Everyone has that one club in their bag they’re scared of.
Not “I don’t love it” scared.
Not “I’m inconsistent” scared.
Actual fear.
For me, it’s my three-wood – hybrid – iron – bazooka – crime against golf.
Yes, it is literally called Bazooka. By JMax. I’m pretty sure I paid twelve dollars for it off the clearance rack at Dunham’s back in Michigan. The kind of purchase you make when you’re already annoyed about something else and just want to feel alive.
This club and I have never had a healthy relationship.
When I try to hit it, I don’t just top it. I commit crimes with it. Sometimes I drive it straight into the ground so hard it looks like a fried egg and I half expect to need a shovel to dig it out. Other times it goes straight up, like a pop-up to second base, full infield fly rule.
And then there was the time I topped it so badly, on some mushy turf, that the ball went backwards.
Backwards!! I literally don’t understand the physics of this!
I hit a golf ball backwards with a club designed to do the opposite of that.
And yet this club is still in my bag.
Why?
Because once, one time, it did something magical.
About three or four years ago, I was playing in a random after-work nine-hole league with my buddy. Reasonable handicaps, just enough structure to make you think you’re playing “real golf” without actually being good at it.
We were at Forest Lake Golf in Florida. We started on the back nine, so this was hole 18. A dogleg left par four.
I hit a short drive. Very Snowman Golfer short. Maybe 180 yards. Straight enough, playable, and lucky. The hole doglegs left, there’s a bunker guarding the right side, and lucky for me I hit every drive right. Somehow this one just stayed out of the bunker. No skill involved. Pure survival.
The kind of drive where you pretend you laid up on purpose.
I pull the Bazooka.
I do not know why.
I get over the ball, take an extra dip in the knees, and tell myself, stay low, stay low, don’t get beat. Full Strange Brew reference, which tells you exactly how old I am.
I keep my head down. Knees bent. I swing.
And I absolutely flush it.
I’m talking 220, maybe 225. Middle of the green. About ten feet from the hole.
Angels sing. Halos appear. Time slows down. I’m hearing sounds that may or may not be real.
I birdie the hole.
We win the match because of that shot.
That one stupid, perfect swing.
And that is why the Bazooka will never leave my bag.
Because ever since then, it’s been absolute garbage.
The last time I tried to use it, I missed the ball three times. Full whiff. Had to pick up. Most of the time I top it 30, 40, maybe 50 yards. Occasionally I catch it just well enough to send a 100-yard worm burner screaming down the fairway like it owes me money.
I’ll take that, honestly.
But I still keep the club.
Not because it works.
Not because it’s smart.
But because of that one mystical, beautiful shot.
That’s the Snowman Golfer disease.
We don’t play enough to build consistency.
We play just enough to remember the miracle.
And as long as that memory exists, that stupid twelve-dollar Bazooka is staying right where it is, even if the only direction it reliably sends the ball is backwards.