The Woes Of Sand-Bagger Johnson….I Got Caught By The Golf Police- A Cautionary Tale

By "Sports Writer" Les Larkin

[This site very occasionally stubs its toes against the massive sport-industrial complex that has many fixated on couches from sports season to sports season with few breathers in between. The exceptions have been a few time when college football looked like it was going to be have some shoot ‘em up seasons and more recently golf, the sport of the infirm, elderly, chronically depressed and desperate after a round where those putts just would not fall in. Now that spring is here in the Northeast after a few false starts the golf season and its eternal hopes for decent rounds of golf is set to take the sting out of the winter doldrums. Les Larkin who has written various book and film reviews in this space has been dragooned into writing occasional pieces since he is the only one around who knows the different between a three wood and a three iron much less what makes these infirm, elderly, chronically depressed and desperate folk flow out onto the links only to be once again disappointed that things fell apart like the wind on them.

The other qualification that Les has for writing about golf is that he actually knows some guys who play the game seriously if not well. The person whom he knows best who he has chosen to call Sand-Bagger Johnson, not his real name in the interest of not being sued by every guy that had the silly notion that they could beat the guy once he had them over a barrel with those strokes they had to give him under the handicap rules of golf which Les will explain more fully at some point. Good luck, Les. Pete Markin]  

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Sand-Bagger Johnson here (and if you don’t know what golf is or give damn about it a sand-bagger is a guy, or gal, who purposefully plays badly during the week putting in scores that are not reflective of his or her true golf handicap in order to grab prizes, money prizes, on the weekend tournaments when he or she plays like a whirling dervish. I was in a bad streak once and had put in some weekday high scores which actually did reflect how badly I was playing and then suddenly for a short period played way over my head and won everything in sight. From that small grasp of luck I got the name sand-bagger and it stuck even though I haven’t won anything, nothing, inflated handicap or not, in about six years. Such is life. I hope I don’t have continue to report this sad story about how I got my moniker so if anybody asks just tell them it is something to do with golf and they can move on with their lives.) 

This is what is bothering me today.

You know the right to privacy has gone to hell in a handbasket in the age of Trump (maybe in previous administrations as well whether they were golfers or not going at least as far back as Tricky Dick Nixon, a common criminal and one time President of the United States in that order who according to reliable sources used to say he had a five on a hole when he really had a six which tells you all you need to know about the man and about the why of Watergate and who I had heard was now hanging around down in Costa Rica with some fallen woman named Corina.) On a recent Monday, a Monday after the wicked weekend of snow fast melted before our eyes opening up hope of playing I decided since Mondays are usually slow days on the golf links of the world to sneak onto the course and play in order to get a leg up on my group, my guys, my foursome come the weekend when dough will be on the line for the first time this season. I felt since I am the oldest player in the group and also the poorest player that I need every leg up I can grab. (My bad streak of not winning tournament money does not include the little side bets among my regular group of guys although even there I haven’t had a winning season in three years.)  

Fair enough I thought. Then when I was finished for the day and putting my golf clubs in the car this SUV came up to me and stopped for a moment. I didn’t recognize who was in the vehicle and thought nothing of it until a couple of minutes later this guy from the vehicle wearing a three-piece came up to me and started asking me a lot of questions. Even as he was taking off his tie to act like just another golfer I thought copper, or some kind of security guy. You know old-time guys who have been around the block, guys who have shaded the edges of what is legal at times especially when younger, can almost instinctively smell copper. He asked questions like what were the condition of the greens, was there still water on the course from the weekend winter storm that melted almost as soon the storm was over, did I play with anybody else and who, how did I putt, did I take any “mulligans” (golf is pretty rigid in its formal rules you basically play the ball no matter where it lands or how you started out the hole but an informal set of rules have been worked out among friendly foursomes where in each round if you have a bad shot off the tee you can get a reprieve and take the drive over again), stuff that showed me especially that mulligan business that he knew something about golf. Still I felt a certain apprehension.     

He asked me my name and silly me I told him. Then I asked him his. He said Keith Smith. Alarm bells went off. This wiry guy looked like the map of China so I knew something was up, something was wrong. Maybe he was American, maybe not although he had an accent but no Chinese guy I knew ever had a name like that which was something out of 1950s Golden Age America when everybody was dropping their ethnic identities to become vanilla American. Then I thought still thinking cop, hey, the President of China is coming to America this week and maybe that was what it was all about. Although why a Chinese security agent of some sort was vetting me at little Pine Point Golf Course far from where the action was down in Palm Beach at Trump’s winter home/resort made me even warier. He must have sensed that because immediately after he said that name he backed off and said his name was Chou-en-lai, something like that, like I didn’t know that they changed the transliteration rules of Chinese to English about thirty years ago. When he saw I was perplexed he said Zhou-en-lai, something like that, like I didn’t know that was the name of one of Mao’s old buddies from the Yenan days and a guy who was never on the losing side of a Chinese Communist Party  faction fight. I let it ride even though my guard was up.

Then this Zhou or whatever his real name was asked the question of questions. What was my score for the day’s outing. At first to throw him off I invoked the old priest-penitent rule of confidentiality that that information was between the MGA and myself. (The Massachusetts Golf Association which controls the handicap system that golf works under in order to allow people of different skill levels to play on something like an even playing field and the subject of much grousing when as previously mentioned handicaps are too high or low. So a ten handicap person and an eighteen handicap person could play with the better player giving the poorer player eight stokes on the round which is determined by how hard the holes are). I suppose that I could have just said it was none of his business but something about the way he had posed the question made me think it might have something to do with Chinese-American relations so I was keeping my mouth shut.

He didn’t buy that excuse so I stepped up and pleaded the 5^th Amendment, you know the rule that you don’t have to in America any way and hopefully in the future as well to confess against yourself just because some governmental agent or committee decided you should spill your guts out. Zhou laughed at me and said he was not a governmental agent, an American governmental agent anyway, so that did not apply. Then I invoked the Official Secrets Act figuring that throwing some sand in his eyes that he might buy. To that reply he asked whether I had posted my score on-line. I foolishly said yes. He then laughed as he walked away and said he would check with one of his buddies at the NSA and get the score that way.                        

So if you see a wiry Chinese guy hanging around your golf course this weekend asking about your score be very, very careful. And whatever you do don’t post your score on a computer. Maybe not even on a scorecard. Enough said.