Finally, the questions come down the phone line: “Would you like to play golf? Can you even play golf?” For some reason or other there is a commonly-held idea that business people spend their lives playing golf, the greens being the place of deal making. Not so at Flowerbud. This call has taken eight years to come, twenty-five years if you count Heron Bulb Farms, and while our deals always seem to be made surrounded by greenery, our growers would prefer that we not stand on their fields.
Honestly, any earlier and the call would have been premature; I first picked up a golf club a year ago and have been seen on a golf course no more than a dozen times. FedEx was now inviting me to go play at Pumpkin Ridge here in Oregon. What the heck, it is long past time for my humble little bag and its $50 set of clubs to make its way around something other than the par 3 municipal course in Lake Oswego. With no small amount of trepidation and a heavy dew on the ground it is time to go and see how the game is played.
Nestled on the back side of Portland’s West hills as they merge into the coast range, Pumkin Ridge is easy enough to find. Just follow the rarified air! Stone gate posts, wrought iron gates, and FedEx signs nestled in the shrubbery along with the members only signs. All is looking fancier by the minute. A place to drop off your golf clubs before parking is indicated yet as it’s hardly the place for mine, I skip it. Walking towards the clubhouse my clubs are taken from me anyway, name inquired of, and I am informed of where I might find my golf cart, the registration desk and the breakfast room. If I prefer I can just proceed to the practice range and have a pro check out my golf swing, place it on a CD and be able to laugh at it for years to come. Pro, swing, Digital analysis, golf balls in neat little pyramidal baskets? Help!! Surely there must be a face to be recognized here. It is time to pour a coffee and to hang back and see how those more practiced accomplish all this.
Golf carts in shiny green livery are aligned with military precision and loaded with all the consummate golfer might need. Tees, logo covered balls, towel, water, cap and on and on. My favorite is a large bottle of sand which I use frequently to pour into the scars I leave on the green sward!! There are score cards for the teams we are arranged in, as well as individual score cards for each player. There are no erasers on the pencils! I have been told to look for my name on a cart. Wow, I think to myself, this is the big time. Fortunately my team mates Ryan, Ralph and Matt make me comfortable, my lack of street cred being quite apparent. There follows an explanation of the nature of todays game, it having a shotgun start and being something called a scramble. I nod like it is registering all the while feeling the dew soak through my sneakers. I am feeling envious of all those shoes with funny little cleats… I have a feeling I am the only one with soaking wet feet. The sun can’t get high enough fast enough for me.
It is a gorgeous late summer morning. The dew may be heavy but is in a losing battle with a temperature that will be 90F by lunchtime. The starter has us peeling out and scooting around the course to the respective starting points, mine being tee#3. The speeding line of carts is almost comical, as if driven by kids, not grown men. In a dip between tee and green a whole family of deer are quietly browsing on blackberries, the scent of which becomes stronger with the rising sun. It is a peaceful scene soon broken by the thwack and ting of irons and drivers on FedEx golf balls. The deer look on with equanimity. Send them to Eastern Oregon in another month or so and they might not be quite so complacent! It is pointless going into the remaining seventeen holes from a golfing perspective. While I am not short of range off the tee I am directionally challenged. Fortunately my cohorts are not and being a best ball format we get to look halfway competent and I don’t need to search out the wayward ones that ricochet off trees to bury themselves in long wet grass. I recall each and every one of us let the side down at #17 as one after another balls hooked into a lake as if by design. That debacle took us to 4 over par for the day. Mid pack would be a charitable turn of phrase for us.
Personally I could not have had more fun… now that my feet are dry. A morning in a beautiful setting, pleasant acquaintances, a modest amount of business chat, an appreciation of a few nice golf shots and an easy acceptance of many awful ones. While this was a generous format in which FedEx might show appreciation of the business we place with them I in turn greatly appreciate “making the cut” for the first time ever, especially on their invite. As I see the listed green fees at these lovely places I know I am headed back to the par 3 muni. Golf and life may never be the same.