Illustration by Igor Bastidas
What happens when you go to a public golf course all alone — at least in a city dense with golfers like New York or Los Angeles, where I grew up — is somebody puts your name on a waiting list and, after some time, plugs you into a group of strangers with whom you’ll spend the next five hours in close proximity. I spend most of the rest of my life avoiding intimate time with strangers. Imagine if, going to a movie alone, you had to shake hands with everyone in your row. Or if, on a solo trip to a restaurant, the host seated you at a table with a party of three and expected you to converse with them until midnight. Not my thing — and possibly why I dread being…