Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Golfers

All Hat, No Birdies

           This might be old news at this point, but country music has found golf.  Or should I say that golf has gone country.  That's right, even rednecks, er, good ol’ boys, have found the game.  (Of course, those necks are now red from walking the course, not plowing the fields.) They write about it in songs.  Sons golf with fathers, fathers with sons, and the womenfolk even golf a little too.  (Although the womenfolk may not think a golf cart is as sexy as a tractor; ask Kenny Chesney.  But they might change their mind when they see this one.)  Even NASCAR is getting in the golf game; ask Darius Rucker and Jimmie Johnson.

            But golf has been country for many years, at least in the eyes of Willie Nelson, a country music icon and longtime duffer and devotee of the game, a man who has never let a small problem with the tax man or plants not usually found growing on a golf course interfere with a good game of golf.   Ol’ country outlaw Willie has owned his own golf course on and off for years, the Pedernales Cut N Putt Golf Club, and is getting ready to run Willie Nelson’s First Annual Celebrity Golf Tournament on June in just a few weeks, to raise money for four Texas charities.  Having seen Willie perform a number of memorable times,  floating on down the Whiskey River, the following is in his honor.

That's Willie In The Middle

MAMA, DON'T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE GOLFERS

Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys

Songwriter/Composer Ed Bruce And Patsy Bruce

Publishers SONY/ATV Tree Publishing

                                                                             

Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be golfers,

Don't let em hit wedges and drive them old carts just 'cause they're lawyers and doctors and such

Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be golfers,

They'll never stay home, 'cause they're still on the course, even when they're making love.

Golfers aren't easy to love and they're harder to hold

they'd rather take strokes than any diamonds or gold

Pink and green Lacostes, and faded plus-fours, and each round begins a new day

You must understand it's so, it makes him again young to hear the call "Play away".

Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be golfers,

Don't let 'em hit wedges and drive them old carts just 'cause they're lawyers and doctors and such

Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys,

They'll never stay home, 'cause they're still on the course, even when they're making love.

Golfers like smoky 19th holes and clear fairway mornings

Fifty foot putts and birdies and four up with three to play

and them that don't know him won't like him and them that do sometimes wont know how to take him

He ain't wrong, he's just different

But his money's still good, so fake a smile, and take his money anyway.

Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be golfers,

Don't let 'em hit wedges and drive them old carts just 'cause they're lawyers and doctors and such

Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys,

They'll never stay home, 'cause they're still on the course, even when they're making love.

AMDG
 

© R.E. Kelly 2012