There are many things about golf that don't make a lot of sense and the one that comes to my mind faster than any other is the yelling of "Fore" when you have hit a bad shot and there is a danger of the ball hitting someone else on the course. Why "Fore"? I know it is important to standardize on one shouted alert but why "Incoming" or "Look out" or "Aft" was not selected is beyond my ken. I used to golf with a business associate who would holler "Fore" after every tee and fairway shot just to be on the safe side. His comment was that he never knew when there might be a party of lawyers playing in front of him and he was not going to take any chances; I will leave him as anonymous. Another friend I golfed with had a habit of ducking whenever he heard the words "Fore" or "Four" spoken on the course. If he wanted to know the honors status for the next hole and someone said they got a four he would duck as if expecting to be hit by a ball. It was funny the first time.
When playing with my late father-in-law, Chet, I had moved further down the fairway than where his ball was lying as I wrongly thought he had out-driven me. I was just then approaching where my ball lay in the rough and I was distracted by trying to mentally compute the distance to the green and selecting a club for my second shot. He proceeded to hit a line drive towards me and instead of yelling "Fore" he called out my name, which caused me to turn in his direction just as the ball impacted above the spot on my anatomy where they measure the inseam. I almost gave up the game of golf that day but the swelling subsided and my memory dimmed of the pain. The mind has a way of doing this and can be attested to by the fact that women quite frequently agree to have more than one child.
I now use the "Fore" word whenever there is the slightest chance some human could be in its line of flight. I use the word human to denote a living thing that would understand the word "Fore". I think this distinction is necessary because I still don't know what I could have yelled to warn the Canadian goose. If I had yelled anything at all, the bird would have just heard "blah". As it was, the goose did hear something coming and turned its head to see what it was. Other than some twitching this was the last move the goose made as I nailed it right between the eyes. I still feel bad about that shot.
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