Ron White Explains Golf to Joe Rogan

I'm just terrified. Terrified. I'll be one of you guys out there every day. Yeah, right. No. I know, I have friends that go out every day. You, you're one of them. I know other guys. I do too. Every time they get a chance. The guys I play with go every day. Yeah, if you can pull it off, it's like a gentleman's leisure way of life. Yeah, you know, it's always back when I was a club comic. That's how I killed the day. I started playing when I was like 13. And so I would just go to a golf course and, you know, she moves out a deal where I could play golf there every day. And you ain't jack shit to do during the day in clubs for 15 years. Right. You know, I'm doing 48 weeks. Right. And making 500 a week or whatever it was when I started, you know, as a middle act out there. You had to work them all, you know, because you needed the $500 real bad. Yeah. Do you ever look back on those days with like, do you reminisce? You know what? It's a good thing for me that this was the path of least resistance. Right. Because if it wasn't for stand up, I'd be a regional marijuana distributor in the state of Texas in an industry that has some questions coming up. So, you know, I did it because I loved it. But it was also fun, fun, fun, you know, and it was easy for me. I didn't mind the travel because I like drinking free in bars and, you know, practicing this art form. But I never, ever thought it would, you know, go where it went. You know, if people ask me, how do I do that? I'm like, I don't know how I did it. That was right there when it happened. I have no idea. I barely remember it. Did you live in Mexico for a little bit? Mm-hmm. In fact, there's a really, really, really good PGA player from the same town I lived in that played golf every day where I played golf. I didn't know him. He was young. He would have been a, let's figure it out. He would have been. He was like 21 or two now. And he was in the heat for this tournament. Abraham Anser is his name. And born in Reynos in Mexico. Well, he was actually born across the border because there's no wall, right? They can just come over there and have a baby. But his parents must have been fairly well off for that part of the world, you know, to do that. But he's great. He's great. And I dig it because, you know, I see where he came from exactly, you know. It's where my son made a hole-in-one when he was eight years old. He was on the Compessary Golf Course in Reynos in Mexico. How many holes-in-ones does a guy get in his career? I've had one. My son's had one. You know, like the big guys, maybe 16, 17, 18. In a whole lifetime. There's no equivalent in other sports. Yeah, yeah. A hole-in-one, there's no equivalent in any other game. There was a double eagle. What's that mean? That's where you make a two on a par five. So that means you sunk a hole from 262 yards out. You made it on the second shot. Oh, wow. Very rare. Very rare. So a double eagle slightly less rare than a hole-in-one. Way less rare. Way less rare. Because that par three could be as much as 125 yards. Most of them aren't made on the longer 185. But you guys like me aren't hitting the par three from 235. Yeah, if you think about it, I guess there's nothing like that in any other game or sport. Hole-in-one. Where it just works out perfect. Maybe a walk-off Grand Slam. Yeah, maybe. Those happen way more often. Way more often than a hole-in-one. For how many people try it? You don't get many chances at that Grand Slam. But for how many people try it, how many people make? Pitch at you. You're definitely going to hit the ball. It's right there. That golf ball is just right there. You might not have a good lay, but you're definitely going to hit it. Am I saying all the right shape? Well, if you hit a foul ball, you've got to play it. You've got to go find it. Yeah. It just seems like the odds of you getting a hole-in-one must be off the charts. It must be like 1,001 or 100,001 or something crazy like that. Yeah, maybe. I mean, most people maybe never. Yeah, what do you think the numbers would be? What are the odds? Oh, fuck, jeez. A hole-in-one. I didn't graduate from high school. Some motherfucker figured it out. Okay, let's throw the math to those carb guys. Those science dudes. They were killing me. What do you guess? My son made one the 11th day he ever played golf in front of me and his coach and his best friend. That's incredible. And it was a 95-yard part three from the regular women's C's with a US Kids Club driver that I still have. Wow. And it just straight at the hall, he had a great golf swing. Kids, if you treat him or his golf coach was good, even though they spoke a different language, they understood golf and how to teach him that swing. And so he was good at it. And he didn't really play much anymore. He did a nice thing, but it landed 10 yards in front of the pen, bounced twice, rolled right in the middle of the cup. And at this point, I've been playing golf for 30 years and I'd never done it. And so it was a big deal. And he got his name in a couple of newspapers and they mentioned him on the Golf Channel. He was the youngest kid that had made a hole-in-one that year that was registered. And then like two weeks later, a six-year-old did it. So I was like, uh, you know, they took all the joy out of it for him. That was one kid. He was lucky. He hit it, his went on and off a mailbox. Yours went on and off a perfect golf shot. Golf shot, it's a hard thing to learn, right? That swing? Yeah. You know, it is a really difficult thing to do. And it's just a thing that you learn how to aim. It's like a bow and arrow, you know, even though that's a little easier to teach somebody how to do, but to do it exceptionally well, you know, it's not easy to do. Or a slingshot, how to get the power at the right spot or even fly casting. It's not power everywhere. It's power in the right spot that does it. Yeah, that whip of the wrist. Yeah. And so it's hard to do, but it's fun to do. Once you learn how to hit a good solid golf shot and the ball comes off the way it's supposed to, it's bliss. I'll tell you something. Here's a story about golf. My best friend who passed away died of brain cancer. So they had done a surgery on him that had just down scars down his neck, down his back where they were trying to harv. They were, you know, they were shooting it. You know, he was already, you know, he had a, he should have had a death sentence. We just weren't saying it out loud. And we were at my place in Montecito and we had thrown everything at this cancer, but the kitchen sink and we were looking for the fucking sink. And and then if Steve goes, let's go to the golf course, man, he goes, I'll help you read some putts. He was always good at reading putts. We've been playing golf since we were a little kid. We'd known each other since we were six. And so when I got my clubs out, his clubs were in there too. So he reaches into his pill bag and takes another pill, pain pill and said, I'll throw mine on there. You know, I might take a swing. So and he did off the first tee box and it hurt and it wasn't very good. And and he just winced and but every once in a while he'd put a ball down and he'd hit it and we get to the 17th holes, part 367 yards, a long hole. And he hits his drive with his driver and and it fades off a little bit as the rabbit. He caught it. And so it was up kind of by the were about by the green, but the pin was kind of on the other side. And I was like, great. You know, and so he hits a chip shot, which is easier to do. And he's always really been good at that. And he hits it to about seven feet. And I'm like, oh my God, he's got a seven foot putt for a par and he makes it. And this dying man gets the biggest grin I've ever seen in my life. And it was crooked because his muscles had been cut, but it just brought him pure fucking joy. And then I got to see the last par he ever made. So and I got to witness that, you know, joy. So that's pretty awesome. That's pretty cool. That's golf, you know, you know, if it means that much to you, you know, it can make you feel better if you do it right. I get it. I think it's like in any difficult game like that. I guess it'd be like that with a lot of games, but there's something about golf too that it's very physical and you're doing it outside. It's one of the only things you have to do outside, you know, other than I guess you could do tennis inside like really, right? But golf is a fucking giant ass course. You're going to be walking. You got to go outside.