Such a funny game

I think out of all the sports I ever played, golf has to be the most unusual.

I have a rotten swing, you see. I bend my left elbow and the club shaft ends up hitting me in the back of the neck. Right now if I went out and played 18, I probably wouldn't break 100. But there was a time when my handicap was a six and people who were partnered with me groaned when they saw me hit it 275 yards straight down the middle out of the T-box.

Liar, you say? Hardly. Golf is not about swinging, keeping the left arm straight, having the right clubs. It's about two things - attitude and timing.

I had a golfer's attitude when I was playing my best. I expected to hit that ball down the middle every time. I knew it would roll into the hole if I was anywhere within four feet of the cup. As for the timing, that was something else.

Both Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino loop the clubhead when they swing - a horrid mistake that makes many golfers hackers. But like those guys, I played every day. Yes, every day. And before each round there was a bucket of golf balls to hit plus another one at the end.

I had my timing down to pinpoint accuracy and even managed to break par one time in my career.

But here's the funny part. Golf was consuming my life. It had a grip on me that would not let go. And then I realized I was never going to play on the Pro Tour. I was never going to enter amateur tournaments because I couldn't handle the pressure. So I quit. I sold my sticks and gave it up.

Today, I have a set of golf clubs and occasionally - make that rarely - I will take a few of them out and go hit a bucket of balls. But that nowadays is another problem. I hate hitting golf balls off wooden tees. That's too much work, in my humble opinion. I liked those mats with the rubber tee you simply set the ball on and fired away.

I haven't found any of those where I now live so I don't hit golf balls. But someday I am going to move to a place that has them and who knows, I just might be knocking it around 85 again (that's a good halfway point between being obsessed with a game and having fun).

And this, my friends, is a true story.