I have been one fortunate golfer since moving to Syracuse the summer of 1983.
Not in a scoring sense.
No, my rounds are as sky-high as the next guy or girl who gets out there on the many courses we have to delight us here in Central New York about, oh, once a week at best.
What I'm talking about is that day of the week. For these 31 years, minus the last six weeks, I have been on the public fairways and greens, steadfastly a weekday golfer. (I'm not counting the few years way back when I was really lucky, having joined the Colgate University-owned gem Seven Oaks out in Hamilton, for then I was adopted into a longtime group called the clowns and played very early Saturday and Sunday mornings on inherited tee times.)
I've held the perception firmly in my mind that the rest of the CNY golfing world forced to play on weekends struggled to secure a tee time, set aside six hours for a slow crawl around any course that would take them and joined the slow and steady parade.
As for me, I had a job at The Post-Standard -- from 1983 until 1991 as a sports editor and thereafter until the layoff in 2013 as music and entertainment reporter -- that always had an evening or weekend component that allowed me to set aside a weekday to get in my round of golf. My playing partners were co-workers. And then a dozen years ago, I joined a post-work nine-hole league with many of them at Northern Pines as the cherry on top.
Then in July I finally found another 40-hour-a-week job, Monday-through-Friday, get in the downtown Syracuse office at 8:30 a.m. and leave at 5:30 p.m. I had to bow out of the nine-hole league. I could no longer schedule my weekday round.
I played a nine-hole round with my daughter Elisabeth and her boyfriend George at Sunnycrest Golf Course a couple weeks ago, but that sweet little city-owned layout behind Henninger High School was empty save for our threesome and two other golfers we saw during the round. I was kind of baffled.
The big test, I figured, was the Sunday round at the Links at Erie Village with KP, Tater and Netti. KP called midweek and was told there were morning tee times available. On Friday morning, he reserved 9:55 a.m. for our foursome. First drawback. The greens fee, with cart, would be $44, a great number for Syracuse football fans, but $10 steeper than the weekday rate.
Twenty minutes before that time on Sunday, I was the last of our group to arrive. I threw my bag on KP's cart, parted with my hard-earned, hit a dozen practice putts with four other guys on the putting green, stretched, swung my driver with its head cover on a half-dozen times, wiggled and waggled, and it was our time to head to the first tee.
Netti had already misplaced his receipt, but the starter let him play with us anyway.
The group ahead of us had made it to the first green.
The group behind us was midway between the putting green and the first tee.
It took us five hours to play our 18. We never threatened the group ahead of us. The group behind us, well, maybe they waited a bit. We had to stop and search for balls hit off the straight and narrow, all four of us. Tater, not so much. He stopped and looked with us, but his ball was mostly down the middle on this Sunday.
Nobody appeared grouchy about it.
If anything, all the golfers on the course seemed happier than the weekday crowd. We saw your ball go over our heads and land in the water behind us over there. We saw your ball go through the rough and land in the other fairway over there. Have a great day!
After the round, we relaxed with a beer on the outdoor porch while a big party swirled inside. Men in suits and women in dresses poked their heads outside the sliding glass doors to smile at us and look out over the green, green expanse beyond.
That ain't happening on a weekday.