Hardy The Hoarder: My Golf Club Addiction
BOSTON (CBS) - Hi. My name is Hardy, and I'm a golf club hoarder.
I wasn't ready to admit it until a couple of days ago, when Fred Toucher and I were doing a baby clothes exchange in the parking lot. As Fred looked in my car, he gave me a compliment that made me blush. It wasn't a comment about my sweet ass Ford Escape, or even a remark about how much my baby boy must have grown. Instead he said, "Whoa, nice Burner."
He was talking about the stray Taylor Made fairway metal that was lying across the box of onesies, jumpers and 0-6 month sweat suits. What we didn't talk about was why the club was there in the first place. I was in denial, but I'm ready now. I'm powerless over golf clubs, and my life has become unmanageable.
Putts From The Rough: My Obsession With The Country Club
The Burner was the 15th club in my bag the day before, and wanting to play fair, I left it in the car when I played a quick nine holes after work. Eventually, it will make its way down to the basement where my hoarding is on full display. There, stuffed into three other golf bags, you'll find all my decommissioned clubs and others that occasionally find themselves back in rotation.
Drivers, irons, putters, you name it.
Some are there for sentimental purposes, like the MacGregor five-wood I used 20 years ago to make my only hole in one (so far). Or my late father in law's clubs, which I'm proud to keep at the request of my wife and her sisters, and even prouder to carry his Odyssey putter in my bag.
Others are perfectly fine instruments that have fallen out of favor with the operator, like the Ping Anser putter that just stopped feeling good in my hands. Or that driver that I just hate, and it hates me back.
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But the majority will never be of any use to anyone ever again, like the Hogan Apex blades I got when I thought I was going to be a "player." I'm not. No one will be with those things. You'd be better off trying to hit the ball off the fairway with a butter knife soldered on to the end of a three-foot length of lead pipe. Still, I'm compelled to keep them.
In all, I counted 49 clubs in my basement. Add the 14 currently in my bag, and that makes a grand total of 63. At least half of them are as useless as infant running shoes, but I'll let the sneakers go. The clubs are staying, all 63 of them.
Whoops, I forgot to count the Burner. 64.
Wow, I've got a problem.
