Golf can be hazardous to your health

Last week my shoulder was feeling better and one of my closest friends asked me and another friend to go out to Catalina on his boat, play the course, eat lunch, go fishing and go home.

This friend owns the “King of the Cage” MMA fighting association and beat me by one stroke to win the Catalina Island Junior Invitational in 1984. The other friend also played in that event and is now the guy I am working with on my game.

He owns his own boat, is an experienced fisherman and boater and spends over 50 days a year on the Ocean, from Santa Cruz to Cabo and everywhere in between.

Some of this is going to sound like we are Southern California pansies and that probably has some truth to it, but I assure you, it was actually worse than I will describe.

We go over around 7 AM, play, have lunch and fish. I won the rematch and we caught a bunch of fish. It was more like catching than fishing and around 5:30 we headed home.

We get hit with the worst wind and waves my friend has ever seen in those waters and the skies were clear. The waves and swells were coming from the perfect direction to shower us and make navigating tough. We were dressed for 80 degree weather and we got soaked with cold pacific sea water and it started to get cold.

Just for some perspective, the “waterproof” section of my golf bag was inundated and I was wearing a Gortex pullover that did not survive.

It was liked we all jumped in the ocean.

The seas were so dangerous, we had to slow down to 5 knots and basically idled in between Catalina and Huntington Beach for 2 hours as the sun went down and we started to freeze.

We all had salt water in out eyes and couldn’t see well enough to miss the waves. It took us 3 hours to get back, all the while being drenched and cold.

Then we get back to the dock and his crank broke and we had to manually put a 28 foot boat onto a trailer using our hands and the engines.

Took an hour and a half while our teeth were chattering and we got wet all over again.

The moral to the story.

Golf stinks!!!!!




  1. Calvin

    Sounds like great fun!

  2. woody

    Now, that’s what I call a “water hazard.”.

  3. cdnmike

    That’s some scary shit! I just recently took a wave over the bow of my fish and ski on our local lake and that was scary enough. It’s amazing how much water comes into the boat in a short period of time!

  4. Andrew

    That sounds exactly like my weekend in Catalina except for the golf. I even have a 28′ boat. I launched out of San Pedro. I was there the 5,6,and 7th., if I had known you were there you could have gave me some lessons on the course there. 😉

  5. Andrew

    Did you drive the green on the first hole? or is that a silly question?

    • Monte Scheinblum

      Hit one in the junk the first 9, then a 3-wood just off the front edge the second 9.


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