Golf wasn’t fun any more.

Michael Cohen and Matt at Lakeside. “It is a fine thing,” wrote the 14th-century Japanese poet and essayist Yoshida Kenko, “when a man who thoroughly understands a subject is unwilling to open his mouth.”

Suddenly golf seemed pointless. Why play it if it didn’t provide escape from thinking about work? I walked off the golf course and didn’t play again for 15 years.

A ROUND WITH FRIENDS BY MICHAEL COHEN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 24

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One day, tired of the cheap, plastic feel of the Top-Flite golf balls I had been playing, I told my long-time golfing partner, Richard Steiger, that I had decided to go back to playing with a wound ball. “Was you using a sqwuawe one?” Richard came back, without a pause and in his best Elmer Fudd accent. Richard’s quickness on the uptake is legendary among his friends, and he is often at his funny, cheery best on the golf course. He has the most inventive excuses for missed shots that I have ever heard. One summer day I watched him attempt to hit a shot from …