Sorry, Mr. Hacker

My first golf round of 2012 was played in the middle of March. No such luck this year, as early spring was a little on the cold side. Fortunately, the first of May was a spectacular day. Skies were clear and the temperature was warm enough to play in shorts. I headed out to Maples of Ballantrae, which is a course I hadn't played in almost seven years. I remembered very little about the layout; all I could recall were the first two and last two holes.

Halfway to the course, I realized that I forgot to bring my contact lenses. Aargh! I don't really need them to play, but it makes it difficult to track the ball past 200 yards. If my drive is heading into the bushes, the odds of losing a ball are greater, since I can't tell exactly where the ball disappears. On the first hole, I flared a 3-iron badly off the tee into an open area right of the fairway. There were no bushes or trees nearby – just a smattering of old leaves on the ground – but I lost the ball anyway. Go figure.

The flared iron shot on hole #1 was a harbinger of things to come. I hadn't played or practised in over five months. Over the winter and early spring, all I could do was think about how to improve my swing. My attention was focused on correcting the dreaded “over the top” move. This has been the bane of my golf experience, ever since I took up the game. Previous attempts to correct this flaw proved disastrous, so I always reverted to my natural ways, which at least enabled me to get around a golf course in a semi-respectable fashion.

In my mental preparation, I thought of dropping the right shoulder at the top of the backswing, enabling the club to drop down to a flatter plane. At the same time, I thought of “pulling” on the club shaft, allowing the club to lag more than usual. This combination should produce a club path that approaches the ball from the inside, which is exactly what I want. Well, thoughts are one thing and physically executing them are another. I found that I could swing flatter by dropping the right shoulder, but in trying to maintain lag, I was keeping the club face way too open. I'm so used to flipping the wrists early, that in trying to delay that action, I over-compensated.

I played the first two holes very nervously. After the long layoff, everything felt foreign to me. To make matters worse, I was holding up a pair of players behind me, even though I was playing as a single. Pretty embarrassing. I triple-bogeyed the opening hole and registered a score of 13 on the par-5 second hole. That included a lost ball in a creek fronting the teeing ground and two balls sliced out of bounds. Beginning with hole #3, I put some distance between myself and the pair behind as my comfort level increased. Still, I was making double and triple-bogeys, owing to shots hit thin or topped, duffed chips and 3-putts. Somehow I managed to par hole #9.

On the back nine, I was held up at every hole by a threesome ahead of me. Common courtesy is to allow a single in that situation to play through, but I had no such luck. On a few occasions, I reached the teeing ground of a hole while the threesome was still teeing off. Still, the trio didn't even offer to have me join. No worries, as I ended up sending them a message, albeit somewhat inadvertently, on hole #17.

Hole #17 is the hardest hole on the course, in my opinion, but ranked officially as the #2 handicap. It is a par-4, stretching a healthy 453 yards. The fairway is of average width, but doglegs slightly to the left and is entirely bordered on both sides by thick, mature trees. I had not hit a single fairway all day, but that finally changed. After practising my “swing from the inside” move a couple of times, I unleashed what has to rank as one of my best drives ever. Contact was right on the sweet spot. The ball started right of centre, then drew ever so slightly, following the contour of the fairway perfectly. I knew I hit it a mile deep to the centre of the fairway, but didn't know the exact distance, as I lost sight of the ball without my contact lenses.

When I struck the drive, I thought there was no chance of reaching the threesome that was ahead in the fairway. Still, if I managed to roll one up behind them, I didn't think that would be such a bad thing. I drove up to the 200-yard marker (which is where a 250-yard drive would have ended up) and looked for my ball – nothing. Then I looked further ahead and one of the guys in the threesome was looking at me with hands outstretched, as if to say, “What the hell are you doing?” He gestured a few yards in front of where he stood, indicating the location of my ball. “Sorry about that,” I said. "No, I'm not," I thought to myself, just like the guy at 0:16 in the video above. LOL. The ball had travelled 320 yards, leaving just 133 yards to the green. Bang!

I followed up my best drive of the day with my best approach shot. Pitching wedge was all I needed to reach my first green in regulation. From 18 feet, I left my first putt 6 feet short – terrible! Of course, I missed the par putt and settled for bogey. The “green in regulation, followed by a 3-putt” is one of those classic golf disappointments. It seems to happen so often!

Oh well. My final score was horrible, but I still had some fun. Onward and upward!

Score: 116
Putts: 38
Fairways: 1
Greens: 1
Penalties: 10