In Defense of Cheating at Golf

If you have never spent hours outdoors in wet-bulb temperatures, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you avoid doing so at all costs. The combination of high humidity and heat prevents sweat from evaporating and thereby cooling us down, instead making it feel even hotter. Prolonged exposure can lead to heat exhaustion or even death.

Or, as was the case for me last month, cheating at golf. I was playing at a course full of rolling hills in Delaware, close to the Atlantic Ocean. I birdied the first, a lovely little number with a creek and an elevated green, and managed to save par on the second. I duffed my tee shot on the par-five third, then banged a long three-wood to get back in position, only to misjudge the turf conditions on my approach and hit a fat eight iron right into the side of a steep hill overgrown with scraggle. A couple hacks with my wedge and an encounter with quicksand later, I two-putted for one of the finer triple bogeys of my life.