A Buick to Dullsville?

My friend Alex and I both retired from rugby after 20 years. He asked, "Can you name any boring rugby players?"

I thought long and hard. I had a couple names of the more than 500 guys I had met through rugby but none stood out as insanely dull. Alex said that if it weren't for my job as a private investigator, that I could pass for boring. He's right. His theory is that only weird angry dudes play rugby and stay with it despite the guaranteed emergency room visits.

I played rugby in my 20s and 30s with guys named: Rug-burn, Sideshow, Chief, Crazy Mike, at least three Mad Dogs, Nick The Cop, Dr. Worm Sex, Smelly, Penis Guts, Wee Man, Angry Charles, Jimmy The Cone, Doctor, Sick Rick, Simbo, Pineapple Pete, Nipple, The Explorer, The Silver Fox, Pete the Dumb Animal, The Mayor, The Vanilla Gorilla, The Mayor of Modesto, The Rock, The Comet, Vag-Eno, Chunk, Uncle Cock Block, etc.

Now I have golf....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I have yet to talk nicknames with golfers. Sure, we might have a beer but then it's home to our wives, families, jobs. The lyrics from Joe Walsh's Average Ordinary Guy apply to golfers, "And Every Saturday we work in the yard. Pick up the dog do. Hope that it's hard."

Are you boring and discover golf or does golf make you boring? It's a little of both. Because to be good at any one thing you have to exclude being good at others, which puts you in the Buick to dullsville. Look at most engineers or accountants. And what's the joke, accountants call actuaries dull? To become decent at golf is to become obsessed and single-minded.

Consider Twitter and the tweets of pro golfers. An example of the blandness that pervades the game is Natalie Gulbis, essentially a Playboy bunny with a 260-yard drive. Her tweets include: "Shot a 68 and off to the gym," "Sunny Day here in Toledo" and, "Now heading for quick workout and a movie." Wowsers!

Let's deconstruct the tweets of young pro Rickie Fowler. His bon mots include "Go Time," "Off to bed...night night" and "Now that was a great nap." He is putting himself to sleep!

Tiger Woods spiked his lifetime excitement meter with A) a mysterious car crash and B) Disclosures that he was getting more ass than a toilet seat. Jim Rome memorialized Tiger with the Robot Woods sound loop. Tiger embodies the downsides of narrow, laser focus.

I accept the trade-offs but only if I become a single digit handicap. I am ripping on a game I am passionate about. Most of us don't have the mindset for serious golf until we are into our 30s, when I started playing. For playing the game well, boring is good.