On the lam with Mrs. Murphy - Brief Article

Golf Digest, Feb, 2000

On vacation with my family in Florida last winter, I managed to qualify for my wife's stringent Golf Release program.

I had done four days of hard time at two beaches, a nature preserve, a G-rated movie, and a seashell museum, and as a reward I had been granted 18 holes of unsupervised play on the golf course at the resort where we were staying. For the next six hours I was, relatively speaking, a free man.

I had no trouble getting on the course. Even at a crowded resort you can be certain that at least once per hour some golfing husband with a tee time will violate the terms of his parole and be returned to family confinement, creating an opening for a single. The only problem is that you, as an unattached player, invariably end up playing with strangers, whose handicaps are of uncertain provenance, and often in less than a full foursome. So how can you gamble?

That was the dilemma I faced last winter. The starter grouped me with two dentists from Ohio. (They were supposed to be playing with friends from home, but the missing pair had been captured the night before in an ill-considered escape attempt.) Fortunately, my father had taught me the perfect game for just this situation. It's called Mrs. Murphy.

In my dad's game, you turn a threesome into a foursome by adding an imaginary fourth player, a kindly old grandmother named Mrs. Murphy. She wears a big hat and a long skirt, and she can't hit the ball more than 130 yards, but she still manages to shoot par on every hole. Each of the three non-imaginary players gets Mrs. Murphy as a partner in one six-hole best-ball match against the other two, who play as a team, and everybody plays off Mrs. Murphy's handicap, which is zero. The key to doing well is to take advantage of the old lady's rock-steady play during the six holes when she is your partner, by aggressively gunning for net birdies. Sandbagging questions are moot, since everybody gets everybody else as a partner for six holes.

Anyway, it's a good game for three people, no matter where you are or who you're playing with. I had a big smile on my face that evening when I returned to our villa, a few minutes before my curfew.