Day Zero Project #58: Play a round of golf

I am a businessman. Golf is a game for businessmen. Naturally, one would assume that I have at least an elementary understanding of how to play the game of golf, right? Wrong.

In my 32 years I've golfed maybe twice and both of those times I focused more on downing beers with my father-in-law than hitting that little white ball into a small hole some 400 yards away.

So when the time came to accomplish #58, I called up a buddy of mine who is actually good at the game and we set up an early enough tee time that I hoped would ensure that I wouldn't be thinking about drinking Bud Lights and racing golf carts. I figure that the best way to try and see if I'm any decent at this game is to start it early and hope for the best.

The approach to the infamous Hole Six

And for the first few holes my theory seemed to work. I started with 3 or 4 double-bogeys, which was my goal for every hole. And then something magical happened on the par 3 6th hole (they were all par 3s, by the way). My tee shot wasn't too terrible and landed just outside the green. And then, even more unbelievably, rather than chip it all the way across the green I managed to put it close enough to the hole to make a putt for par. I fist pumped like Tiger Woods winning the Masters and it was then that I realized that golfers put up with all the horrible shots for those one or two times per round where you actually hit a perfect shot. That rush of hitting a great shot can make you forget the last 14 drives that you shanked into that road that runs alongside the golf course.

Chipping? Not a problem. Except the other 17 times when it was.

And after that par? It was a blur of bad shots, bad putts and a few lost golf balls. All made worse by the fact that on the 9th hole I decided to give up playing golf sober and stopped by the clubhouse only to learn that they don't serve beer at this particular golf course. No beer on a golf course?!? That really messed my day up.

At the end of the round, I'd guess that I was somewhere around 60-70 over par for 18 holes. Not too bad considering that I had to play the whole round with exactly 0 beers.

The End.