Hole 8 is the one hole that every round of golf has that makes the golfer feel like they can one day become good. Obviously, it is not always hole 8, but it is the hole that you will go home and tell your friends, wife, girl friend, neighbor, homeless guy down the street and everyone on Facebook about. It is the hole that for some reason you managed to hit your driver down the middle of the fairway and backed that up with a great approach shot only to two putt for par, or better yet one putt for birdie. Yes, this will only happen roughly one to two times a round, and yet we will shovel out hundreds of dollars a year to go out and torture ourselves, all for that elusive "hole 8". We do not do this for anything else, I do not pay 30 - 40 dollars to go stand and sing poorly, so why do I consistently pay that amount of money to lose golf ball after golf ball? I do it for that one par, that one birdie, that one drive.
With this in mind, and of course the realization that regardless of how much I focus I will still stink, I went and played a round of golf today. I was sure that I was going to play the best round of my life and be able to tell everyone about it, and you better believe that I was going to tell EVERYONE about it. I already had my list of people to brag to prepared (I would like to point out that playing my best round would be breaking 94).
Yea, I am terrible. Or am I? The average weekend golfer in the United States shoots roughly a 100, or 5.6 strokes a hole, or 28 stokes over PAR! What does this tell us? It tells us that we all stink and we should most likely stop spending money to torture ourselves every Saturday and Sunday. Regardless, I gave it a shot today at Elks Run in Batavia.
(One of the more beautiful courses in Clermont County)
When you are a bad golfer, there is no worse feeling or greater level of anxiety than when people watch you golf and more importantly, watch you tee off. So naturally, as myself and Ben (the guy I was golfing with) went to our first hole, we were greeted by the ranger and a group of guys that were supposed to tee off in front of us. Of course, they were not ready when we got there so we were told to go ahead which only meant that they would be playing directly behind us and creating an unneeded amount of discomfort and terrible playing. Again, why are we spending money to play a game that we do not want anyone to see us playing and if we do, we are automatically more terrible than we already are?
I step up to the first tee box, we decided to play the second longest tees (we are idiots) and I am psyched and sure that I will be able to drive this ball exactly where I want to hit it and I will impress these guys playing behind us (did I mention idiots?). While on that subject, why are we always so certain that the people playing behind us and watching are great golfers? They probably stink too. Anyhow, I swing as hard as possible on the first hole and what do you know? I nearly knock over a tree by ramming the ball off of it as hard as possible and creating a noise that sounds as if lightning also struck the tree at the same time as my ball. In the truest form of being a bad golfer and a hopeless player, my greatest disappointed in this series of events is that my ball did not bounce off of the tree and into the fairway. Lost ball number one.
I decide that I will tee off a second time because it is the first hole and I deserve a practice drive. Wrong. I deserve nothing, in fact I probably deserve to go home and realize that I do not belong on a course that is nice. Despite this, I play and send my second drive roughly 200 yards to the right of the fairway into the parking lot. To my surprise, I do not hear a window shatter or a human scream out in pain. That's a win for me. Lost ball number two.
After roughly 115 more shots, which felt closer to 150 more shots I complete my round and feel like I should never set foot on a putt putt course again, yet alone a golf course. But I will, because on hole 8 I got a par. Sure, it was a par three and I did two putt, but to me that was a hole that I wanted to tell everyone about. That is the reason that we play, that one hole that sticks in our head. We do not remember the details of the terrible drives or the missed putts, but I can tell you that I used my 9 iron and landed my tee shot about 15 feet from the flag and then left my birdie putt about four feet short. Those were my five minutes of glory and I will not forget them, just like you will not forget your "hole 8" during your next round.
This should be embarrassing for me, except that at least half of the people reading this will be thinking to themselves that they know exactly what I am talking about and can imagine everything that I just described. We are all bad, we will all always be bad, and all the young people starting to play will also be bad. It is a game where being "less bad" makes you good. No less than 10 times I found myself today saying that golf was stupid or wanting to throw my clubs, but come Saturday or Sunday I will be ready to go out there again and make a fool of myself. So why do we love this game? We love it because of hole 8.
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