27 August 2021

golfing in the end times...

 I've decided to watch The Walking Dead from the start again with the final season starting this week. I'm well over 2 Seasons in, and quite an awesome thing occurred to me: I need to work on my golf game.

I know it's not where everyone's mind goes to while getting re-acquainted with the Governor and his Woodbury gang, but in one episode, he has set up a tee off the top of their wall, and whacking balls out into the street and at any oncoming walkers, and it occurs to me that after the end times come, and the breakdown of society (whether it be zombie-caused or Super-Flu or something else totally unexpected), we are all going to have a lot of time on our hands.

I know leisure time is not what we generally see depicted when people tell apocalyptic stories - it's all busy busy gather gather fightfightfight. Because activity is helpful to narrative, however in reality, once you're holed up somewhere there will be a fair amount of down time.

The Governor's impromptu driving range is hardly the first golf go-round for a zombie-infested world. When we meet Bill Murray in Zombieland he's just come back from "playing nine holes on the Riviera". Robert Neville, when he waits each day at noon at the Manhattan piers opts to do some practice driving rather than playing a full round (although I'm not sure there actually are any golf courses on Manhattan Island where he is stranded).

And it's not just zombie-ravaged worlds where golf seems like a good hobby to take up: even Hugo sets up a short course on their island on Lost. It's Hugo's course that I modeled the proposed Turtle Greens Golf & Beer Club (or TGBG) after in the Hellwaukee setting - after everything fell apart, it's a great place to unwind.

Evidently, my prescience on this issue had spawned an upcoming hit video game on this very theme.  I'm realizing that this post may need to become a perpetual post, as I think I have run out of examples of golf in apocalypses, so I'll add them as I find them, and please let me know what I haven't thought of yet!