These friends put the duff in duffers

The majority of friends I golf with are immensely better friends than golfers.

That’s why May is my favorite month of the year.

And, no, it has nothing to do with longer days, warmer temperatures or the soothing scent of lilacs in bloom.

What makes May so special for me is my golfing buds, most of whom are usually ready to do a little comical blooming of their own about this same time each year.

Mind you, these are guys who play, maybe, six or seven rounds of golf a year. And they are not the type to venture out in the dead of winter in search of an indoor practice facility or golf simulator to work on their swings.

So when they blow the dust off their clubs for the first time each spring, it becomes a time of celebration.

It is a time to revel in the diversity of the early-season shots that find their way off the dirt-encrusted faces of those clubs, defying every single law of physics along the way. And it’s a time for me to work, once again, on trying to catch a breath while doubled over in laughter after watching where some of those shots end up.

I mean, these guys can make golf balls do unnatural things.

This ritual of spring kicked off recently when I accompanied three of my favorite golf partners – Ralph, John and Jim (these names have not been changed to protect the innocent, because none of them qualify) – to Chewelah Golf & Country Club.

For those not familiar with that tight, tree-lined layout … well, let’s just say it was probably not the best of courses for Ralph and John to take their first swings of the season.

But personally, I loved the anticipation, especially after John called right before we left to pick him up and asked if I could pack along a few extra golf balls, because he wasn’t sure how many he had left in his bag from last year. And he wasn’t going to take the time to check.

Ralph, whose steep swing plane resembles that of a plaid-shirted logger at a lumberjack competition, opened his 2010 golf season with violent first-hole lash that resulted in what I first thought was a topped drive that came to rest about 8 inches in front of his tee.

Trick shot!

Ralph claimed, however, it was a pure whiff and that, somehow, the sheer force of his swing had blown the ball off the tee – which was an even better story, so I’m going with it.

After reloading, he pulled his next drive left, debarking a small section of a once-proud towering pine. And it was at that moment that I decided to start taking notes about how the rest of the round unfolded.

As it turned out, that tree Ralph hit with his do-over would be the first of many to be abused by our pitiful group.

During the round, the four of us managed to hit 37 of them – including the one standing in front of the 10th green, which Jim and John both hit. By the time we made the turn, we had already hit 24, which had to have had us on pace for some kind of record.

But after I personally nailed our milestone 30th with a dead pull off the tee on No. 12, we were only able to average a little over a tree per hole the rest of the way.

Still, it was a heck of an effort.

Our moment of Zen occurred on the 495-yard sixth hole when Jim pulled a 5-wood out of his bag in effort to get home in two from about 225 out.

“No one ever accused me of being smart,” he said, right before blistering a penetrating low-rise approach shot that landed on the front of the green and rolled into the cup for a double-eagle 2.

Of course, no one has ever accused him of being consistent, either.

Why?

Because he had made a triple-bogey 7 on the previous hole, and when I asked him what he made after butchering the difficult 443-yad eighth, he said, “Give me a six, with a slash.”

Huh?

I already had several asterisks and a couple of DNFs on the scorecard, but I went ahead and added a slash – whatever that means.

On one memorable hole on the back nine, Ralph managed to hit a tree, a water hazard, a fairway trap and a vinyl privacy fence that regretfully prevented him from adding a hot tub to the list.

Later on, while playing in and along the trees lining the left side of the 15th fairway, he looked down and announced he was playing someone else’s ball. That “someone else” turned out to be John, who had failed – and not surprisingly, I might add – to notice he was playing Ralph’s ball.

Jim and I considered imposing a penalty, but after checking with the two, who were in obvious violation of the sacred rules of golf, we discovered that neither could determine how long they have been playing the wrong ball.

So, we gave them a pass.

We finished the round without further incident, and, fortunately, no one got hurt – although Ralph did slap a ball off the instep of my left foot after I made an unflattering remark about the “one-ball” putter he bought out of the clearance aisle at Shopko.

We grabbed a quick beer in the clubhouse afterward and then headed home, armed with plenty to discuss.

I mean, really, with friends like these, who needs real golfers?