Peddling beer on the golf course is bad business for people serious about the game.
Gov. John Baldacci has confirmed what I’ve long suspected: Golf is not really a sport.

That’s right. Last week, the governor made it official by establishing the legal right – based upon economic necessity – to sell beer to golfers while they golf.

The governor signed this bill to make us more competitive … no, not in golf, dummy – in business.

That’s right. Baldacci couched this as a jobs-and-business bill, and I for one say it’s comforting to know that he has finally found an economic-development strategy.

Golf course owners have argued for two years that they were losing the swig-and-swing golfers to New Hampshire. Now, portable beer wagons will roam Maine’s courses in search of parched, dehydrated golfers.

The possibilities here are endless: Maybe we can sell little belt holsters where golfers can place their beer can while they take a shot. Maybe golf carts will come with a little pony keg mounted next to the gas tank.

But, in all honesty, if people can drink and golf at the same time, can we continue to call it a sport?

Granted, the words “golf” and “sport” have had an increasingly tenuous relationship, and I now realize that I witnessed the beginning of the end about 40 years ago when, as a boy, I worked as a caddie.

Alcova Country Club in my hometown seemed to cater to newly wealthy Italian guys in the construction business trying on the trappings of the wealth. Most had never worn a tie before, so the whole golf culture was still a little foreign to them.

But the newly constructed “refreshment stand” between the ninth and 10th holes (a small, concrete block shed with a bar) was a big hit. There I witnessed, over a couple of summers, the transition from stone-cold sober to fully “refreshed” golfers.

My conclusion: A couple of beers may improve a guy’s confidence, but they don’t improve his game, attitude or treatment of his caddie.

After a few beers before the 10th, golfers who had been muttering occasional damns under their breath often became raging, foul-mouthed dragons.

Guys who could barely see the ball in front of them couldn’t understand why some 13-year-old kid couldn’t find shots splayed in ever-widening arcs away from the tee.

Suddenly, grown men were cursing expensive drivers, flinging putters into ponds and bending irons around trees – literally.

Doing 18 holes with a foursome of men often became a nightmare of anger, fear and verbal abuse, mostly heaped upon me, their caddie.

It got so bad that I would switch places with another caddie just to get a foursome of women. Sure, they played slowly, but they had fun. What’s more, their bags were lighter and they bought their caddie drinks – albeit the non-alcoholic variety – between rounds.

And there was always the intriguing possibility that some older woman, a la Ann Bancroft in “The Graduate,” would try to seduce me behind the clubhouse. The boozing male golfers I knew were more likely to beat me senseless and leave me for dead there.

Finally, when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, Alcova introduced carts and dispensed with caddies.

The advent of the cart, however, relieved players from putting forth even the slightest exertion while golfing. Soon people could breeze through 36 or 54 holes in a day. A man I knew boasted of doing 108 holes of golf the weekend before he went in for bypass surgery.

With the governor’s decision last week, we’ve gone past the point of pretending. Is there any other true sport in which beer has supplanted Gatorade?

Do marathon runners grab little cups of Budweiser along the race route?

Do football teams down cases of Colt 45 during halftime?

Do NASCAR drivers grab six-packs of Old Milwaukee during pit stops?

Of course not.

Golf, apparently, is becoming like fishing: an activity desperately trying to define itself as a “sport” even with one hand on the rod and the other on a cold can of beer.

Any physical activity you can perform between sips of beer is definitely not headed for the Olympics.

But the golf course owners of Maine have won the day, and along with it the legal right to peddle beer to people driving carts near water, carrying “clubs” and firing tee shots near highways, houses and other people.

Like they say in the beer commercials, it doesn’t get any better than this – at least not for the liability lawyers.
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