Joe Posnanski

They need to invent a new word for golf announcers so they will stop saying putts are “perfect” when the ball does not go in the freaking hole. I appreciate what they’re going for here, but it just sounds stupid. It cannot be a perfect putt if it doesn’t go in the hole. For that matter, any shot that does not go in the hole is not perfect. Drives hit into the center of the fairway are not perfect. Iron shots hit to 12 feet are not perfect. Bunker shots that nestle up nicely to the hole are not perfect either.

We tend to have a fairly high standard for “perfection.”

The problem is, golf announcers are limited by language. They don’t want to call a 310-yard drive down the center of the fairway “a nice drive.” They don’t want to call a great shot, “a great shot” every time. They want in their voices to express to us hackers and non-golfers the extraordinary difficulty of what these golfers do, and I don’t blame them one bit.

And that’s why, I have come up with the word for them.

“Perquist.”

I will hope that golf announcers from here on in use this word. Every great drive, they can say, “Wow, that’s just a perquist drive under pressure.” Every remarkable chip, they can (in whispered tones) call “Perquist.” Every twisting, double-breaking putt that a golfer manages to get within two feet of the whole is a “Perquist putt.” It’s a versatile word that I would define as so:

Perquist [PURR-kwist], adj., a golf shot that does not go into the hole and, as such, falls short of perfection. But is still, like, a really skillful shot.

Perquist, as you no doubt figured out already, derives from “Perfect” and the name of one of my favorite announcers “Lundquist.”*

*Verne in all seriousness is terrific, and his call of Jackie Smith’s dropped touchdown pass in the Super Bowl (“Bless his heart, he’s got to be the sickest man in America”) ranks as one of the all-time greats.