Judge Smails would be proud

It takes little reflection for me to conclude that golf is probably the worst possible sport for me.  I'm a perfectionist.  Always have been, and in spite of my father's best efforts, I always will be.  There are sports where a perfectionist's cravings can be satisfied.  A pitcher can throw a perfect game.  A bowler can roll 300.  A tennis player can win in straight sets without losing a single point.  These things aren't possible in golf.

Any golfer will tell you that perfection will never be yours once you start winging a little white ball all over creation.  Consider the most coveted shot in golf:  a hole in one.  And, for the sake of this conversation, let's not even restrict ourselves to a hole in one on a par 3.  Let's say you manage to drive the green on a short par 4 and the ball miraculously trickles into the cup.  You'd be happy, sure.  But, think about this:  that's still one stroke against you.  Your score still creeps upward, even though you just hit the most remarkable shot of your life.  Of course, I spend much of my time on a golf course thinking that I didn't just hit the most remarkable shot of my life.  And, since I'm a perfectionist, this troubles me greatly.  And, when I say "troubles me greatly" I mean that I often want my golf bag to explode just before I spontaneously burst into flames.

In spite of all of this, I generally look forward to golfing.  Because maybe today will be the day when I don't want to spontaneously combust.  I harbor optimism, even, and this makes precisely no sense at all.  A good 98% percent of my brain will be saying "this will end badly for you... just start drinking now" and yet I listen instead to the 2% that's saying "good things will happen for you.  You can do this."  God, that 2% voice is an idiot.

In recent years, my dad, my brother, and I have tried to play at least one round of vacation golf at The Rookery in Milton, Delaware.  It's a relatively young course, and it's well-maintained.  The layout is pretty open (because all of the trees are still young), the beer cart girls tend to be shapely (because, like the trees, they're still young), and it's not a long drive from where we stay.  Win, win, win.  The big concern for me was that my most recent round before vacation featured some of the worst golf I've played in about 15 years.  I'm accustomed to posting a score in the 80's.  On my good days, I'll head to the low 80's and on my bad days, I'll play bogey golf.  So, you can imagine my dismay when I dropped a 109 while playing a relatively easy course in upstate New York.  I'll spare you all of the gory details, but suffice to say that the best shot of the day was a tee shot on the back nine where I swung as hard as I could, caught the ball perfectly flush, and hooked it out of bounds.  Sure, it was a lost ball and a two stroke penalty, but it felt damn good.

Unfortunately, the mental scarring that accompanies such a round of golf sticks with you for a while.  What if I had developed the golf version of Steve Blass Disease?  What if I never hit a ball solidly during a round ever again?  What if I suddenly started shooting triple digit scores?  What if all of these things happened and I never had the good fortune to burst into flames while shrapnel from my exploding golf bag ripped me to shreds, finally putting me out of my misery?  These are the things I tried not to think about on the first tee at The Rookery.

Fortunately, I could take comfort in the fact that I was wearing my favorite golf shirt.  In the past, I've taken some ribbing (for everybody's pleasure but my own) about my baby blue polo shirt.  But, here's the thing:  I've played some of my best golf when rockin' the baby blue, so it's in pretty heavy rotation on golf days.  Besides, it brings out the color in my eyes, and one of these days, that's going to matter to the right beer cart girl.  The truth -- really -- is that if I broke 80 while wearing a "kick me in my misters" shirt, I'd wear it every time I went golfing, even if there was a Crotch Kickers Anonymous convention in town.

Some days, though, even your baby blue polo shirt isn't enough.  I mishit my opening tee shot and limped around the front nine while trying to maintain a jovial demeanor for the rest of my foursome.  They say that God never challenges you with anything you can't handle.  Which makes me wonder why He let me leave consecutive sand shots in a greenside bunker before picking the third one clean and airmailing the green entirely.  It definitely didn't feel like I was doing a good job of handling it, and given how far the rest of my foursome stayed away from me for the next two holes, I have to imagine that they felt the same.  Walking off the seventh green, I decided not to keep score any more.  The 98% voice had been right, and the beer cart girl was pulling a Where's Waldo? routine at the worst possible time.  Remarkably, in spite of my poor play, it still represented an improvement over the previous round of golf.  But, I guess if your previous round featured multiple instances of you snap-hooking a drive out of bounds and then trying to kill yourself with a pitching wedge, it's hard to go anywhere but up.

Speaking of going places, I don't know where I'm going with any of this.  I simply can't be rational when I start talking, thinking, or writing about golf.  It's this johnson-withering bitch of a sport that makes you feel bad about yourself and the world, whether you're a perfectionist or not.  Oh, and if you think I'm not looking forward to my next round of golf, you're crazy.