I’m thankful for my Saturday morning golf partners. Good guys who take the game seriously but never themselves. Armed with a bullet-proof sense of humor, they join me as comrades strolling down the fairways, foregoing noisy carts that spoil the journey, the simple quiet steps of the day. Even more than their deft soft wedges, I admire their good-natured bantering and the little courtesies extended. The emphatic “good shot!” that follows my drive. The rake that is handed to me after I barely clear the lip of a bunker. The invoked “mercy rule,” preventing me from the ignominy of four-putting. The kind diligence and keen eyes in finding my seemingly lost ball.
Reflecting on their polite queries about family and jobs and as we chase after our final drives, I realize the grammar and the social fabric of the game is often revealed in the interrogative, not the declarative.
