Calvin Adkins
Sports Editor
TARBORO —
I have a story that is made for Hollywood and I’m going to share it with you if you promise me that you will read it from the beginning to the end.
OK. Here it goes.
I finally played my first round of golf last week and to my surprise I did remarkably well. For those who don’t know my story, I was given a set of clubs by a new friend last year for only a promise to play the game.
Since then I have been reading the how-to-play golf books, getting advice from anyone who were kind enough to offer it to me and watching the Golf Channel. I even ordered training lessons videos by Don Terhan.
So last week it was time to put what I’ve learned to action by playing my first full round of golf – 18 holes. Playing with three seasoned golfers I was nervous at first.
My friend Gene took out his golf clubs and they looked spanking brand new. Then he reached in his trunk and changed into a snow white pair of golf shoes. He looked the part.
Earl also had a nice set of clubs with designer covers on all of his woods. As I marveled over his clubs I thought that his clubs would cost me two paychecks.
There was nothing special about Jack’s clubs or his attire. His approach and talked about the game was so intimidating that I wished that he wasn’t there.
And for me, my clubs were a little tarnished and the heads were nicked and had grass stains all over them. To save myself from too much embarrassment, I jumped at the opportunity to clean as many of them as I could when my three partners went inside the clubhouse to make the final arrangements for our game.
It wasn’t long before they came out. I jumped on the cart with Jack and he told me, “Relax and just go out and have fun. We’re not expecting you to play like Tiger and you shouldn’t expect that either. As a matter of fact, none of us can play like Tiger. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself.”
Coming from the mastermind, that eased my fear. By that time we had stopped on first tee. My three friends grabbed their woods and began practice swinging. I did the same thing. Then Jack asked me to go first.
Of course, I was a little hesitant in the beginning. I approached the tee stared down the fairway, took my stance over the ball, made about three practice swing and then… PING. The ball hooked about 200 feet including 20 feet off the fairway. It took us all of the allotted time to find my ball. Lucky me I ended up making a quadruple bogey.
I didn’t expect an eagle on my first hole but I didn’t expect a quadruple bogey either. My friends encouraged me saying, “That’s not bad at all for your first hole.”
Then Earl pointed out some of my faults. He told me exactly what to do on tee of the second hole and PING, right down the center of the fairway. For my next shot he told me to grab a seven iron, position my hands and then he backed up and told me to go for the flag. PING. I struck it solid. The sun was in the back drop and nobody saw where my ball dropped. We thought it fell at least 30 feet in front of the green.
After Earl, Gene and Jack hit their second shots, we climbed in the carts and the discussion was where did my ball land? Once we arrived close to the green everybody found their balls except me. Earl was about 18 feet on the backside of the hole, Gene was on the front side about two feet off the green and Jack was on the edge of the green about 15 feet from the hole. I knew they would escape with at least pars.
The guys felt sorry for me so they told me to drop the ball about 15 feet in front of the green and they asked me to go first. They didn’t have to ask me twice.
I pulled out my old scratched up putter. Jack gave me a couple of tips then I straddled over the ball. I looked at the hole and then the ball and then… TAP. The ball slowly trickled down the green and fell in the hole.
I did an impersonation of Tiger Woods fist-pumping celebration. My friends gave me high fives. Our voices echoed through the air as if I had made a hole-in-one.
After the short celebration ended, I walked over to the hole to retrieve my ball.
Guess what I found? My first ball. My friends were stunned and as happy as I was. We had looked everywhere except for the hole. The celebration began again with me doing another Tiger fist pump.
Then I woke up. That was the best golf dream that I ever had.
Golf lovers, I hope that you have enjoyed the golf columns written by our golf pros at Hilma Country Club, Maccripine and The Links at Cotton Valley over the past three weeks. If you have a question or concern about your golf gaming send me an email at cadkins@dailysoutherner.com and I will forward it to one of the pros so they can address it in their column. Until next month, let’s take it "From The Tee."
