A cool beer sometimes golf’s only redeeming grace

From Gerald Hamilton of Greenville comes this tongue-in-cheek commentary: “Old Dawg. I suppose by now you have heard the good news: Now that I can get a beer at the golf course, I plan to learn the game. Many of us have held back because of the ‘No Beer’ policy. This will bring a lot of new people to the sport. House members should be proud of their approval of this important bill…”

Hamilton’s reference was to Monday’s vote in the Maine House of Representatives – popular with many golfing constituents, unpopular with perhaps as many more – approving LD 133, which would allow the sale of beer on Maine golf courses, via mobile service vehicles. The bill had come out of committee with an 8-5 ought-not-to-pass recommendation, which the Senate subsequently followed in rejecting it. But after prolonged debate on the floor of the House, the measure, sponsored by Senate President Mike Michaud of East Millinocket, was favored there by a vote of 77-59.

Consequently, the two branches of the Legislature were at odds and would have to get their act together in support of the bill if the Budweiser Clydesdales are to be hitched to their beer wagon in service of thirsty Maine hackers this summer. Ours is one of just four states in which liquor sales on golf courses is prohibited.

Not that the ban works worth a damn, mind you. Walk on to most any Maine golf course, past the “No Alcohol Allowed” sign, and count the empty beer cans you find in the trash containers, often as not on the very first hole. So much for prohibition.

Debate on the bill was predictable. Opponents insisted that open beer sales would only encourage drinking, especially among the young bucks who can hit the ball a country mile and have never met a beer they couldn’t quaff inside of 10 seconds.

“An abomination,” is what Martin’s bill is, said Rep. Rosita Gagne, D-Buckfield. In addition to encouraging copious swilling amongst the riff-raff, she said, it would favor large courses over the smaller ones that couldn’t afford to hire some minimum-wage barkeep to tend the beer cart.

Proponents have argued that if courses were allowed to sell beer to golfers it would be good for business, plus there would be greater control over drinking and less illegal smuggling of beer onto the course via the all-purpose golf bag.

“This is a reality bill,” suggested Rep. Christopher Muse, D-South Portland, who acknowledged a penchant for pulling the old sixpack-in-the-golf bag maneuver traditionally favored by many a well-prepared good ol’ boy. (Show me a golfer who has never done likewise at some point in his checkered career on the links, and I will show you a golfer whom I have never met.)

Opponents of the bill exude “the stale odor of sanctimony,” offered another legislator, because so many people already drink on the golf course. And little wonder that they do, too, considering what a job golf can do on a person’s self-esteem. The late great British author, P.G. Wodehouse, wrote about the subject in a classic short story titled “The Heart of a Goof.”

In golf, a “goof,” according to Wodehouse is “one of those unfortunate beings who have allowed this noblest of sports to get too great a grip upon them; who have permitted it to eat into their souls, like some malignant growth… He broods. He becomes morbid. His goofery unfits him for the battles of life…”

The dry-humored Brit suggested that golf is “the Great Mystery. Like some capricious goddess, it bestows its favours with what would appear an almost fat-headed lack of method and discrimination. On every side we see big two-fisted he-men floundering around in three figures, stopping every few minutes to let through little shrimps with knock-knees and hollow cheeks, who are tearing off snappy 74’s. Giants of finance have to accept a stroke per [hole] from their junior clerks. Men capable of governing empires fail to control a small white ball, which presents no difficulties whatever to others with one ounce more brain than a cuckoo clock. Mysterious, but there it is…”

There it is, indeed. What golfer in his or her right mind wouldn’t welcome a beer after enduring the disgrace of being repeatedly upstaged in public by little shrimps with knock-knees and the brains of a cuckoo clock? Ask not why the Maine House of Representatives approves of golfers having a cool libation at such times. Ask why any sane person would take up the game in the first place.

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