25 June 2015

PROMPT:  I had to lie...

Lynne Kaufman, playwright 

Joe, Phil, and Roddy sit at a table in the snack bar at their local municipal golf course after the round , having a cold beverage.
JOE
It’s a stupid game.
PHIL
It’s not stupid!
RODDY
And it’s not a game!  It’s a sport!
JOE
You ride around in a golf cart, drive right up to your ball, get out, take a club from your bag, swing it gently two or three times and then hit the ball and get back in your golf cart and drive to where you hit it and do it all over again.  How is that a sport?!  On a spring day, you don’t even break a sweat.
RODDY
I have to walk from the cart to the green.
PHIL
Or in your case, near the green.
JOE
Not too near the green.
RODDY
Very funny.
JOE
See. It’s stupid.
PHIL
It’s not stupid!
JOE
You use a curved stick...
PHIL
It’s a golf club.
JOE
Which is just a fancy name for a curve stick.  You take a curved stick and a tiny ball and try to hit it into a itsy-bitsy hole that is three or four or more football fields away.  Who does that?
PHIL
The idle rich.
RODDY
We’re not rich and we do it.
JOE
Proving how stupid we are.  Hundreds of dollars on clubs, balls, gloves, shoes, attire, range finders...
RODDY
Phil took lessons last year.
JOE
To hit a ball in a hole!?
PHIL
It’s fun!
JOE
Then why do you cheat?!
PHIL
I don’t cheat!
JOE
You took a mulligan on the fourth tee.
PHIL
They’ve torn up the driving range.  We didn’t get to hit balls before we started.
JOE
A mulligan might have made sense off the first tee...
RODDY
And I saw you move your ball to a better lie on the tenth hole...
JOE
And the twelfth hole, and the second hole, and the seventh hole...
PHIL
Winter rules.
JOE
And where is that in the rules of golf?
PHIL
This is a city course.  It doesn’t it proper maintenance.
JOE
And so lying and cheating is okay?
PHIL
I don’t lie.
RODDY
A ball out of bounds is a two stroke penalty.  You only took one.
JOE
Technically, you have to go back, take a stroke, and re-tee.
PHIL
It’s a muny!  We can’t go back and re-tee.
RODDY
So... two strokes.
PHIL
We’ve always played the relaxed rules of golf.
JOE
You mean we’ve always lied.
PHIL
We have to lie!  If we didn’t lie and cheat this game would be no fun!
Silence.
RODDY
Stupid game.
Silence.
PHIL
Stupid game.
End of play.