At first glance, it seemed as if my friend Jenkins was having a pretty good week. After all, it was the high season for golf, his course was in superb shape, and he had been to his club six days in a row.
But Jenkins never reached into his golf bag during those visits. Nor did he step on the practice green or take a swing on the range. Instead, he found himself enduring hours of meetings as he fulfilled various leadership responsibilities at his club. There were admission committee gatherings and sessions with the groups charged with finding a new course superintendent. He attended discussions of the latest club financials with his general manager and kicked around ideas for tournament formats with his golf pro. All told, he had spent about four hours a day – each of those days – working at a retreat that had once been his main place of recreation. And he did not come close to having a good time through any of it.
But that’s often the price one pays for getting involved.
Invariably, it seems noble in the beginning, as clubs are dependent on members volunteering to serve on various committees and boards. And any person with a good sense of citizenship feels compelled at some point to step up. So Jenkins accepted his club president’s offer to join the board.
Over the next few years, he agreed to sit on a couple of club committees. But it didn’t take long for him to sour on the role of conscientious club leader. He quickly learned it can grate like an ex-spouse and sap every bit of pleasure out of a place.
Spending most of his time at the club in meeting rooms was bad enough. Even worse was what happened to Jenkins on those rare occasions he actually got to use the facilities. Like the time a member accosted him during a golf lesson over the placement of the forward tees for an outing the day before– and complained so incessantly that my friend developed a sudden case of the shanks. Or the day a self-professed environmentalist interrupted a birdie putt on 18 to accuse Jenkins of deliberately destroying a nest of swan’s eggs by having the maintenance crew mow an area of overgrown marsh grass – just hours after Jenkins had overseen the successful relocation of the avian abode to nearby cover.
Not surprisingly, my friend pushed his putt and spent the next several days expecting PETA protesters to start picketing his house.
To be sure, there sometimes were humorous scrums that provided more laughs than a “Seinfeld” rerun. Such as the time Jenkins had to chastise a prominent female member for continuously asking a rather buff lifeguard to apply suntan lotion to her back. Then there was the stern sit-down he had with a chum who got so over-lubricated during a Labor Day luau that he dove fully clothed into the shallow end of the club swimming pool and began doing the hula, a Mai Tai in each hand.
But the difficulties of Jenkins’ positions far outweighed any fun he was able to derive from them when at the club. And the gift of getting involved kept giving after he left the grounds.
There were, for example, the early morning phone calls at home from members eager to debate everything from the height of the rough to the price of a chicken salad sandwich. And one Sunday in church a fellow approached him in the communion line to ask why cell phones had been banned at the club. But the worst may have been the way a highly caffeinated distaff golfer verbally assaulted Jenkins’ wife in the produce section of the local supermarket because the club was backing up the starting times for Ladies Day.
It went on that way for several years, during which time Jenkins also received anonymous hate mail in his golf locker and watched at least three longtime friendships dissolve over heated disagreements about club policy. So it was no surprise when he turned down a recent request to renew his term on the board – and add another committee position or two to his résumé.
Sadly, he learned getting out was a lot better than getting involved.
Posted: 11/5/2007
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