Golfing is nearly revered among officers. Almost every military installation has a golf course and, if you look, you’ll definitely find officers who set their meetings at the driving range. But the reason why all officers love golfing is exactly the same reason why lower enlisted should be fans, too: It’s the most sham sport you can think of.
Pretty much everything about golf is perfectly geared toward pretending like you’re working hard while actually just having fun — which is, essentially, the mantra of the E-4 Mafia and LCpl Underground.
What other way can you drink while everyone else is working?
(Photo by 1st Lt. Kenya Saenz)
You can drink while you play
This is almost reason enough for lower enlisted to love golf. Why spend your day cleaning out the connexes for the seventh time this month when you could be drinking a beer with the colonel?
Most sports discourage you from getting plastered in the middle of the game. Golfing, conversely, encourages you to be slightly inebriated.
Even when they set up driving ranges on deployments, no one really cares how good you are.
(Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Charles Highland)
Your skill — and effort — doesn’t really matter
You can be tipsy and play golf because no one really cares if you’re good or not. Okay, fellow golfers might start to give a damn if you’re just so bad that people are lining up at the tee.
The good news is that if you’re really that bad (or that drunk), you can just go to the driving range and swing. Other golfers won’t judge you — because they’re probably drunk, too.
Don’t even worry about getting the ball, that’s someone else’s responsibility. The E-4 mentality at work.
(Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Charles Highland)
You’re just hitting things without consequence
If you’re very serious about golfing, you’re going to try your hardest. But everyone else on a military golf course is just trying to get out of work.
This point rings especially true on the driving range, where you don’t need to even worry about aiming. Most people use the driving range to improve their stance and swing, but if you just want to let off steam, just tee up, give it a nice, angry whack, grab another, and go again.
It’s kind of a gray area, though…
(Photo by Capt. Stephen Von Jett)
You can just drive the cart all day if you want
Golf courses are huge and it’s kind of expected that golfers aren’t going to ruck their clubs around the course. Instead, they’ll just take a golf cart. If swinging your arms seems like too much effort, you can volunteer to just drive the golf cart.
Extra points here if you can get away with just driving around the course and never stopping at any holes. Just don’t be that idiot who does doughnuts on the green while drunk. Legally, you can still get a DUI while driving a golf cart.
What other opportunity will you get to openly mock someone who outranks the f*ck out of you?
(Photo by Airman 1st Class Christian Conrad)
You spend more time joking than actually playing
Just as with everything else that the lower enlisted do, in golf, you spend thirty seconds doing the task (hitting the ball) and about five minutes joking around (waiting for the other golfers).
Your entire day is spent barely doing anything. You’re just drinking with the guys and cracking jokes at each other. Then, when you finally come back, you can tell everyone that you’ve had a long day.
Just another day in the military, am I right?
(Photo by Sgt. Diandra J. Harrell)
You look professional as f*ck, but you’re really not
With all of this in mind, you’re not actually doing jack sh*t but having fun. Yet, for some reason, everyone thinks you’re this squared-away individual who’s been doing things officers do.
Officers (who are also wiggling their way out of command and staff meetings) know full well that you’re trying to skate — so are they. But they’ll still think highly of you.