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Drink and sport
A hoocher's guide on how to combine our favorite hobbies
By Jeremy Johnson
jjohn308@mscd.edu

Courtesy of Incredible Technologies Golden Tee Info Box History: Manufactured by Chicago-based Incredible Technologies in 1989. Locations: Bars, arcades, bowling alleys and pizza places. Featured Options: League play via Golden Tee Gold Card or any major credit card (information is protected by state-of-the-art encryption), online tournament play, and up-to-date statistics on scores. Cost: Stroke and Skins: $3/18 holes, League: $4/18 holes, Tournament: $4/9 holes. Facts: $400 million spent on GT in 2005. Nearly $4 million paid to GT players annually in monetary prizes.

Everyone has memories they will take to their graves.

For some, it’s a wedding. For others, a funeral. For many, it’s the first time they laid eyes on their first-born child.

And for some delinquent sports junkies, it’s witnessing a perfect golf moment, a pivotal change in character, or a profane putt that is nothing but money. Think Phil Mickelson’s 20-foot putt in the 2004 Masters for his first Major win. Think Tiger Woods’ picture-perfect chip and curl into the cup the following year at the same event.

Those who think golf is a bore may not have tried it for themselves. Golf is the siren’s song of sports. A player can hit one super-sweet shot among 92 horrible strokes, and the lure of sticking the pin will forever again bring them back for more.

But golf can be time-consuming and expensive. As students, we have little time to spare, and when we have a break, a lot of us just want a beer and some time to unwind. That’s fine, but it doesn’t mean our golf game should go to hell.

I started playing Golden Tee in 2000. I spent months convincing the owner of the bar where I worked to give it a shot. After the first week, the machine had netted nearly $400. That would have been good news if nearly $100 of it hadn’t been mine.

I was an addict. I’d play a round before work and two, three, sometimes four after I closed and cleaned.

Suddenly I was master of a game that, in real life, I struggled to play.

Beers were consumed and competition brewed. GT became an obsession, a sweet science, a barroom experiment combining roller-ball skills, video wind calculations, a little luck and a lot of cheap beer.

It also seemed that my GT skills were spilling over into my real game. GT did nothing for my swing, and nothing ever will, but it changed the way I approached the game. I started calculating better yardage and playing smarter golf. My game improved by three to five strokes.

On the GT circuit, I became somewhat of a legend. Over the course of about a year, I averaged a score of 14 under. Oops. That almost sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it?

Anyhow, back to that memory I’m taking to my grave. After watching my friend bounce off the pin on a par-three, hole 17, hole-in-one challenge, I swiftly finger-rolled a seven-iron straight into the hole, a shot that earned me a $38 check.

Every day for a year after that shot, when the GT machine sat idle, it would flash a picture on the screen of my check.

That’s my favorite memory: my own perfect golf moment.

GT’s popularity is fading in the shadows of new roller-ball games such as Silver Strike Bowling, and the machine I played on for so many years is now gone.

But the memories of good times with Golden Tee linger on.