Bob Cramer's Blog

I played in the senior handicapped golf club championship at my fancy-schmancy club this weekend.   I put down my bad right hip on the tournament application and after a short doctor’s consultation was of course immediately accepted.  

While none of this is true, except for the fact that I did finish in the money, my right hip is truly a bit of my Achilles heal.  While thankfully it doesn’t hurt (I gleefully walked 36-holes in oppressive heat over two days), it does cut down my mobility, costing me precious seconds in doing routine things like putting on my sock, tying my Nikes, and doing the good ol’ fashioned exercise, squat thrusts, requiring bending like a baseball catcher.

It has become a little conversation piece around the locker room at the aforementioned fancy-schmancy club.  People seem to buy tickets to watch me coax my Thorlo’s around the big right toe, rock back and forth in a criss-cross, applesauce motion, trying to close the space between where my fingers will reach and where my toes start.  At times it seems like a wide crevasse, the Grand Canyon of space separating cotton and skin.

They even make side bets on exactly how long it will take.  I don’t take that personally (you should hear how I debate politics over there with my dear friends from the other party), but you would think they would cut me in on some of the betting action as I am the main attraction.

Yoga, stretch classes and daily doses of Dona glucosamine pills helps, but sometimes that makes me feel like my dog who also takes the supplement.  One time I ran out of mine and decided to take his. That wasn’t smart.

But let’s face it, we have come to the age where everybody has something and I have this; a hip that doesn’t rock.  Based on what I saw at the golf course this weekend, some of my fellow competitors have much more serious handicaps.  So I thank my lucky stars, sleep with a pillow between my legs, sport the no-sock look and seek out slip on shoes whenever possible.  And don’t talk to me about a hip replacement; I plan on keeping the original.