​Do alligators play golf? I don’t know. If you can answer that question, please let me know. Ian Poulter, who’s a pro on the men’s tour, would also appreciate any information you have.
 
Several weeks back, he was playing in South Carolina. The tournament is known for having alligators on the course. Sometimes they sun themselves on the grass. Sometimes the camera catches them meandering around in the water.
 
On this day, Poulter hit his ball into the water, so he took a drop nearby. An alligator came over to the edge of the water line to watch. Here’s where we’d like to get some reptile information. What the heck was the gator thinking?
 
Did he want a piece of Poulter’s leg? Was he salivating, thinking to himself, “Mmmmmm, I’ve never tasted a blonde-haired Englishman with a dry wit before. He’s probably got a sharp bouquet.”
 
“No,” you say? The alligator isn’t that smart?
 
Well, how the heck do we know? How the heck do we know anything about animals? We presume because we use tools and can write that somehow we’re smarter or know more than other species. I’m not so sure when I watch these thousands of videos online that demonstrate animals helping each other out when they get in a tight jam, like that one where the cat jumps down into a garbage dump to pull out a terrorized dog that can’t get up the side of the pit to safety.
 
Alligators may just enjoy golf. We don’t know. That big boy could have been waiting for Poulter’s annual visit to South Carolina, thinking to himself, “I hope that skinny guy who wears the bright clothes hits one close to me this weekend. I love his backswing. And he can feather a deuce in there.”
 
Can alligators smell? I don’t know. Maybe he enjoys Poulter’s cologne. It could be he smelled good, so he didn’t want to leave his post.
 
Regardless of all this conjecturing, if you get a chance, go on YouTube and watch the video. It’s darn amusing. There’s some conversation about what to do (What would you do? Would you hit the ball with a gator a few feet away, eyeballing your left calf? I DON’T THINK SO!). The caddy and Poulter go back and forth. The announcer throws a few funny phrases in there.

They spank the ground with a club to get him to move. Nothing. Finally, the caddy charges at him, swinging the club wildly, and the gator splashes off into deeper water.
 
There, he circled and continued to watch the play. The whole thing was funny and disconcerting at the same time.
 
I have to believe the gator has either developed a sense that humans are interesting, white balls are fun to watch, or golf is his favorite sport. He’s bored floating around in the water all day, chowing on frogs or fish or whatever it is that gators find in the waterways. When he’s done, he’s got to figure out what to do with his spare time.

What better way to kill the Saturday and Sunday afternoons they relaxing and watching some golf? And he doesn’t have to turn on the TV. He gets a front row seat.  Hmmmm, sounds great.
 
Alligators are probably ahead of us on the evolutionary scale. They’ve figured out how to get into a golf tournament for free and grab an awesome seat on the course, right next to the pros. Too bad they don’t know how to scream “YOU DA MAN!,” because that would complete their day.

​There are no shortcuts. Some people think you can find one in your career or a new road to get to work, or developing a skill to the level where you’re considered an expert, but it ain’t gonna happen folks. Give it up.
 
Our dad was a funny man some times. He was an engineer by trade. He looked at the world in a linear fashion: x+y=z, or x, then y, then z. There was a logic to the world. Arithmetic made sense. Algorithms solved problems.

He applied this to driving. Sometimes we would come home from college or visit him and my mom once we were out working full-time ourselves, and I can often remember his excitement that he’d found a shortcut to the golf course or the supermarket.
 
“If we turn here, this cuts off seven seconds on the trip,” he’d say ecstatically. Now, I guess seven seconds a day added up over the course of the year (hmmm, use that math now) is 49 seconds a week or about 2,600 seconds a year. Divide by 60 seconds (to get minutes) and you’ve saved about 43 minutes in your life.  That might be significant, but I’d argue it’s not. In his mind it was a shortcut. He’d found an efficiency. But I’m not sure it really worked realistically in the grand scheme of things.
 
I think that applies to many situations where we think we can get away with something by finding a shortcut. Frequently, I look for alternative roads, for example, when my regular route is congested. We lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area for 12 years, notorious for maniacal traffic and drivers, so it was imperative to always have a backup plan. That meant finding faster ways through back roads or using tollways.
 
What happened though (because I would time the alternatives) was that no matter what I chose to do, the amount of time to get somewhere seemed pretty darn close regardless. Take the toll road and there’d be an accident. Get off the toll road because it was backed up for six miles and you’d get stuck at 14 consecutive stoplights while going down side streets. You couldn’t win. No shortcuts.
 
You go one way and there’s construction. You go another way and there’s an accident.
 
I was driving to a high school basketball game recently. On the way there, I took the back roads. I wasn’t in a hurry. There were lots of stop signs. It was the most direct route. It took 38 minutes.

Coming back, I chose the Interstate, which took me south past where we live by about 4-5 miles, then you have to make those 4-5 miles back up. So it’s about 8-10 extra miles altogether.
 
I’m thinking it would be faster because it seemed like every other crossroad on the way out to the game there was a stop sign, and I was going 40-45 mph. So the highway speed and no slowdowns would get me home faster. Not. Of course not. No shortcuts.

My mind predicted it would be 4-5 minutes faster driving home. As I pulled into the driveway, it was almost to the minute the exact same time it took me to drive to the game.
 
There’s no question you can find efficiencies. Our dad, using his engineer mind, would shave 12 seconds off a route here, and 16 seconds off a route there. It made him proud.
 
It can add up.  But don’t bank your mental health on it. Find alternatives when the GPS or Google is showing a red line of blocked traffic for 3-4 miles (if you can). Otherwise stick to your game plan and find some good music to kill the time.