Wednesday, February 2, 2005

Guys on Ice Guys find the goofiest ways to have fun in winter. Take ice fishing, for instance. It used to be a sport practiced by old men with too much time on their hands and no canasta partners. Now, it has become a respectable high-tech sport. To do it right, you need a portable shelter, propane heater, fancy jigging rods, freeze-proof tip-ups and a $300 piece of electronic equipment so sensitive you can watch your bait drop down to the fish! More on that game later... Partly due to the high-tech nature of ice fishing (and partly because guys are just guys), guys have turned to other goofy winter sports. Like snow golf. All you need is a frozen lake, a snowplow, an ice auger (part of that high-tech ice fishing gear...) and 9 bicycle flags. You plow 9 tee boxes, fairways and "greens" (spray-painted green with food coloring) and invite a hundred of your dumbest friends. Sort of a Wisconsin version of "build it and they will come see how dumb it is..." Divide your friends up into teams of four (foursomes, if you will), give each player a yellow tennis ball and a golf club and turn 'em loose. That's what happened last Saturday at Tittle Lake, just north of Long Lake near Dundee. Benson's Hide-A-Way (which just happens to be southeast Wisconsin's UFO headquarters (but that's another story) becomes the clubhouse for the Long Lake Fishing Club's annual Snow Golf outing for a day. I joined Rick Piraino, Denny Koprowski and Dave Teuteberg to play a round Saturday afternoon. The accompanying photo shows Rick (l) and Denny watching as a big northern pike leaps out of the 8th hole to grab Dave's putt. That move cost Dave two strokes and just might have cost us the match (if we hadn't muffed a couple dozen shots earlier in the round). Anyway, we left after we got back to Benson's and learned that our score of 198 was not going to place in the money. In our first year in this event back in 2000, Rick and I, along with George Jenich and Bruce Cameron placed second, so Rick, George and I have been coming back every year since to try to win it. Bruce was the only smart one [^] he quit after leading our team to second place the first year. This year, George had a conference in Miami as a convenient excuse to miss the BIG GIG. He had better come home with a tan, is all I can say. Rick quickly rounded up Denny, who has played with us before, and Dave, who says he will do it again (I'll believe it when I see his name on our card again next January.), and we had our foursome. If you've got a hankering to try this game (and that's what it takes, a serious hankering, or maybe a six pack), there are a couple more golf outings on ice this winter. The next one I know of is at Friess Lake, out by Holy Hill, on Sunday, Feb. 13. If you want to play, contact Ted Willet by Feb. 9 at 262-512-1100. That outing includes a fishing tournament, so put a couple tip-ups in your golf bag and have a go at it. Who knows, we might even see you there. That is, if Dave can get his ball back from that darned pike. Later... 9:28:54 PM    comment []