My top 10 pet peeves!

I have two wishes about my golf game. I wish I had taken lessons and started 40 years ago (instead of 25, without lessons) and I wish I had never started. Okay, now that I have established the need for sports psychoanalysis, I must confess golf is the most challenging, rewarding and frustrating game I have ever played.

I once read a story about a golfer who threw his golf bag and all his clubs into a lake, swore off golf and then almost drowned the next day trying to retrieve his clubs. I can identify with him; maybe we all can, who knows?

Over the years, golf has become an addiction, not unlike a voodoo curse and I just can’t break free and live a normal life. I have grown to pity the scratch golfer, who always plays from fairway to green – one who will never know the joy and happiness of making par on a hole, where his or her tee shot was in the rough, the second shot landed in a greenside bunker, the third shot out of the bunker rolled 20 feet past the hole, then sinking the putt for a par. 

For extra excitement, just add another shot out of the trees to the above scenario and you have Christmas Day on a par five.

So with that in mind, maybe you can identify with my top 10 pet peeves I love about golf. Maybe we all need sports psychoanalysis?

10. I love having a single join our threesome at the last minute on the way to the first tee box.

9. I love wet, soggy fairways because you have to walk to your ball and leave the cart on the cart path. (It is good physical activity, your shoes get soggy and help strengthen your leg muscles, while you carry three clubs with you and guess the yardage - this will sharpen your senses).

8. I love losing a ball in foot-high weeds/rough (within eight to 10 feet) next to the fairway or losing a ball under leaves in the fall and having to take a drop.

7. I love hitting my ball out of another golfer’s divot, which should have been filled or replaced.

6. I love it when the starter gives you the pin placements and which holes are cart-path only but can’t recall the hole(s) where a port-a-john is located.

5. I love losing a brand-new Titleist ball in the woods, searching for it and finding an old X-out, no-name-brand with tree sap on it.

4. I love looking at the GPS screen for a critical layup or water-carry distance and seeing “stop by the snack shop for a sandwich, burger or beverage,” after your round.

3. I love meeting new people, when I slice my drive into the trees and greet a golfer, who sliced his drive into the trees from an adjacent fairway.

2. I love shooting par on a long par five, followed by a triple on an easy par-3. 

And the number one thing I love about golf: Totaling your score!

19th Hole Honorable Mention:

A. I love to make a par after missing a three-foot birdie putt.

B. I love hitting a ball into the woods, punch out and hit a 7-iron from 150 yards to within 10 feet of the cup, then three-putt. 

C. I love hitting a provisional ball 260 yards straight down the fairway then finding my sliced drive (first shot) in the weeds, in-bounds, on the pond bank.

D. I love shooting a 101, with a 150-yard hole-in-one, over water, to a small, hilltop green, nestled in between dozens of pine trees. (true story)

E. I love focusing on 300 to 400 swing keys in my mind, when I address the ball.

F. Last but not least:  I love how easy it is to make a 30-foot putt, when you lay nine.

Epilogue: Update two weeks after writing this column…my new sports psychoanalyst says I should take up bowling, instead of golf, because the ball comes back to me, a high score is excellent and ordering a beverage is only a push button away.