@#$%%^^@!!!

I could have done better, I suppose. One can always do better. But golf is a cruel game. It teases you and entices you. You hit just one good shot in 18 holes and that will be the shot that you remember; the one that brings you back again.

Of course, today, I didn't even get that one. I was just a teeny bit off my game. Which is a mile, or several, off the pros' games. I don't fool myself into thinking I can hit a ball the way a pro can, or putt as well, or anything near the level a pro plays at. I am a duffer. I tend to hack at the ball.

For the vast majority of us, there are phrases like "worm burner" or "banana ball" or "duck hook" that more aptly describe the kind of shots we make. We gently stroke a putt 10 feet past the hole or 10 feet short. We take two, sometimes three, shots to get out of a sand trap. Our approach shots usually come up too short, or to the right, or the left, or well over the green.

I am, oddly, better than average. My handicap hovers around 14 now. Even with the slowly (oh. so. slowly.) healing knee. The average handicap is 15.2 and the average score for all golfers (including those who do not keep an official handicap) is 100. I do better, my average score is about 84. Yes, I stink. Even on my good days, I stink.

So why do I do it? Because golf is like that pretty girl in high school who smiled at you in class and then repeatedly turned you down for dates. Mastering the game is simply unattainable. For everyone. Even the pros blow shots. But there are enough shots made, enough putts sunk, to draw back even the most cynical of us. And if no shots are made that at least looked perfect, if no long putts fall? Then there's the "almosts."

And so I go back. In 90 degree heat at 8:30 on a summer morning. In 45 degree cold in the winter. When it's windy, when it's muggy, when rain threatens.

Because I am nuts.