Last Saturday morning marked my first time on the golf course in 2019. I went into it ready for a solid experience - just smack the ball around a little bit, hope for a bogey at some point and leave happy. What I expected to be a fun-filled day on the course with the family turned into a nine-hole nightmare from start to finish.
The next two hours featured a completely unprovoked attack from these small, black gnats that left my body a bloody mess. Let’s have a look.
[evp_embed_video url=”https://deceptivespeed.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/IMG_6815-1.mov”]
Not ideal. Not a great day out on the links for ya boy here.
What happened?
I was only slightly annoyed by the bugs the first two holes, but then after hole 3, I turned to my brother and claimed, “This is the most miserable experience of my entire life.”
And we weren’t even close to be finished. For the rest of the round, not one moment went by without at least 10 bugs covering my body, usually significantly more than that.
In recent days, I’ve been questioned as to why I didn’t just call it a day and wait in the clubhouse since I already deemed the experience a disaster and already wasn’t enjoying myself not even halfway through. The answer? I am an absolute warrior. When Tiger Woods isn’t having his best day, does he quit and go home? No. He grinds it out and battles the conditions like the true champions we are.
So that’s what I did, a race to get this stupid golf round over with. Practice swings became rare. Just stepped up to the ball, take a swing and immediately start walking toward the next shot.
Why me?
Seven other humans took part in this golf adventure. A few had a couple bites here and there, but most left the course completely unscathed. Meanwhile, 170 bites were counted just from my neck up. There had to be at least 1,000 bites across my entire body.
The first question that came into my mind is why me? What have I done to deserve this? I still don’t have a great answer for this, but it was a sign of bad things to come that day.
Later that night, the Bucks were eliminated from the Eastern Conference Finals. More importantly, right when I stepped off the golf course and denied the need to go to the hospital, I was alerted about the Hauser brothers no longer being interested in transferring to Wisconsin.
Despite the pain and sickness, I sucked it up and cranked out the article, which is currently the most-viewed post in Deceptive Speed history. My personal version of the Michael Jordan flu game. What a heroic performance on my part.
The aftermath
For the Marquette fans out there who said mean things to me on the internet in recent weeks and probably hoped for the worst, unfortunately for you I have gotten better in the eight days since this incident.
The high fever is gone, itching has subsided. The obesity and lack of a girlfriend remain, however those things are not related to the bug situation.
So what did I learn from this experience? Spend less time with family and never go outside.
And if you noticed in the video, yes I wore a Southern Comfort t-shirt to the golf course. Deal with it and let me live my life because it almost ended in the great Gnat Massacre of 2019.
Keep the conversation going by reaching out to Erik Buchinger on Twitter or email erik@deceptivespeed.com.