Golf club reviews make me feel yucky.

My wife got me a subscription to Golf Magazine for Christmas (she's always trying to make me happy, god bless her!) and the magazine is alone worth its price for the regular article of ubermensch David Feherty . But one thing that is just a little weird about the mag is its annual golf club review issue. Now, aside from the fact that a golf magazine which reviews the goods of companies that contribute a good chunk of said magazine's ad revenues seems like a conflict of interest (and could explain why they never even get within a hair's breadth of issuing a lukewarm review of any major manufacturer's clubs (or could be because the clubs are good, you decide (and I am NOT backtracking))) the reviews themselves are occasionally a little creepy.

Creepy how?

Well, there seems to be a smattering of... shall we say, orgasmic imagery. To wit, from the Golf Online site:

"This is an all-around quality club. It has an absolutely lovely feel--pucker up honey!"--Stephen Wills (14 [handicap])

"Oh, my. Does this feel heavenly."--Don Wilson (15[handicap])

"A stud from the rough."--Jeremy Ross (7[handicap])

And sometimes not so subtle: "Like kissing your cousin--pleasant and respectful but devoid of passion."--Kirk Fisher (8 [handicap])



What is going on here? Golf is fun, clubs are neat, but are my clubs studs? I think not. A person may be a stud, but not clubs.

Might there be a sociological phenomena occurring here? Group-think, anyone? These club testers have been chosen from among thousands of applicants, they spend every minute together eating, practicing, playing, smoking cigars, etc., etc. The more you look at it, the more it looks like a male bonding ritual, something akin to a sweat lodge. A-ha! Yes, it all makes sense. The testers, without the civilizing influence of women, revert to a simpler kind of man, a man more in touch with his primal urges. Hence, what better projection could there be for male virility than--c'mon, I know you're way ahead of me on this--the phallic golf club. And a DRIVER, no less. It's a return to nature, an embrace of our Paleolithic forebearers. Guys with big cigars, a graphite rod in their hands. Oh, this is too good--I'm not a doctor, but JAMA's got to publish this.

Now that I understand where these men are coming from, I no longer feel yucky reading those double entendres about kissing cousins and heavenly sensations. My fears are gone. Golfers are manly men, striving in an almost poetic way, for the life that seems to elude Modern Man. They are heroes reaching into our shared past, hoping to emerge with some kind of autheticity among the spider's web of compromise and homogenization which characterizes so much of our modern life. God I love golf!