Golf

The game of golf started humbly in Scotland some five centuries ago, and has spread across the globe like wildfire ever since. From Tasmania to Tulsa, from Japan to Jacksonville, the game that Mark Twain famously reviled as "a good walk, spoiled" has gone from a pastime for rich folks and royalty to an any-color-collar leisure pursuit. I have personally played with grocers and CEO's, actors and athletes, grandmothers and grifters. It is truly a big-tent sport, if you agree to call it so. Some don't!

Twenty-five years ago, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation opened a bingo hall on their reservation near Ledyard, Connecticut. Since then the nation has become an empire. Foxwoods Resort + Casino, which grew out of that bingo hall, is home to one of most profitable casinos in the country, with thousands of slot machines and hundreds of tables, but to refer to the Foxwoods megaplex as a "casino" sells it short. More than that, it is the most complete weekend escape plan east of the Rockies.

Readers of this humble almanac have probably surmised by now that I submit to no cosmic authority higher than Lenny Bruce or John Coltrane, a couple of my cherished boyhood idols. When I look into the sky at night I see nothing but the ivory moon and coruscating stars, no pantheon of bearded superbeings staring in disapproval of my dilatory ways. It's eerily quiet out there….