Golfin' after dark

The last time I picked up a set of golf clubs was when my senior class went to the now-closed Bogey’s on Fischer Steel Rd. in Cordova and Carl Foxx showed me the nuances of minature golf.

Justin Hall socked one that probably hasn’t landed after six years after from high school.

During my time at Crichton, my friends Paul Mahoney and Anthony Tomassetti tried to get me to play golf with them in the final months of my time in North Highland Park over at the Links at Galloway, but because of my then-job and lack of funds, that never happened.

The cool thing I found out about living in Oakdale was the fact that unlike the greenspace in Madison East, there was a putting range in the courtyard of my apartment complex, giving aspiring golfers to work on their putting skills.

Obviously on Saturday night, my neighbors and yours truly didn’t try to practice putting.

But in the interim, our golf swings.

The idea of playing golf  after dark last night in Oakdale was to see how many balls could sail over the roof of the section of the complex that bumped against Avery and since Christian Brothers has a real golf team, a few of the guys went outside to whack the balls over the roof, not on the roof like home runs at Tiger Stadium.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” one of them asked me.

“I mean if I can whack balls over 50-foot trees in baseball, then certainly I can whack golf balls over a roof,” I replied.

What I didn’t mention was the fact that as a boy, I crushed golf balls with a Louisville Slugger onto Interstate 240, only to piss off a member of the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates that was working on their golf swing.

While the first three socked theirs over the roof, it was time for yours truly to attempt to put one into orbit.

What I forgot to realize from my time playing baseball, that in baseball striding and movement was a big part of my swing, golf wasn’t about that.

The first swing I took, which came after saying the 23rd Psalm, dented the gutter and hit a box.

Second swing?

Knocked on someone’s door.

So in an effort to work on what was wrong with my swing, my newfound neighbors placed an empty golf ball box.

“Try to hit the blue part,” they said.

Realizing that it was like being in the batting cages, I managed to do just that.

“You just need to stop moving your feet a lot,” they said.

Well, duh.