The Sport of Gentlemen

The morning mist is rising off the manicured expanse of lawns, swirling tendrils cloak the dyads of the dawn and from each glade and glen the denizens of old-growth forest sing paeans to herald Helios.

Yet how soon such idyll can to terror transformed be, for contemplation sublime shall give way soon to mortal strife, and James Fiumara's foursome anon shall struggle for their life when tricksome Pan a plan doth weave.

Strolling to the sixteenth, Fiumara, Downing, Cosentino sensed the rushing dread 'ere fully realizing Atropos had cut their thread for playing at their leisure. Even idle Goff looked up as swiftly from behind came the whizzing spheres of doom!

"I'm about to hit my ball and I hear a thooomp," Fiumara said. Then another. And a third. Three times a ball whizzed past them.

They never heard "Fore!"—the traditional warning when a ball is inadvertently hit near another golfer. They got angry. But nothing more than shouts came of it—at least until they finished the hole.

Courtesy, it must said, defines the eldritch sport of Lords and clannish Kings of yore. One never takes advantage of a turn'd back to prime the lie or deftly drop the score. Yet on this day, a week ago, four Hudson horsemen were possessed by demons unknown to the game and to their shame assigned the blame upon the dawdling group that went before.

"You talking to me?" Fiumara said he asked the man. The man was waving a club, they said.

The Muse of discourse fled the dale and at the seven-and-tenth tee Mars raised his awesome crimson shield to rule the day in shades of red.

As they got close, Fiumara said he pushed the club away. He said it was an iron but Cosentino remembers it as a 3-wood. Fiumara, who is 5 feet 3, said the 6-foot-2 man punched him in the face.

Our dyads flee in trembling fright, the minstrels in their leafy perch fall silent in dismay. Such ignominy and woe betide this at once the mannered art hath fallen oh so sadly low. The forest trickster Pan draws close for 'tis his flute he would repair in metaphor, as 'tis said a thing minute can in a word grow princely tall; yet at the tee Cosentino is reduced instead to gutta-percha, and at that, very small:

Cosentino said he rushed to break it up and the man turned on him like he was a golf ball.

"He turned around and just swung at me as hard as he could," Cosentino said.

The club's shaft hit his back and broke in three.

Then all enjoined the fray; divots meant for cloven wedge are roughly lifted from green Gaia's cheek by churning knees and elbows—O noble Groundsman thou art stunned to behold that which light of day should on the fairway never see.

The tussle continued momentarily with everyone rolling around together on the ground, a sheriff's report states. Eventually, the group said, it subdued the man from the trailing group.

Villain enchained, the tide of war swiftly celebration brings. As sherrif's deputies arrive the question hangs and in proud answer a solitary chickadee with eyes of jet so loudly sings—a trumpet to begin the game anew!

Then they finished their rounds ... According to the Sheriff's Office report, the case was referred to the State Attorney's Office for further investigation. As much as each member of the foursome said he had trouble remembering specific parts of what happened, Fiumara, Cosentino and Downing all remember taking pars on the 18th hole.

Exeunt omnes, seize the day and rise above the morning fray to claim your laurels woven of birdie and par; at clubhouse quaff libations potent. Ruddy faces then bemarch to SUV and pick-up truck to place a capstone on the spoils of thy mighty triumph. Somewhere in a darkened grove Pan leads his charges in a rill and doth the light glint seeming strange from his magic pipes? A trio of those rousing reeds now gleam "Callaway" along their length in snapped-off bits of stainless steel.