for diapers.  By now, one of the three front runners fell a bit behind.  However, the bet was still pretty close when I decided to make a secret run for a bunch of states to jump out ahead.  I had a great idea for a trip.  But first I need to tell you about my good friend Jack Daniel. 

to be continued ...