Laid-back hackers rate high with kids

Golfers with handicaps high enough to approximate their I.Q. have long suspected that, although they may not be able to run with the big dawgs whose minuscule handicaps more closely match their hat size, they generally have more fun on the golf course.

Those suspicions were confirmed for me this past weekend by a panel of young low-handicappers who served as spotters on four of the trickier holes at the Bangor Municipal Golf Course during the annual Paul Bunyan amateur golf tournament.

One of the kids is 12, the others are 15. Golf’s equivalent of basketball’s gym rats and hockey’s rink rats, all are course regulars who live for the game that Mark Twain once dismissed as “a good walk spoiled.” Their handicaps, reportedly within reasonable sight of the single-digit benchmark that separates the real golfer from the wannabe, are enough to make a grown hacker cry. Two of the 15-year olds, Ben Sprague and Matt Jarrell, are members of the Bangor High School golf team.

“The guys coming through today in this C flight (the high handicappers) are easily the best natured,” Sprague confided Sunday as he earned his keep helping find errant shots in the williwags off the semi-difficult 12th hole. “The guys in all three classes have been great, but this group just seems more laid back and enjoying themselves more than the A group (the best golfers) yesterday.”

“No question,” agreed 15-year old Casey Civiello over on Number 8 hole, where if a golfer is not in the fairway on his tee shot he is most likely in deep doo-doo. “The C guys are really happy when you find their ball, but not all that upset when you don’t — maybe because they’ve been there, done that so many times that it’s no big deal any more. The A guys tend to get impatient and angry with themselves when they lose a ball. The B guys are somewhere in between. But they’ve all been real nice to me. I’ve gotten a few dollars in tips. And one guy gave me a brand new ball … .” Twelve-year-old Jesse Speirs, working the blind knoll on the 15th hole, and Jarrell, stationed on the crest of the hill that fronts the tee on No. 18, reported similar experiences.

Club pro Brian Enman instructed his young spotters that they were there strictly to keep play flowing and help look for errant golf balls and were not, under any circumstances, to give rulings to golfers. “He doesn’t want some guy coming in arguing about his score and saying, `That kid out on No. 15 told me such-and-such,”‘ explained the home-schooled Speirs, who seems wise beyond his tender years. “And he doesn’t want us laughing when guys screw up, either,” difficult though that may be when you’re stationed near a ball-devouring frog pond which is out of view for the golfer teeing off and is situated at the precise point where a decent tee shot normally falls to earth. When that happened, Speirs would flash an animated “thumbs-down” sign from his hilltop perch to the golfer awaiting word of his fate back on the tee. To further confirm that the ball was, indeed, wet he’d occasionally give his version of the Australian crawl, a creative signal which seemed to tickle the sense of humor in all but the more deadly serious perfectionists passing through.

To talk golf with these kids is to realize that you were born 50 years too soon. Speirs, whose dream is to become a golf pro, said he took up the game “when I was 8 or 9” and got serious at age 11 when he won a nine-hole tournament in the 10-12 age group, shooting a 34. He is a regular on the Maine Junior Golf circuit, finishing second in the under-13 age group at an 18-hole tournament at Arundel Monday with a 94, and third in the Fred McPheters Cup competition for ages 12 and under at the Junior Bunyan at Kebo Valley in Bar Harbor on Tuesday. On Wednesday he was back playing Bangor Muni.

His short game is his weakness, Spiers confessed. It’s getting better, though, thanks to lessons he has been taking from assistant pro Mike Baker. “But in this game everyone’s real weak point is right up here, ” he declared, tapping his forehead, and I’m nodding in agreement while thinking that getting whipped on the golf course by a 12-year-old kid might not do a whole lot to remedy the situation.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangornews.infi.net.