I don’t like golf.  Not in the way that I don’t like anti-vaxxers but in the way that I don’t like fashion, it’s just not something I pay attention to.  Kyle likes golf.  It’s his thing in the way that Team Interrobang is my thing and everyone’s entitled to their thing.  Today, I followed him as he did his thing and took pictures.  I think this helped balance out the number of times I’ve drowned a meal in the marginalia of the people on my Steam Friends list.

This is not golf; this is the background of a slide presentation on something or maybe the ghosted stock on a wedding invite.  Kyle was setting up for his first shot and I didn’t much notice.

This is a gazebo and also not golf.  Kyle’s putting down his ball and he didn’t let me ask him to do it again with him as the focus.  We were in a hurry.

There’s a brutality to the swing of the golf club that suggests that the club is a golf cudgel and therefore not golf.  The swing slowed is not the grace of a person diving, or running, or casting an atlatl dart where the frames have an obvious before and after.  That would probably change with training or with maybe another person’s swing, but Kyle is my world of golf knowledge and I refuse to go Columbus on him.

I hate this picture.  It looks like a damn motivational poster and should have “Goals: They’re the bullshit we say we’re trying to do” or something below it.  Motivational posters aren’t golf.

I hate this one more.  Again, cue bullshit inspirational poster line.  Neither of these are golf, these are the tools or implements of golf and their mating is a necessary sub-unit but putting is not golf in the same way that getting on a ski lift is not skiing nor is shuffling a deck of cards a game of poker.  Again, not golf.

After many holes, a pair of Asian fellows held us up through their slow play.  I requested Kyle yell “Ladies” at them, but the Argyle Fury chose not to release the storm.

This was Kyle previously waiting for someone who later let him play through and through forced inaction, not golf.  Here, we have the meta-game, the necessary pre-actions that aren’t skills to me.  Kyle says it is, but it’s one of those things that appears to be malarky until you have to deal with it like treating a person for shock or lamaze.  There is no contemplation here, just bewilderment and may 10% anger.

This is a failed artistic shot of a hole.  Holes are not golf.  I wish I were better at knowing how light changes will affect a shot, but I am not, yet.  This was the penultimate hole of the day and everyone was mad, two groups in front of us, and two groups behind.  Golf seems to be the only leisure activity where not ending in a state of paroxysm is a triumph.

While not containing a depiction of a club, ball, or hole, this is golf to me.  It is the formality of argyle on the savagery of hands that could rip a phonebook in hands.  It is reflection on top of analysis that is ultimately passed to a primal kinesis despite the introduction of polymers and carbon fiber.  It is repetition to perfection coupled with knowing you never play the same hole twice.  Golf is a fight.  Other people watch, and other people may be fighting at the same time but it is never a melee.

Kyle moves back to Florida in two weeks or so.  Last time he moved there, I didn’t miss him as  I was angry and small.  This time, I will miss him.  Goodbye, Kyle.  I still don’t like golf, but thanks for not requiring that to love you.