Birdies For Him, Bargains For Her

On paper, it seemed like the ultimate oxymoron: Golf cruise.

Golf cruise? What, you roll around the high seas aboard the QM2 and whack multi-colored golf balls off the deck in the direction of Casablanca or Carnoustie? Or maybe you play putt-putt all day on the mezzanine deck? Or watch instructional videos as some retired pro from Bogey Gulch Dunes explains the nuances of the flying elbow?

So, when the wife suggested that we ought to take a golf cruise, I gave her a quick, “I’d rather take up tennis.”

She nastily called me a sick-o
golfaholic, and not just because at that very moment I was TiVo-ing the Pro-Am practice round of the ATT/Cingular/Bell South/Bell West/Verizon/Pac Bell Quad Cities Classic Festival Invitational. Then she threw a brochure from Kalos Golf at me.

“Check this out,” she said, standing there and blocking my view of Joe Ogilvie hitting a left-handed pitchout from behind a weeping willow alongside the 5th green. “The Danube River Golf Cruise on Page 4 is for you. And for us. You get to play your stupid golf in places you’ve never been, and I get to see some great cities, visit historic museums, hear the Vienna Boys Choir, do some shopping, have lunch with some leftover Hapsburgs—plus we have a few cold ones at the Hofbrau Haus in Munich and finally meet some people who know there’s more to life than curing your case of the shanks.”

Read the entire article in the November 2007 issue