the basics of golf

I spent the night in lovely Klamath Falls, OR, for work, where my hotel room offered a view of a golf course. If tennis is where the pretty people go to play sports, golf is where the rich people go.

Luckily, Klamath Falls appears to be largely uninhabited, so you can get a view of a golf course for only $95 per night, which as any traveling salesperson will tell you, is a deal and a half. Take that, rich people! I'm all UP in your game.

**sidebar: That's called "trash talking." In sports, that's what you do to sound bad-ass when you're short on limited syllables. "Trash talking" should include emphasis for additional attitude, as I've indicated with all-caps above.**

So, golf is a sport! I've been researching this for you.

As any rich person knows, it's important to make sure that you have hired other people to do your activity; that's how you know you're rich. In golf, the activities to choose from are: staring hard into the distance, swinging a metal pole, carrying said metal pole, and walking. Most rich people contract out at least one of those activities...typically the carrying of the poles, which is done by a younger and/or less-well-off person, termed a "caddie."

(Typically a "caddie" is not actually a "cad." That role is saved for the actual golfer. I know. This can be really hard to understand. You might want to print this out.)

Golfers will also use additional resources to avoid the last activity mentioned: walking. It's replaced with sitting, in a motorized cart.

**sidebar: If you want to be good at sports, regardless of your socio-economic class, it's important to practice sitting. Most players sit at some point or another: in golf, it is on a moving vehicle, but in other sports it's typically on an aptly named "bench."**

In golf, the pole is called a "club," because cavemen carried clubs, and this is the modern equivalent. I know that sounds really manly, and it is, which is why women who play golf are not to be messed with. If you see a woman playing golf who does not appear to be aware of the club's original purpose, it is a dead-giveaway that she is a-hunting (that term, "club, is appropriate in this context, too!) for a rich mate.

Golf is rife with complexities, including that a golf "pro" is actually NOT a professional golfer. Again, I know: SO COMPLICATED. But that's why I'm here. To help.

other words for zero

UPDATED TO ADD:
It turns out, even talking about sports math is confusing!! I referred to the "O" phenomenon below as mentioned in a "score" when it turns out what I meant is a "win-lose record," as in, that team is Oh-and-3. 
Carry on.

As anyone who has every entered in a confirmation code knows, "O" and "0" are not the same. They can look so very alike, but one is a letter and one is a number. I'm an English major. You can trust me.

And yet, in sports, a score of "zero" is often referred to as "O."
Why is this?

**Sidebar: This is a case of using different terminology when it's not really warranted. That complicates things unnecessarily, but does do quite a nice job of humiliating the uninitiated, which is part of what sports is all about.**

I'm considering the possibility that it's because it has one syllable instead of two, thus further bearing out my theory that sports requires that we limit our syllables when we can, either for the purpose of sounding bad-ass or for simply saving time and energy. This would explain yet another sport, tennis, where the term for "zero" is "love."

By the way, that's adorable. More sports should consider using sweet terms...they draw the women in.

Tennis also uses another common one-syllable word for a different purpose: "all," which means "tied." I can't quite explain this one with the syllable justification, but it DOES contain one fewer letter. And I don't know whether a tied zero score is referred to as "love, love" or "love, all," or just "this game hasn't started yet."

I do know that it can be quite difficult to keep all of this straight. I suggest using catchy phrases, such as my [copyrighted] "I love the little green ball, is all," which handily ties the reminder that "all" and "love" are used for the same sport to the reminder that that sport uses a small green ball. If you need to, you can change the color to "yellow" or "neon lime" or whathaveyou to more accurately reflect your television's color scheme.

This one, the [copyrighted] guide to "O," is more of a chant, carefully designed for performance either with or without cheerleader arms:

O is for oblong!
Oblong is the ball!
Oblong is for football
Where the winner takes all!

See what we did there? Again, for ease of use, "O" is mentioned in tandem with the shape of the ball itself. Actually, on second thought, you may not want to use that one, if you're the slightest bit unsure about the "all" issue, since that could cause you to think that a tied score in football uses the "all" designation. Although, really, it should. It would save them a letter.

sports as a flirtation technique

Let's be up-front about something. If you're a girl and you don't like sports, it's possible you have used this to your advantage in the past, as a flirtation technique.
Where this technique falls down is that it's a very short-term play. (Look at that! That's a sporting reference!)

Anyway, the first time I go to watch a football game with a boy and let on my complete lack of knowledge, it's ADORABLE. He gets to be manly and In Charge and mansplain things to me and I get to widen my eyes and focus on the color scheme.

**sidebar: all of the teams with bad colors (see: the state of Oregon) should probably remember that there are people for whom the only thing that team has going for it is the color scheme. That's why Northwestern is ALWAYS going to beat the University of Oregon. I'm not actually sure if they play each other, but a) the side of the stadium in purple looks WAY less crazy than the side in yellow and green and b) Wildcats vs. Ducks is a no-brainer. Ducks can't really beat anybody up, and that's what wildcats do, essentially, for a living.**

But the SECOND time I go to watch a football game with a boy, he is going to expect that I have retained some of that knowledge. Whether or not I could have, I chose not to, because I'd rather use that space in my brain for napping. Somewhere about Game 7 (this is not a World Series reference because I'm using football as my example: stay with me), this stops being cute and becomes infuriating for the boy.

If you're a serial dater, then, this method works wonders. If you, like me, prefer to lock into a long-term relationship, you're going to either need to find a boy who doesn't like sports (and take it from me, that is a win only if he hasn't replaced "sports" with "computer games" as an obsession) or else a boy who doesn't care that your mind is like Teflon when it comes to sports knowledge.

Luckily, I seem to have found one.