GOLF: Snow time like the present to golf

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Nov. 21, 2014 (A1)

Snow time like the present to golf

Frigid temps don’t stop 2 men

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN

Daily News

If there is snow on the ground and someone is crazy enough, West Bend Lakes Golf Club will let people wander onto the course and squeeze in nine or 18 holes.

Put Kewaskum’s Dale Waala and West Bend’s Jeff Werner on the list of crazy people.

They’ve heard it enough this week.

When asked how many people have told him he was crazy, Werner replied, “Including my wife?”

To them, it’s just another day on the links.

“Pretty much nothing stops us from golfing,” Waala said. “It was another day really. We go out pretty much every weekend. So that’s what we did.”

Waala and Werner are longtime friends who play golf with a group of about 10 people on a regular basis.

They’ll often play for a couple bucks on each hole. They will also play cards together.

But on Sunday, with the temperatures below the freezing mark and about a half-inch or inch of snow on the ground, Waala and Werner were the only ones brave enough to take on the cold and the cold white powdery stuff spread throughout the golf course.

“We had the golf course to ourselves,” Waala said with a smile.

“At this time of the year, we don’t get many chances to go out,” Werner said. “It was only an inch or half an inch.”

To them, it wasn’t that bad.

They played with yellow golf balls — after all, golf balls are regularly white, so that wouldn’t work. They also had brooms in their golf bags, which Werner joked thankfully the broom didn’t count as a club in the bag. Rules state golfers aren’t allowed to have more than 14 clubs in a bag.

They didn’t have to leave a club behind.

“It fits right in the bag,” Werner said with a smile.

They didn’t ride on a cart, either. They walked, which is what they do when they golf during better weather.

“If we were driving a cart, we would’ve been colder,” Waala said.

“I had a blast; we had a blast,” he added. “I wasn’t that cold. I’ve golfed in warmer weather and felt colder.”

They did wear an extra layer or two of clothing to keep warm. That complicated the round a bit.

“It is a little different because you have a few more layers on,” Waala said. “I don’t like long sleeves when I’m golfing.”

The duo also golfed Saturday, but it was a bit warmer and there wasn’t snow.

They thought if it wasn’t too bad Sunday, they were going to golf, which they did.

For each hole, they swept the tee box where they would hit their tee shot and did that for each ensuing stroke.

If they miss-hit a stroke, some pain lingered.

“It’s like if you’re playing baseball and don’t hit the sweet spot, it stings,” Werner said.

When they got to the green, things got a bit tricky.

On the green, they located their ball and swept a path for the ball to the pin.

“We made a couple 10- or 12-footers,” Werner said.

Putting through the snow can be a way to improve their accuracy. If they were off and the ball hit some snow, the ball stopped.

“It kind of forces you to hit it straight,” Werner said.

So how’d they do?

Waala said he shot higher than 100, which is about 15 strokes off his average round. Werner was about 20 strokes off his average round of in the 70s.

Werner got a par on the first hole to provide the lone bright spot. After that there were a lot of 8s and 9s on the scorecard.

“It’s not always about the score,” Waala said, adding the day was more about the experience and having a good time.

However, there were times they were disappointed with their shots, like any golfer often is.

“I really didn’t expect a whole lot,” Waala said. “I expected bad shots that day.”

There is a cut-off to their golf obsession: temperatures below 20 and more than an inch or 2 of snow.

“If it warms up, I believe we’ll be out there again,” Waala said.