In our group, when one of us manage to pull off a great sand shot that lands within a foot of the hole, another guy in the group would routinely squawk, “Phil Mickleson!” in tribute to the fat guy that once challenged Tiger and who can pull off ridiculous shots with his wedge, in his sleep, while having grandular fever.
However, when we manage to pull off an impossible escape shot (which to us, so far, counting is about 1 in 6,456 swings of the blasted club) we have a term for it. We ‘Ballesteros’-ed it. Or, the same squawk will come, only with the more awsome: “YOU ARE THE SEVE BALLESTEROS…”
It’s amazing how much us hackers pay tribute to a guy that most of us have not even watch before…I mean, Seve was way before our time. When we started guy, it was for the black guy in Sunday red, not a Spanish matador in bell bottoms. But as Ballesteros passes away this week, I managed to look at some of his shots, and realise that this is the guy that embodies Gilagolf. He’s an inspiration to the hacker because he misses as many fairways as us! Granted, he can do probably a trillion more shots than the average hack, but hey, he seems like a fun dude to play with. He seems like a guy you’d want in your sixers team. He seems like a guy that would compete and kill for a 15-5-5 game not for the money, but for the pure joy of thrashing the living daylights out of the competition.
So here’s Ballesteros in all his top 5 hacker glory:
1) Fall on your knees: How many times have we always tried to attempt this shot, only to completely whiff it and break our spine? Countless….
2) Nightmare to play against: How do you hate a guy like this when you think you can one-up on him only for him to mock you with save after save? It’s like: “Golf is so bloody boring, let me level the playing field with these losers by playing from all the bushes and jungle….”
3) We’ve seen this guy called Kevin Na shoot 16 from a similar position. Seve? He bogeys it. Take that!
4) This is the most ridiculous save ever. And there’s so many more like it from this guy.
5) And finally, the famous birdie from the parking lot “Parking Lot Champion”, truly the a gila shot reminiscent to 99% of our drives. To all the hacks out there: Never give up on your golf, no matter how crap we play, in memory of Gilagolfer Seve.
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