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Playing Golf with Llamas

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 28, 2025| 3 Comments »

Photo: Jim Davis for the Globe.
Globe reporter Matt Porter played three holes with llamas Yowie (left) and Elmer (right) at the Mountain View Grand Resort & Spa. For $150 plus green fee, you can have a llama or two join your group.

Here’s a new angle on an old sport: golf with llamas. Not sure this would work for a serious golfer, but it makes a change.

Matt Porter went to New Hampshire to report the story for the Boston Globe.

“Lloyd Van Horn, a general manager, felt business could use a boost. So he decided to promote a few prospects who were down on the farm. Finnegan, his scouting staff told him, should be the first rookie up. Teammates Elmer and Yowie also were ready for a new challenge. Word was all three had shown well on the back fields.

“And yet the call-up was a tough adjustment. Finnegan reached the big club and tried on his equipment. It fit perfectly, but he felt awkward, for he had never played the sport. Same with the other two. None had any clue what they were doing.

“The staff pressed on. After a few training sessions, Finnegan, Elmer, and Yowie became more than just llamas. They were llama caddies.

“[Van Horn] may be on to something with the newest promotion at his Mountain View Grand Resort and Spa. For $150 plus green fee, you can remove all the seriousness from your round by having a llama or two join your group. …

“Llamas cannot swing a club, so they can’t play with you. They don’t speak — they’ll grunt, bray, or cry — so they offer no course knowledge. But they are pack animals, American descendants of those who hauled gear and people through the Andes, so toting clubs is no sweat.

“In theory, they make for fine caddies. As long as you tip them well. And by tip, I mean offer several handfuls of alfalfa pellets. That was how Elmer and Yowie took a liking to me before I played a rain-soaked few holes with them in late July. …

“I had Elmer on the bag, while Yowie, his bonded mate, trotted alongside us. I chose six clubs for the three holes, Nos. 7, 8, and 9, and carefully slid them into Elmer’s custom leather saddle. After a few neck rubs — not the head, advised farm manager Henry Bogdanowicz — of Elmer’s soft, summer-cut fur, and some one-sided chit-chat, they were ready to watch us tee off.

“Golf, by its nature, encourages a long, lazy look at the world. I’m all for that. Whether playing the game or reporting on it in the last two decades, I have gazed upon many animals while hitting one good shot out of every few that I take.

“In South Florida, I saw iguanas and geckos, plentiful there as are squirrels and chipmunks here, skittering in the scorching heat. I have locked eyes with alligators, and let them break the stare. …

“In New England, these clubs of mine have chunked a deep divot or two, but if the post-swing view is a hawk circling over a hillside, or a heron gliding low over the marsh, I’m all the happier.

“Up here in the Presidential Range, course superintendent Kalen Whitney said llamas are welcome to walk his course. They will nibble on the fringes, but unlike goats, they won’t tear grass from the roots. They have soft toes, so they won’t damage the fairways. Those large, gorgeous eyes can look in two directions at once, which could help a hacker like me track my wayward flights.

“Whitney is happy to deal with them instead of porcupines and raccoons, and groundhogs that make him consider reaching for [explosives]. Last year, a moose made a mess of one of the Mountain View Grand’s postage-stamp greens. … A mama bear and her cubs crossed the property a few weeks ago, and were no doubt given the same respect you would gators in any number. …

“The umbrella I carried to the first tee was perceived by Elmer to be a threat. I decided I’d rather be wet than test our friendship. When he sat down on the job, I didn’t mention it.

“Try chatting up a llama caddie and you might be answered with a ‘HAWWWW???’ … If seriously offended, ‘they can scream,’ Bogdanowicz noted. …

“Happily, most of what was heard that day in the mountains was the chirping of the birdies. Before we called it a washout, I played pretty well. Must have been the companionship of the llama.”

More at the Globe, here.

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If She Says She’ll End Child Marriages …

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 24, 2020| 20 Comments »

… I have to believe she will do it. She’s a miracle girl.

Let me begin at the beginning. Almost exactly three years ago, I wrote a blog post about a girl from a deeply conservative family in Herat, Afghanistan, who secretly took up golf and opened a whole new world for herself.

It was through the radio show “Only a Game” that I learned about Shagufa Habibi and how she had gotten herself to a golf competition in Bangladesh and then bravely applied to college there and matriculated without the knowledge of either her family or the abusive husband she was forced to marry at age 16.

Fast forward to early 2020, when I get a message at the blog from Shagufa thanking me for my 2017 post. Turns out she now lives half an hour away from me in Massachusetts.

This is a young woman who makes things happen for herself. After a few emails, she asks if I could help her prepare for the graduate record exam (GRE). She wants to go to grad school to acquire the tools she needs to set up a South Asia foundation for girls in sports that will empower them to break free of traditional constraints and dangers.

Shagufa’s vision combines access to sports (which poor South Asian girls usually lack), education in skills such as leadership, and a stipend to help the young women financially so their impoverished families will be less pressed to marry them off for the bride price.

I know. Pretty far out, huh?

But when I consider all she has already done, including being accepted for fall 2021 at a top grad school and awarded a generous scholarship, I know she will do what she sets out to do.

But here’s the rub. Despite the generosity of the scholarship from Brandeis, Shagufa still can’t afford to go. She has no family here to help her, and they definitely do not support her goals. In fact, if she returned to Afghanistan right now, her life would be in danger because she is regarded as having “dishonored” her family.

Read her description of the situation and her ambitious dream in the GoFundMe link below and consider whether you want to help her with a donation or just cheer her on. Maybe you’d be up for telling someone you know about her.

I have been speaking with Shagufa via What’s App once or twice a week since we met. We alternate between work on advanced vocabulary (you wouldn’t believe how she studies and retains the most difficult words!) and GRE-type essay topics, because even though Brandeis waived the GRE for now, Shagufa still plans to take it. Often we spend part of the hour just chatting and learning about each other’s culture.

The GoFundMe site for Shagufa is here.

Shagufa Habibi, Afghan miracle worker.

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The Language of Retirement Studied

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 17, 2018| 5 Comments »

030315-Morfar-has-a-cake

Retirement means different things to different people. Some people can hardly wait to start traveling or playing golf more. I was always afraid of it — afraid that I would be bored, afraid that I would stop learning, afraid that without the structure of a work schedule I wouldn’t be able to remember what day it was.

In the event, it hasn’t been too bad.

Recognizing the variety of attitudes people have about retirement, the American Association of Retired People (AARP) commissioned a study for use by financial planners (varied attitudes do affect financial planning). I got a kick out of the recommendation about tempering people’s belief in a future consisting of walks on the beach and endless golf. After all, one really changes as time marches on. And I’m particularly aware of that today as my lack of attention entering an on-ramp was a bit responsible for getting my car rear-ended.

Chaiwoo Lee, Ph.D., and Joseph F. Coughlin, Ph.D., have now published “Describing Life After Career: Demographic Differences in the Language and Imagery of Retirement” at the Journal of Financial Planning. I removed references to prior research, but you can find all that here.

“This empirical study was conducted to understand people’s perspectives toward retirement and to describe how views differ between people of various characteristics.

  • “Verbal and visual representations regarding life after completion of a career were collected online from 990 adults in the U.S. to uncover underlying ideas and map key concepts.
  • “A small number of words and features were reported in descriptions of retirement, indicating both an ambiguity and limitation in relating their current selves to possible future states.
  • “Perceptions of retirement were generally positive, and a sense of optimism was evident across different segments.
  • “Some demographic differences were found in thoughts on life after career. For example, people making less than $25,000 a year used fewer positive words and more negative words [editorial comment: No kidding!]; younger adults’ images were more likely to address financial well-being; and older adults and those with higher incomes provided more images related to travel.
  • “Using the results of this analysis, financial planners can better address clients’ emotional needs, rather than solely focusing on rational financial planning. …

“The ambiguity and limited vocabulary associated with retirement might be explained [in part by the fact that] participants were asked to think about an intangible future state, their answers may have been bounded to a small, abstract, and coherent set of words. The observation that younger respondents used more vague and abstract words, while older respondents used more specific words, further supports this explanation.

“The finding can also be explained with portrayals of retirement in public media. Ekerdt and Clark observed that the majority of retirement advertisements did not depict visual images, and the small portion that did focused on leisure and freedom. Such limitation in consumers’ exposure to related concepts may have impacted the results, where ‘relax’ and ‘travel’ were among the most frequent.

“People were generally optimistic about life after completion of career. Most of the words were positive, and images showing life after career were generally more positive compared to images representing today. A possible explanation can come from the positivity bias, or the Pollyanna Hypothesis, which describes that people universally tend to use positive words more frequently and diversely than negative words. It is also aligned with past research that found people to be more optimistic about the distant future compared to the imminent future.

“The majority of such positive words and images addressed emotional values, suggesting a higher emphasis on pursuing emotional fulfillment in retirement. This may be due to related media that mostly convey positive contents around leisure, freedom, personal pursuit, and financial security.

“Results showed some differences in how different segments view life after career. For example, older participants, suburban and rural residents, married people, and men provided more words addressing physical values compared to their counterparts. … The positivity gap between the present and the future were greater among younger participants. However, while images from the younger participants showed wealth, family, and accomplishments with a positive lens, their descriptions lacked in how they plan to reach the ideal future state. [No kidding!]

“These findings have practical implications for the evolving roles of financial planners as curators, educators, and co-creators of retirement. The limited vocabulary and imagery imply that clients may not have a clear, or realistic, vision of retirement. Results suggest that planners may have a new role as curators of possible lifestyles for clients to consider and plan for.

“Respondents reflected inordinately high positivity about their future retired selves. Financial planners may not want to dissuade clients of looking optimistically, but they may find an important role as educators in tempering popular images of beach walks and green fairways with candid discussions of possible futures that may be costly and less positive.” Ha, ha, that’s for sure!

Nevertheless, I thought it was interesting that people think about retirement so differently.

More here.

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Golf Gives Afghan Girl a Better Life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 20, 2017| 6 Comments »


Photo: Only a Game
Golf was the entree to a freer world for this Afghan girl.

We hear a lot of stories about disadvantaged kids who rise above their circumstances by becoming stars — at sports, say, or ballet.

But sometimes the reason those pursuits mark a turning point is simply that they open up a different world. They show the kid that there are different worlds. The kids don’t have to become stars to benefit.

Here is a story about an Afghan girl whose path to breaking free involved golf. Martin Kessler tells the story at the radio show Only a Game.

“Before it was her turn to take the shot that could change her life, Shagufa Habibi remembers being uncomfortably warm.

“Shagufa and 11 of her teammates were standing on a soccer pitch in Herat, Afghanistan. Herat doesn’t have a golf course, so this soccer pitch was the best her team could do. It was a summer afternoon — the hottest part of the day in a city where temperatures can exceed 100 degrees. It was the only time locals would let the women have the field.

“Shagufa wore a long black dress and a head scarf. She carried a wooden club.

“Each of the women had one chance to hit a ball at a target at the other end of the field. Whoever got closest would get to attend a golf tournament in Bangladesh.”

Shagufa amazed herself. Her shot was the best.

“Shagufa Habibi was born in 1995, the youngest child in a large family. Her parents are illiterate. Her dad made his living selling dried fruit — until his hand was mangled in a terrorist attack at a local mosque. …

“When Shagufa was a young girl, the Taliban controlled Afghanistan. Girls couldn’t go to school, so Shagufa and her seven sisters stayed home. Shagufa was allowed outside just once a day, to help her mom buy food. …

“In 2001, the Taliban lost control of the government, and schools opened for girls. Shagufa’s friends started attending. But Shagufa’s father wouldn’t have it – he believed women belonged at home.

“So Shagufa and her sisters devised a plan. After their father left the house in the morning, they would sneak off to school.”

Over the next few years, there were conflicts with Shagufa’s conservative father, an unwanted marriage to an older man, separation, depression, and a decision to embrace sports at school. Sports were so freeing.

” ‘I was forgetting everything,’ Shagufa says. ‘I’m just free. And this ball was giving me more motivation for my future to be so optimistic.’

When Shagufa went to that golf tournament, she was “amazed by what she saw in Bangladesh. Girls weren’t wearing long dresses or scarves. She says women looked so free.

“On the final day of the trip, the Afghan embassy hosted their players for a lunch. The conversation turned to education. Shagufa had a question – but she wasn’t sure she should speak up.

” ‘Should I ask them or not, should I ask them or not?’ Shagufa remembers thinking. ‘Then I said, “Would you tell me, please: how is the education in Bangladesh? And is it possible for me, somehow, I come and do my education?” ‘ ”

Read what happened next at WBUR’s Only a Game, here.

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The Invention of Golf

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 12, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Who came up with the game of golf first? Wikipedia has so many answers that it amounts to no answer, but let’s give it a shot.

This entry is for my dentist, who loves golf and who was kind enough to say that Suzanne’s Mom’s Blog makes him think of floating down a peaceful stream after all the anxious hammering from the media.

“A golf-like game is recorded as taking place on 26 February 1297, in the Netherlands, in a city called Loenen aan de Vecht, where the Dutch played a game with a stick and leather ball. The winner was whoever hit the ball with the least number of strokes into a target several hundred yards away. Some scholars argue that this game of putting a small ball in a hole in the ground using golf clubs was also played in 17th-century Netherlands and that this predates the game in Scotland. There are also other reports of earlier accounts of a golf-like game from continental Europe.

“In April 2005, new evidence re-invigorated the debate concerning the origins of golf. Recent evidence unearthed by Prof. Ling Hongling of Lanzhou University suggests that a game similar to modern-day golf was played in China since Southern Tang Dynasty, 500 years before golf was first mentioned in Scotland.

“Dōngxuān Records (Chinese: 東軒錄) from the Song Dynasty (960–1279) describes a game called chuíwán (捶丸) and also includes drawings of the game.It was played with 10 clubs including a cuanbang, pubang, and shaobang, which are comparable to a driver, two-wood, and three-wood. Clubs were inlaid with jade and gold, suggesting chuíwán was for the wealthy. Chinese archive includes references to a Southern Tang official who asked his daughter to dig holes as a target. Ling suggested chuíwán was exported to Europe and then Scotland by Mongolian travelers in the late Middle Ages.

“The modern game of golf is generally considered to be a Scottish invention. A spokesman for the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, one of the oldest Scottish golf organizations, said ‘Stick and ball games have been around for many centuries, but golf as we know it today, played over 18 holes, clearly originated in Scotland.’ ” More.

The Ming emperor in the picture below seems more like he’s playing croquet. I’m not sure how today’s golfers would react to the idea that their game started as croquet.

Image:  Ming_Emperor_Xuande_playing_Golf.jpg

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