Slipknot <3's golf

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Kinda interesting, and more proof that kickers are weird

 

Keeler: Slipknot's Fehn gets zen with golf

SEAN KEELER

REGISTER STAFF WRITER

 

June 11, 2006

 

 

John Lennon had heroin. Ozzy Osbourne had scotch. Brian Wilson had Twinkies.

 

Chris Fehn has an 8-iron.

 

"It's just the greatest sport I've ever played, really," Fehn coos. The unholy confession of a golf junkie.

 

Fehn's day job - actually, it's more of a night job - is percussionist with Slipknot, the popular metal band that hails from greater Des Moines. For work, he dons on a sweaty leather mask with a long Pinocchio-style nose, screams like a banshee and bangs on a beer keg for two hours.

 

For fun, he likes to try reaching the green on No. 18 at Tournament Club of Iowa without scuba gear.

 

"It's a good way to pass the time because with Slipknot, it's 23 hours of boredom and one hour of (lunacy)," the 34-year-old Ankeny native explains. "I can shoot a 90, I can shoot a 67. It kind of depends on how I'm feeling. I'm not saying I could ever step up on Pebble Beach and say, 'OK, Woods, it's on!' But I definitely would take on a challenge as far as (a normal) game goes."

 

Mission accomplished. The rock star - "I'm an 8 handicap right now," he says - will be one of more than two dozen celebrities hacking for charity in the Regency MDA Golf Classic today at Glen Oaks Country Club.

 

"Being in Slipknot, (people) think we're just these crazy guys who wear masks and have nothing else going on in life," Fehn continues. "Sometimes, it's tough."

 

He sighs. Fehn says that one television network turned down his offer to appear at a charity golf event because of the band's hard-core image.

 

Even Alice Cooper, the godfather of shock rock and a total golfing nut, won't return his e-mails.

 

"I think he's scared," Fehn chuckles. "I think he's scared he's gonna get beat.

 

"This (tournament) is a huge deal for me, to be able to show we - pretty much all of us in the band - have a lot of other things going on other than our main job. We've got pretty much every (interest) covered."

 

Fehn, for example, is a sports fanatic. Before Chris turned to heavy rock, he was a skinny jock.

 

The kid's been walking golf courses since he was no taller than a sand wedge. When not listening to Slayer records, he grew up rooting for Iowa and the Dallas Cowboys. He even played baseball and football at Ankeny High School.

 

In fact, as a senior placekicker with the Hawks in 1989, he converted 35 of 41 extra points, four of seven field goals and was named All-Central Iowa Conference.

 

A straight-on kicker, Fehn says he once nailed a 56-yarder in practice.

 

"A very good kicker," says his old coach, Jerry Pezzetti. "A great kid then, like he is now. Very down-to-earth. He was a very good athlete and worked hard to do it."

 

Last year, it was discovered that Fehn had been performing with a torn ACL. At least now we know where the guy learned to play with pain.

 

"I wasn't much of a hitter," Chris admits, "but I loved the game so much."

 

But not nearly as much as golf. Football is a vice. Golf is an addiction. Fehn plays his Titleists - "The pimpest golf company that there is," he gushes - when he can, where he can. He even drags his clubs with him on the road. Therapy.

 

"When I'm out on the golf course, nobody can get to me," Fehn says. "For the most part, it's complete solitude. I just drive the cart and think about stuff and let everything else go for a while. It's just four hours when I'm outside. It's pretty priceless, actually, to come from one world to that world."

 

He's played on the same bill as Ozzy and Judas Priest. But the one performer with whom Fehn's always wanted to share the stage is - drumroll, please - John Daly.

 

"I can relate to him in a way," Fehn says. "I like his theory about golf. If you overthink the game, you're going to be horrible. 'Oh, man, did I get my hands (right?)' Screw that. Go up and feel it.

 

"It's a very zen game. It's like drumming. You can't trip out on (form). Just feel it, man."

 

See? Maybe golf and metal aren't such strange bedfellows. Your kid paid $40 to watch Nine Inch Nails; you spent $70 bucks last Saturday making Nine Inch Divots. By the end of the night, both of you were banging your heads.