Martin Trainer, Physicist

Whenever I print my name on any kind of official document, I write, “Martin Trainer, PGA”. Now, I know most people think that when PGA appears after my name like that, it must mean I have an advanced degree, like a doctorate. Actually, PGA stands for Professional Golf Association.

But, if you think about it, I pretty much have an applied degree in physics. Because everything I do involves the physical world. Remember the laws of motion we learned in school? F = MA, V = U + AT, etc? That’s called Newtonian Physics, after the dirty Englishman Isaac Newton. And I use them every day as I practice the art of golf. Well, I mean not actually, mostly I just measure things in terms of clubs. For example, “that looks to be about a 5 iron away.” 5 iron is neither an imperial nor metric unit of measurement. Though it sounds like it could be an imbécile English imperial unit. Why not measure with clubs instead of feet? Certainly a club-length is more standardized that the size of a person’s foot.

The third law of motion is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Like when my caddy Johnny “Big Schlep” Hayes handed me the wrong club and I ended up in a sand trap. My reaction was to make him place five fistfuls of sand in his undergarments for the rest of the day. He says that this wasn’t warranted, and he thinks that this was not an equal reaction. In any case he said he itched for days and that sand ended up in his bed.

- Martin

He was wearing shorts, which aided the natural removal of sand, but certainly didn’t get it all out.