I always thought those people who proclaimed walking was the only real way to play golf were tiresome. Actually, I still do. I don’t take seriously those people who are always teling you the way things ought to be done.

That hasn’t changed. If I want to exercise, I’ll play basketball. If I want to play golf, I’ll take a cart.

But, my atittiude toward walking around a golf course has changed in another way, but not because it makes me more in tune with the game or any of that nonsense.

I went to Ireland and Scotland recently and, of course, you have to walk over there. If you don’t, you’ll be berated, which is OK because you can’t understand what they’re saying anyway.

In any case, I walked the courses for about eight or nine days straight. All during this time I was eating like a Herculean pig: “full Scottish” or “full Irish” breakfasts, which always includes seven types of meat and a bucket of butter. For special requests, they’ll sprinkle additional cholesterol over your bacon. On top of all that, I was snorfing down huge dinners always followed by that great pastry they have over there.

Instead of gaining weight, darned if I didn’t lose at least 10 pounds. I wasn’t trying to; it was just a result of all that walking.

Now, there’s still a lot of fat people in Ireland and Scotland – though not as many as in the U.S. – and some of them are on the golf coruse, but not many.

So there it is – walk the courses when you play golf because of the great exercise and weight loss, not because you’ll somehow get all inspired and averything and somehow start understanding what the hell it is Pete Dye is trying to do.

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