The Time I Shared A Driving Range With Larry David And His Buddy Doc Rivers
Curb Your Enthusiasm is BACK for its "final season," and it, of course, is generating some serious buzz. The last episode picked up just where it left off. Larry David is basically his same overbearing, opinionated, hardo self, living his cushy, uber-rich life in Los Angeles. His pettiness in Episode 1 is full mental. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
What you may not know (but probably expect), is that Larry is EXACTLY like his Curbed character in real life. Even he knows it. And contrary to popular belief, it's pretty... pretty...pretty obnoxious when you see it in the wild.
How do I know? I've experienced it first hand.
A couple of years ago, I was back in LA on vacation and got invited to play golf at this fancy little Country Club in the Pacific Palisades. I vividly remember the time of year because it was the first day of the NBA postseason, The Clippers had just missed the playoffs, and I happened to be hitting balls on the driving range next to none other than Clippers head coach, Doc Rivers.
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I met him a few times covering the NBA, so we chatted for a bit about Ben Simmons winning the ROY award and debated whether anyone could actually beat the Warriors. I mentioned that the playoff race got tight along the home stretch and said something like, "you guys were so close to getting to that 8th spot".
"Yeah... that would have been...something," Doc said with a slightly sarcastic and relieved tone
In 2018, squeaking into the 8th seed was not an accomplishment. Doc knew it. His statement said it all. It was a date with demolishment. It was an inevitable embarrassment. And most importantly, it meant less time for the links. I remember seeing Doc EVERY SINGLE DAY during that long weekend I spent in LA, and he didn't seem disappointed one bit to be eliminated... he was grinning ear to ear every time we crossed paths.
Anyway, Doc was there as a guest of Larry David, who was also on the driving range with us. I was a little more intrigued than usual watching this duo because Doc from what I remembered had always been a charismatic gentleman, and Larry was, well, precisely who Curb fans hope he'd be... and NOT in a good way. Every interaction I ever had with Larry ranged from slightly annoying but amusing to borderline infuriating.
Today, Larry was fully on that bullshit.
What set him off was probably my fault. I happened to be friends with Larry's caddy, James (who was standing right next to Larry on the range), from my time living in LA and hadn't seen him since I moved out east. As Larry was hitting balls, James and I chit-chatted about... I don't even remember actually.
And then Larry just. Went. Off.
"JAMES...Why did my ball do that? What happened? Did you see my swing? Wait, are you even paying attention?" Larry said
"It sounded a little thin" James responded back
" So you're saying you weren't watching then? You were just listening. How could you be watching my swing (your job) while you're chatting? The entire job of a caddy is to watch the golf swing."
Or something to that effect. Yikes.
Shortly after I walked back to my spot on the range, I noticed one of Larry's friends was speed walking towards us furiously. He was clearly upset.
"THEY'RE FUCKIN' US AGAIN LARRY" his friend screamed across the range
HOW? HOW ARE WE GETTING FUCKED?? Is this about our tee time?" Larry yelled back
Apparently, from what I could gather, Larry and his buddies had a standing 10 am tee time, but unbeknownst to Larry, there was a hiccup. There happened to be a one-off 10 am tournament that bumped their standing time. But not just any tournament... A god damn Ladies tournament. Larry and the boys would have to play behind four groups of women. He. Was. Incensed. And that was just the beginning.
Larry also had a group of 5 players, meaning they needed to split up into a twosome and a threesome. even though Larry tried to finagle his way into playing a five-some behind the ladies. Larry wanted to be paired with Doc, but his friend thought Larry's group should play behind the others, even if he were in the twosome.
OH BOY.
"I'm not doing that! Why would I be behind? Are you saying I'm slow? I think you're saying I'm a slow player? Or MAYBE, you're saying Doc is slow? SOMEONE here is slow. Who is it?" Larry ranted
Crickets. You could hear a pin drop.
At this point, I was sure I had teleported into an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. What the hell was going on? I looked over at Doc, making a face for some sort of validation. Did he see this too? Was it just me? He nodded his head back and said, "In these situations, it's just best not to say anything at all. You know?"
So that's exactly what I did. I just hit my nine iron, over and over, silently, pretending I wasn't in the eye of Larry David hurricane, hoping the California trade winds would move him, elsewhere...fast.