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This week's golf porn: the Golfsmith winter catalog
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I read it for the articles, I swear...
When I was a young lad, the Sears Christmas Catalog was all that was holy in the land of fantasy consumption. Back before massive toy stores like Toys R Us, the Sears catalog was the end-all compendium of that which I must have. I would look forward to the Christmas edition with unequaled anticpation.
Once it arrived, I would go through it page by page, reading every description, making note of what each toy did and how it would fit in with my current collection. Then I'd get a marking pen, and go back through and indicate which toys I wanted.
Thirty-three years later, and not much has changed. The Golfsmith winter catalog arrived this weekend, and I've all but taken a magic marker to that which I cannot live without.
It is a simple pleasure, but a meaningful one in my busiest work time of the year. It affords many fantasies, much like the Christmas catalog of old.
There is the overt fantasy, the one they pitch to you on every page: game improvement. And who's game wouldn't get better with a new driver, or one of Hank Haney's chipping nets? I've set score-based equipment goals for myself for quite some time now. I got my new bag the first time I broke 100. I've promised myself a new set of irons when I break 90.
I really thought last year was going to be the year I crested that precipice and started accelerating down into the mid-80's. I had my new irons all picked out, cross-referenced between Golf Digest's Hot List and Golf Magazine's annual club test. Thanks to a flailing short game and the latest rev of equipment announced in the latest little red book, I've got a whole new batch of shafts to fantasize about (that came out wrong, didn't it?).
The more subtle fantasy, however, is actual golf. The catalog doesn't just sell getting better at golf, it sells the whole d4mn game and lifestyle. Right now I'd love to have the time to be able to utilize a few dozen balls and a shag bag, fine tuning my short game for hours on end. I can just imagine what fun it would be to spend my late evenings chipping into a net in my back yard. This is sort of a two-fer, because it brings in the added home ownership fantasy that keeps getting further out of reach.
The winter catalog is more of a teaser, really. The real hot stuff is the aforementioned Hot List, which doesn't come out until spring. What a bonus, the older I get, the more times Christmas comes a year.
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