Our New Golf Game: 'Lady or The Champ'

When you live on a golf course and are a member of a club, sometimes it is fun to shake things up and play a different kind of game to make things more interesting. To do that, a friend and I cooked up a "new" match-play game we call "Lady or The Champ."

The rules are simple: win a hole, you have to play the next one from the Championship Tee. Lose a hole, you are on the red teebox, but you cannot use anything bigger than a six-iron to tee off. Play it out from there.

On our course, the so-called Championship tees are sometimes behind where the low-handicap black teeboxes are, and not only are these ridiculously long tee shots, some of them also have extremely narrow tunnels through trees to get to the fairway. It's very tough to hit the right places, and even for the longest hitters leaves very challenging approaches from anywhere.

The forward (or ladies') tees are quite generous, as they should be, since they are meant for very high handicap players or kids. We call them the "ladies" tees out of habit, even though that's a label from an era gone by. These days, plenty of our female members play from behind the reds and do it quite well, thanks very much. Anyway, if you can't hit the fairway from most of the red boxes, you can't spit, because that's how close most of them are. A smack with a putter would get one out on the short grass. But armed with only a six iron, it's not as easy as you might think to win the hole. The course is still over 5000 yards even from the shortest boxes so a good, solid shot is needed to get to the A Position.

The fun part in these match play rules is that you have to really work hard to keep winning holes from the championship boxes and with the mid-iron rules from the reds, you can't just bomb and gouge your way back into a match -- unless you learn how to hit low-running balls that run forever. The longer approaches you face from the championship tees season you as a golfer and give you new respect not only for the scratch players but also for the course designers, because everything comes into play from the tips. From the reds, you learn how to work your ball as if it was very windy, something that comes in extremely handy in the cool weather months here when the breezes are often howling.

And oh, one other rule we are considering adding: we picked up a nice pink miniskirt from Goodwill that "The Lady" will have to wear on holes that they play from the forward boxes. Since the course winds its way through our neighborhood, "The Lady" is sure to be seen by someone who will surely have a smart-aleck catcall to offer. After all, a hairy-legged middle-aged fellow in a hot pink mini is one of the uglier things you will ever see in your life. The 17th hole is a big one in the match, because "The Lady" has to march up 18 and by the deck outside the clubhouse and hear it from whoever is out there. Finally, the loser of the whole match has to go the 19th hole where he has to pay for the first round in his hot little skirt.

Before you say it, this is not a sexist game, it's just having fun and tossing in some bright pink embarrassment for the loser. . That'll get your attention on a short putt and make you a better player, count on it.