Thinking Out Loud
FORE!

July 27, 2014
By: Diane Szczepanski

It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. It took one afternoon on the golf course.
Hank Aaron

Any person who has ever golfed knows two things: Some days you feel you have the potential to be a contender for the next PGA tour and some days you want to melt down your clubs and make decorative door-stops out of them.

In my case, both of these thoughts crossed my mind this week.

My first foray out on that big green expanse was wrought with sliced drives that found more bark on the trees in the woods, than it did anything resembling a fairway.

The ball apparently really did think the 'grass was greener on the other side' and at times acted possessed, in search of distant and greener pastures.

A simple putt turned into a battle of wills with a devilish hole and a club with a mind of its own. Two feet of putting green may well have been two hundred.

My score left me thinking this was nothing any sane person would or should ever attempt again.

My second game saw drives that connected at an almost alarming rate, soaring straight and at a respectable, sometimes amazing distance and a chipping game that had me rethinking my choice of profession.

I left the course with visions of hushed crowds, golf claps and awed announcers recanting my last putt.

Thus is the draw of hitting that little white ball around on a beautiful summer day.

The ever pervasive hope that this sport we call fun, can be mastered and the cycle of loathing and loving the game, begins anew.