Swingin’ Dick

Athletic prodigy and cultural icon Dick Bill approaches the game of golf in the same manner he approaches most activities: power-drink into total blackout and ignore dealing with the repercussions the following day. And, quite unexpectedly, it was Dick Bill’s employment of this technique which valiantly led Team Recoil to a spectacular finish at the 2011 Billy’s Lounge Golf Outing last month. What set Team Recoil’s performance apart from its previous “participation” in the annual event was that this pathetic squad of eight drunken assholes – A Team, comprised of Recoil publisher Cliff Frantz, Recoil financer Chris Frantz, Recoil safety officer Dick Bill and pub-owner Frank Lehnon (the latter of whom literally played an entirely different course than the rest of the team, therefore condensing Recoil A Team into a threesome [Dick’s personal favorite]; and B Team, comprised of Team Leader Ira “Klaus” Briggs, Jeff England, Henry Forrest and Pete Denney) – actually finished the entire 18 holes without any personal injury, course damage and/or police involvement. For once, both Recoil Team A and B’s scorecards were not simply covered by large Xs, but actually consisted of a series of scores that, although illegibly written in crayon, never exceeded two digits per hole.

The ever-reliable Dick Bill brought his standard golfing equipment: leather jacket, flak jacket, welding goggles, coal mining helmet, a stolen bucket of range balls, his one-of-a-kind tee (fashioned from the tooth of a grizzly bear he accidentally asphyxiated during an undocumented and best-left-forgotten threesome of another sort), an extendable ball retriever with a PBR can taped to the end of it, an over-under shotgun, and a single golf club – a four iron with its blade painted red – which he wielded with the courage and skill of Gandalf the Grey battling Puff the Magic Dragon for custody of a magical crack rock.

As the heart of Team Recoil, Dick’s pulse was routinely monitored to ensure its irregularity. The action shots were taken during one of the few times there was no Jäger cart nearby.

September 2011