72 http://www.popularmechanics.co.za _ AUGUST 2017
there and wonder if I’ve finally had enough
golf. It’s a long way to the show from the
parking lot, on a buggy Florida morning.
Nearly two kilometres and I’m sick of walk-
ing it. So I hire a rickshaw to ferry me across
the sea of asphalt and gleaming rentals.
The driver wants to know my destina-
tion. “There’s a surf show and a golf show
this week,” she says. She cranes for a look
at me. “I’m betting you’re a surfer.”
God bless her. She thinks I’m a surfer. It
makes me laugh to think it. “Sorry,” I sigh.
“Golfer.”
“Don’t be sorry!” she chides, nudging the
bike towards some unseen concourse.
“Everybody is all pumped up. Golf makes
people happy.”
She makes a hand signal for a left turn,
pulls out across convention traffic. I close
my eyes.
“Golf will never be as cool as surfing,” I
assert.
“You know,” she shouts back to me, “I
drive this bike at Coachella every year. I do
the Super Bowl. I did Vegas during the adult
video awards. I follow Dave Matthews
around and drive at every concert.”
All of this seems cool.
“But people are happier at the golf show!”
she says.
Happier than porn stars, sure. But Dave
Matthews fans? Those guys are stupid with
happiness. Somehow I don’t believe her.
“Come on,” I say.
“Come on, your own self!” she barks back.
“This is the PGA Merchandise Show up
ahead! It’s like mad golf in there. They
brought in a beer truck. New golf clubs all
over the place. And golfers talking to golf-
ers about golf. You can’t be sorry about
that.”
She’s hit a slight incline and strains a
little, so we ride in relative silence. At the
You have to believe you’re
going to get better on the
next shot and the next
and the next...drop-off she tells me, “I grew up playing
golf in North Carolina with my dad.” She
stands and turns. A pair of egrets stab the
grass on a traffic island. “Hoo boy, he
would give his testicle to get into the PGA
Merchandise Show.” I hand her a twenty.
She makes eye contact then. “Yes, singu-
lar,” she says of her father’s testicle,
though I didn’t ask. “Cancer.” She takes a
look at the birds, too. She shrugs. “So
that’s really saying something, because he
only has the one.”
I cringe a little, nod and gather myself to
head in.
Then she asks if I can sneak her dad in
for a look. He lives in Dr Phillips, which
she assures me is a suburb of Kissimmee.
“Golf is good,” she pronounces, loudly.
Pedestrians look up. “There’s a lot of his-tory in it and all that.” She doesn’t care
about the history, though. “I tell him to
think about all the golf he still gets to play,”
she tells me. “Think about the future, I tell
him.”
This, of course, is the greatest truth of
all: golf is a game of optimism. Otherwise
no one would play. You have to believe
you’re going to get better on the next shot
and the next and the next, if you can just
do this one thing and that and get that
new club. Maybe more than any other
sport, optimism sustains golf.
I look back and wave. Even as she stands
there, over her bike, with the Dave
Matthews cranked on rickshaw speakers, I
can see she knows what she wants. She’s
full of optimism and she will tell you all
about it. She too is a golfer. PM