Throwback Thursday: Teeing Up Democracy

This personal essay predates my blog, going all the way back to January of 2005. I don’t make a lot of political statements these days. Apparently, back then I did—though this was more about democracy than a stance on the wars being waged at the time. Now, my brother is in the military, working for the freedom of the oppressed. So, maybe this was accidental foreshadowing.
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My brother had never played a round of golf before, and I’d been itching to play since I’d moved to Virginia. So, we headed off to Colonial Hills, the cheap local course, where we figured we could hit a bucket of balls, rent a cart and a couple sets of clubs, and tee up our manhood nine or eighteen times.
“We don’t rent clubs,” gargled from the AARP register minder.
So, Tim and I sped back to Walmart and the strip mall, then back to the mildewed “clubhouse” with a graphite-shafted set from Dick’s.
“You can’t play from the same bag—gotta have two sets if the two of you share a cart.”
“We don’t have another set.”
“Well . . . [big sigh] . . . you can take one of those loaner sets we have in the corner.”
Now, these clubs (no bags with a full quota of sticks) aspired to be worthy of a yard sale: wooden heads, metal shafts, hard pleather bags. But golf had been the second dream on the week’s to-do list (after Tim’s training with a former Braves farmhand), and I wasn’t going to drive him home without that memory.
“Alright, and I’ll take a bag of tees . . . can I get a pencil for the score card? Oh, and a bucket of balls for the driving range?”
Tim has long been athletic, a soccer menace at all positions and a baseball all star since his second season. Golf was apparently no different. At just 13 years old, he could drive almost 200 yards, even if he topped his chips now and again. I can’t say I didn’t have an occasional problem there, too. He would finish just three strokes back at the end of the day—and get to drive the cart.
We took our time around the front nine, a slow group in front of us. I used the time to look for balls and let Tim figure out distances. We had only paid for 9 holes; but after a great start and a fresh morning, we ducked into the “pro shop” to pay the difference for a full round. After some more sighs and admonitions, the crusty cashier granted us our wish—even threw in a discount for two young guys bonding over bogeys.
We had teed off on 10 and both found the out of bounds. Out of sportsmanship, we were looking for where our balls left play to know where to drop. We had a group playing in front of us; so we took our time. Apparently, though, the group behind us reported us to the pro shop for slow play.
We finished the tenth hole oblivious to this, then sat at the eleventh tee, waiting on the group in front of us. Before we were to tee up, the “pro shop” attendant drove out to us to tell us that we’d have to speed up play or he’d be giving us a refund and a renege on the back nine.
“You know, these guys work downtown, and they took an afternoon off work to play.”
I could’ve retorted that this particular Friday was my first day off in months, that I ran a quarter-million-dollar-a-year corporation from my basement, that I’d played on courses with bent grass fairways and greens fees multiple times more than his. I could’ve argued that my dollars equaled those of the fat scowlers waiting to play through. I could have asked him to look past the unshaven 26-year-old face.
But I just promised him what he wanted and let the 50-something smirkers play through. Then Tim and I got up and out-drove them.
 
I hope that’s the way it is tomorrow in Baghdad.
This Sunday, Iraqis from around the world will vote for their constitutional government representatives. Curfews restrain the night, and native police enforcers prepare for Russian roulette guarding at polling centers. Democracy is millennia late to Eden’s home, and most of the rest of us can’t comprehend what voting will mean tomorrow to those men and women—not even Americans still coalescing after an historic election here.
Their freedom has been maligned, their independence proclaimed too expensive, their ability to govern themselves doubted. Liberals around the world have framed their independence by our benefit; they’ve counted bodies instead of lives, measuring the immeasurable freedom with unrealistic expectations.
They want a quick game, where the regular players can go about their perfunctory play not slowed by new players in the world democracy. They want the young ones to figure out the game at a more convenient time, another place.
But tomorrow, the condescending world will watch an election where each vote counts the same as our native ones. We will see Iraqis smiling in their civic duty, like the Afghanis last year, despite risking their lives just by doing so. Men and women will quietly—and some with tears not so quietly—change the course of their country and maybe the region because they didn’t listen to the ignorance of the skeptics.
And someday, in a different kind of bunker, an Iraqi entrepreneur will be teaching his little brother how to flop a chip out of a deep sand trap at the Euphrates Hills Golf Course.
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Stock photography purchased from iStockPhoto.com