I am convinced that the hardest shot in golf is the one you have to record on your score card. See, seasoned golfers have learnt never to play when the God of the skies is sending down his lightning rods on all those people who cheat. No golfer would be left alive if they did not quit playing when the revenge lightning sticks started happening. The air swing that turns into just a practice shot cheat, the kick of the ball from the rough while pretending to look earnestly for your lost ball cheat, the count back of all your shots at the pin and ending up with just 7 – cheat. Well that pretty much describes me and the boy’s (John, Bancroft and Dessie Lyons) first day out at golf. It looks so easy and also like so much fun on the TV, but in reality it is just so dammed hard. We were told by the pro at the club house to let others pass through if we were slowed looking for our lost balls. Well people played through us all day faster than a three day curry from the local take away. We walked twice as far as the hole distance board indicated as we crisscrossed each other down the fairway to the hole. We only ever met at the tee off and the putting green. What happened in between could be used as footage in any Benny Hill skit you could name. It was a day of embarrassment. Playing two fairways away from the one you were supposed to be playing on – Proper golfers at the tee watching in awe as each ball went in every direction identified on a compass and always into something very bad – or as Bancroft used to say in where the elephants go to die – Hitting a ball at the tee and having the divot of grass travel further than the golf ball so much embarrassment!!. We did however, initiate a rule just for us that day. If you could walk over to get your teed off ball and get back before the next person played then the stroke was not recorded now this happened more times than you could imagine and it certainly saved a few double centuries that day. As the day wore on, Dessie decided to just use a 7 iron for every shot and with a fair degree of success I might say. No fancy club selection for him. In fact 7 seemed to be his lucky number because as we would record our scores at the green it was amazing how many times he seemed to score just seven. The rest of us tried to master the wide range of clubs given to us at the start. I had my most trouble with the #2 wood. Just about every stroke resulted in hitting the ground as well as the ball for a very poor result. My primitive golf understanding told me that if I put the ball on top of a very high placed tee then it may reduce the chance of this problem reoccurring. So, that’s what I did. Place the ball high on the tee and whack it with the #2 wood as hard as I could. The shot seemed to go off beautifully with only a little dirt taken. All of us peered forward to try to see that majestic golf ball in full driven flight. Strain as we did, no one could see where the ball had sailed to. Suddenly right above us came the sounds of something hard crashing thorough the tree branches overhead. The ball landed only a few meters from where it was first hit so under our rules I got to have another embarrassing go in front of the now sniggering crowd.
