Welcome to The Golf Scene — Your Weekly Golf Fix.

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This week, we discuss why your eyes hate you playing golf, wonder where snacks and beverages go to retire, and learn about a pinball-wizard golf shot for the ages.

And somewhere in there, we’ll help you hit a few better shots.

Let’s get into it.

In This Issue:

Swing Insight: Are your eyes trying to sabotage your golf game?

Golf Life: Where do snacks go to retire?

Believe it or not: Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up - A pinball wizard story

Your eyes have a problem with golf.

I don’t know why.

They seem perfectly happy helping you drive a car, read a menu, find your keys, recognize your spouse, and occasionally locate the television remote.

But put a golf club in your hands and suddenly they become unreliable.

At least that is what golfers have been told for generations.

Hit it fat?

You looked up.

Top it?

You lifted your head.

Miss it completely?

Obviously, you took your eye off the ball.

Apparently, your eyes have one simple job in golf and absolutely no interest in doing it.

You can stare at the ball with the concentration of someone trying to disarm a bomb, and somebody standing twenty feet away will still tell you:

“You looked up.”

Really?

How do you know?

Were you watching my eyes?

Did my pupils make a run for it?

Was there some sort of unauthorized glance toward the beverage cart?

Because I was fairly certain I was looking at the ball.

In fact, I may have been looking at it harder than I have ever looked at anything in my life.

But according to golf mythology, your eyes are constantly conspiring against you.

They apparently wait until the most important moment of the swing, abandon their post, take your head with them and ruin the shot.

It is almost as though they hate you playing golf.

Perhaps they want you to quit.

What other explanation could there be?

For years, golfers have responded by trying even harder.

Keep your eye on the ball.

Keep your head down.

Don’t look up.

Stay down.

And so the golfer makes a swing while attempting to keep the head nailed to approximately the same location it occupied at address.

This can produce a wonderfully athletic motion resembling someone trying to swing a golf club while hiding from a low-flying aircraft.

There is, however, a small problem.

Your eyes may be innocent.

Obviously, you need to see the ball.

That part is not particularly controversial.

But many of the movements people blame on “looking up” are not caused by the eyes at all.

The body may be standing up.

The pelvis may be moving toward the ball.

The golfer may be losing posture.

The low point may be in the wrong place.

The swing may have gone badly wrong several hundredths of a second before anybody’s eyes became involved.

What people see is the head moving.

What they assume is that the golfer looked up.

Those are not necessarily the same thing.

In fact, trying desperately to keep your head down can create problems of its own.

A golf swing involves turning.

The body rotates.

The head can move naturally.

And after impact, eventually, it would be rather useful to look up and see where the ball went.

Unless, of course, you enjoy relying entirely on witness reports.

So perhaps we owe the eyes an apology.

They have been accused for decades.

They have been blamed for topped shots, fat shots, thin shots, shanks and various other golfing crimes for which the evidence remains surprisingly weak.

The eyes would therefore like to issue the following statement:

“We watched the ball.

We have always watched the ball.

Please investigate the golf swing.”

Case dismissed.

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There are certain things a golfer expects to find when arriving at the turn.

A hot dog.

A chocolate bar.

A bag of chips.

And something cold to drink.

This is not fine dining.

Nobody arrives at the halfway house after nine holes and asks to see the wine list.

You have approximately seven minutes before the group behind you appears, so the traditional golf-course meal has been carefully designed around food that can be purchased, opened, partially consumed, and carried to the 10th tee while somebody is still trying to remember whether they made a five or a six on the ninth.

For decades, this system worked beautifully.

Then things started disappearing.

Not the hot dog, obviously.

The golf-course hot dog appears to have survived every major social, political and economic change of the last hundred years and will probably still be available long after the rest of the halfway house has been replaced by an app.

But some of the supporting cast has not been so fortunate.

Walk up to a cooler today looking for a Wink and you are likely to receive the same expression you would get if you asked whether they still had telegram forms.

Wink.

The Sassy One from Canada Dry.

If you remember it, you are probably already nodding.

If you don't, ask somebody with grey hair.

Then there was Hires Root Beer.

NuGrape.

And assorted other bottles and cans that seemed perfectly capable of surviving our childhoods but apparently lacked the necessary qualifications to thrive in the twenty-first century.

The snack rack suffered casualties as well.

There was once a time in Canada when a bag of potato chips practically meant Hostess.

Hostess chips were everywhere.

Then, one day, they weren’t.

Chocolate bars began quietly disappearing too.

Sweet Marie.

Cherry Blossom.

Jersey Milk.

Nobody sends you a letter when this happens.

There is no retirement ceremony.

Nobody lowers the flag.

You simply walk into a store one day and discover that something you have been buying since Pierre Trudeau was prime minister is apparently no longer part of the national inventory.

And golfers of a certain age have seen this phenomenon somewhere else.

At the drive-in movie theatre.

The drive-in snack bar and the golf-course halfway house have always had a curious relationship.

Both specialize in food you would probably not choose immediately before a medical examination.

Both expect you to eat quickly.

And both have occasionally seemed like places where old food and snacks go to retire.

The drive-in snack bar was once a glorious sanctuary for products that had vanished everywhere else.

You could walk past the little illuminated menu board and suddenly spot something you had not seen in fifteen years.

There it was.

Alive.

Apparently living out its final days beside the popcorn machine.

The drive-in also had its own culinary specialty.

The foot-long hot dog.

I have never been entirely certain where these things came from because they seemed to exist almost exclusively at drive-in movie theatres.

You rarely saw one at home.

Nobody packed one in your school lunch.

Restaurants apparently wanted nothing to do with them.

Yet every drive-in snack bar seemed to have secured an unlimited supply.

Perhaps the foot-long hot dog had been developed specifically for children who intended to wash it down with a large soft drink and then immediately climb aboard the spinning wheel of vomit in the playground.

And what a magnificent piece of recreational equipment that was.

A large circular platform with steel bars that children pushed faster and faster until everyone aboard had an opportunity to discover whether their stomach contents had been properly secured.

It was essentially a gastrointestinal stress test disguised as playground equipment.

And we lined up for it.

The accepted drive-in sequence was simple.

Eat twelve inches of hot dog.

Add fries.

Add a soft drink.

Perhaps throw in a chocolate bar.

Then walk directly to the playground and subject the entire meal to centrifugal testing.

Meanwhile, your parents remained in the car waiting for the movie to start.

It was a simpler time.

Possibly because nobody was doing risk assessments.

Golf-course halfway houses occasionally provided the same sort of sanctuary for disappearing products.

A soft drink could vanish from supermarkets, convenience stores and gas stations across the country, yet somehow there would still be six bottles of it sitting at the back of the cooler beside the 10th tee.

Authorities believe several missing soft drinks were last seen together at a drive-in movie theatre sometime during the late 1970s.

The investigation remains ongoing.

This is one of the strange things about getting older.

You do not necessarily notice when familiar things disappear.

There is rarely a moment when you stop and think:

“Well, this could be my last Wink.”

You just drink one.

Then thirty years later you are standing in front of a cooler wondering where it went.

The same thing happens around golf courses.

The old wooden tee markers disappear.

The ball washers disappear.

The little metal spike cleaners disappear.

The guy sitting in the starter's hut disappears.

Eventually somebody replaces the halfway house with a refrigerated vending machine that accepts credit cards and offers six varieties of sparkling water.

Progress, apparently.

Fortunately, a few traditions remain.

The golfer still arrives at the turn hungry.

The group behind is still approaching faster than expected.

Someone is still trying to remember whether everybody paid for the skins.

And somewhere behind the counter there will still be a hot dog rotating slowly beneath a heat lamp.

It has seen Wink come and go.

It survived Hostess.

It watched Sweet Marie disappear.

Cherry Blossom is gone.

Jersey Milk is gone.

Drive-in theatres have nearly disappeared.

Even the spinning wheel of dislocated joints and vomit has presumably been removed by somebody carrying a clipboard.

But the hot dog remains.

And frankly, at this point, I'm afraid to ask how.

Most issues contain at least one thing intended to help your golf game.

Below is this week’s version—a Believe It or Not story proving that, when it comes to golf, almost anything can happen.

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A golf swing can look like a work of art.

It can be perfection in motion, a graceful ballet performed with a seven-iron, or the smoothest valet move ever made.

It can also look like someone has been thrown from a horse, fallen out of a moving car, or become trapped inside a lawn chair tumbling down a flight of stairs.

Generally, there is more of the latter than the former.

Years ago, I was playing an evening round with my brother and two golf course marshals at the facility where we all worked. The property had 54 holes, including an executive 18-hole course, and on particularly busy days that was often the only place we could squeeze in a quick game.

We arrived at a short par three measuring roughly 110 yards.

My tee shot finished on the green about ten feet from the hole.

My brother followed with a good shot to roughly twenty-five feet.

The first marshal hit his ball ten or fifteen yards over the green, leaving himself a difficult up-and-down for par.

Then our fourth player stepped onto the tee.

He was another of the course marshals and a genuinely good fellow.

His golf swing, however, looked as though it had escaped from either Ripley’s Believe It or Not! or Madame Tussaud’s House of Horrors.

It was not pretty.

It was not particularly effective.

But it was enthusiastic.

He took a mighty swing, presumably hoping to cover the full 110 yards before something went wrong.

Something went wrong.

At almost the moment of contact, he lost his balance completely. The ball launched at least forty yards to the right of the green while he lurched forward and bent down toward the ground.

He later claimed he was merely bending down to pick up his tee.

That was his story, anyway.

We assumed it was an attempt to hide the embarrassment of a swing so unique that it had caused him to fall over.

Unfortunately, his body continued toward the ground long after the tee had presumably been recovered.

He finished flat on the tee deck...

We thought it was to hide the embarrassment of having a swing so unique that it caused him to literally fall over.

Unfortunately, his body continued rolling around on the ground long after he had made his tee shot

He finished flat on the tee deck, facing away from the green and looking remarkably comfortable for a man who had arrived there unintentionally.

The three of us stood quietly.

We were not entirely sure whether we should help him, express concern, or allow him a few moments to pretend that everything had unfolded according to plan.

He remained on the ground slightly longer than seemed medically necessary.

Eventually, he began trying to get back to his feet. It was not a rapid process. His first attempt lacked commitment. His second showed promise. His third finally returned him to something resembling an upright position.

While all of this was happening, the other three of us were watching his golf ball.

It struck a power cart.

The ball ricocheted sharply to the left and hit a bench.

From there it appeared to strike the ball washer, crossed the cart path, climbed a small mound and began rolling toward the green.

By this point, it had travelled in several different directions, both through the air and along the ground, and encountered more golf-course furniture than most players see during an entire round.

The ball reached the green.

It continued rolling.

The three of us watched in silence.

The golfer who had hit it was still dusting himself off and attempting to reorganize his dignity.

The ball rolled closer to the flagstick.

And then it disappeared.

Straight into the hole.

We began shouting and cheering.

Our playing partner looked at us in complete confusion.

He had missed the entire thing.

“You made it!”

He stared at us.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did.”

He looked back toward the area forty yards right of the green, which was where every available piece of evidence suggested his golf ball should have been.

He did not believe us.

Not until we reached the green and he looked into the cup.

There was his ball.

The hole measured approximately 110 yards, although his golf ball had probably travelled closer to 140.

Some of it through the air.

Some of it along the ground.

Some of it in directions not normally associated with the game of golf.

And somehow, after hitting a power cart, a bench, a ball washer, crossing a cart path and climbing a hill, it had finished in the hole.

When we recorded the scores, the card became almost as unlikely as the shot.

He made one.

I made two.

My brother made three.

The other marshal made four.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

I have witnessed many unusual things on a golf course.

But I have only seen one golfer fall over immediately after impact, struggle to get back to his feet, miss the entire journey of his own golf ball and then discover that he had just made a hole-in-one.

If that isn’t a pinball wizard, I’m not sure what is.

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This week we’ve learned three important things:

Your eyes may be innocent, despite decades of accusations.

The golf-course hot dog may outlive us all.

And anything can happen on a golf course—and usually does.

And please...

If you know where I can get a can of Wink, please let me know.

If you found this useful, or at least mildly entertaining, feel free to share it with:

a friend,

a playing partner,

or someone who has had a hole-in-one.

And if you're looking to take your game a step further...

👉 I'd be happy to help — in person or online.

David Govan
PGA of Canada Professional

Golf Excellence Academy
Modern Golf Instruction

Creator of the 5C Golf Performance System
👉 GolfExcellence.ca

P.S. Next issue, we’ll find out whether you’ve stumbled into competence, see what happens when the astronaut meets the moose, and include something that may even help your golf swing.

Beyond that, the editorial strategy remains remarkably similar to my golf game:

We have a general direction, but the exact landing area is still unknown.