I took up golf at age 50, when my son quit baseball and basketball, and I needed a pastime to replace the many summer hours I had been coaching and watching my son play games. I also refreshed my bowling game, joining a league for the first time in more than 25 years from that date. I'm 70 now.
I naively thought that since I was fairly athletic and had good hand-eye coordination, golf would be easy and I would quickly elevate my "game" to a satisfactory level. But I learned what most golfers know intuitively, though never admit to themselves. (Starting as an adult) You go from terrible to bad in your first three years, and there you remain, unless you seriously do something to improve beyond that level. You don't get any better from year to year, no matter how much you play. When you start as a child it's a whole different thing. If you learn a good golf swing before you are twenty, you will be fine for the rest of your life. But if you DIDN'T learn that swing when you were a child, you can never re-capture that opportunity. Muscle memory dies at age 20. But I digress.
So in the past 20 years, I estimate that I have played 18 holes of golf every week during the approximately thirty week Western Pennsylvania golf season (two nine hole sessions) since I took up the game. (Some years I play more - especially since I retired - but that's about it). Approximately four of every 18 holes is a Par 3 on which I have a theoretical chance of hitting a Hole in One. That's two thousand four hundred shots over the past twenty years when I could have hit a hole in one.
On two previous occasions on Par 3's, I have hit my first shot "into the woods" where it was definitely lost forever, then teed up again and hit the ball into the hole. Those are technically not "Holes in One," although they are gratifying in the extreme. On the scorecard those shots are recorded as "3's".
As stated above I am not a good golfer, and I can say quite honestly that other than the two shots mentioned, I can't remember having the ball stop within, say, 18 inches of the hole, on any Par 3 since I started playing. I have had fewer than twenty-five birdies on par threes.
Obviously, over the years I have met hundreds of other golfers, most just casual or instantaneous acquaintances, and most golfers have never hit a hole in one. In fact, I know several avid golfers - three or four times a week golfers - who have never hit a hole in one.
But yesterday I was playing in my league of Geezers, and the impossible came to pass. I was playing particularly badly on the front nine. My tee shots, chipping and putting were OK, but I was "spraying" my irons. That is to say, all of my iron shots were off-line, but not in any consistent way; therefore, it was impossible to make a correction since my flaw on every iron swing was different. Very frustrating.
On the back nine I started well, and my irons improved a bit. I parred 10 and 11, and bogeyed 12. The thirteenth hole is listed at 164 yards from the White Tees, although the tee markers were a little bit forward on the tee box, making the shot about 160 yards. I normally hit my 5-iron about 150, but the course was terribly dry, which led to balls rolling farther than usual after they landed. So I took out my 5-iron for this tee shot. The shot took off on a perfect trajectory, right at the pin, landed on the front of the green and rolled toward the hole. What often happens under these conditions is that the ball will roll OVER the hole, continuing for several feet. You can't see the ball from the tee box because it is partly obscured by the pin. I've seen shots that were actually 8-10 feet past the hole by the time we got to the green, when it appeared to have been a possible Hole in One. Approaching the green, none of us could see the ball on the green, and I assumed that it had rolled all the way off the back of the green, so I grabbed my pitching wedge and putter as I walked up onto the green.
Another of the golfers in our foursome - one more optimistic than me - had walked directly to the hole, glanced down into it, and looked over at me with both thumbs up. My distinctive ball (I had switched to a yellow ball to avoid losing one) was sitting in the cup. There were congratulations all around, and I marked the "1" with two circles around it on the scorecard while the others were finishing the hole. I texted my wife the good news.
Unfortunately, I had an urgent dentist appointment due to a suspected cracked filling, and I was on a time limit. We had planned to golf quickly to get our 18 holes in, but got delayed at the beginning, and I would not be able to finish the round. I played 14 and 15, but had to bail out of the last three holes, so I never finished the round.
There are two customary formalities when someone hits a Hole in One. All four golfers sign the scorecard and turn it in to the course. Sometimes the course gives some sort of prize, and usually the course will call the local newspaper and have the shot reported in the paper. It is also customary at some courses for the person who hits the HiW to buy a round for the other golfers, but in these Covid-19 days, that would not have been possible. Regardless, we didn't do any of that. The others may have signed the scorecard after I left, but it was satisfactory to me that I had scored the Hole in One and it was witnessed by three other golfers.
It was probably the only straight Iron shot I hit all day.
In the Big Picture, a Hole in One is the ultimate manifestation of the factor that makes golf "addictive." Psychologist B.F. Skinner did research many decades ago, proving that pigeons and - by extension - humans can be induced to do things over and over again almost to infinity, if they are "reinforced" on a random basis. That is to say, they get a great feeling of satisfaction from doing something, but it only happens randomly; you never know when the next orgasm of satisfaction will occur, so you keep doing it over and over again, hoping for another one. We golfers - even the bad ones - experience a great shot occasionally - usually on the 18th hole, and it's that occasional feeling of euphoria that keeps us coming back, week after week, year after year. Outsiders ask, "Why does he keep golfing? He sucks." But he doesn't suck ALL THE TIME. He occasionally hits a great shot and that's what keeps him coming back.
Despite playing a generally crappy round of golf, I'll be back next week.
I naively thought that since I was fairly athletic and had good hand-eye coordination, golf would be easy and I would quickly elevate my "game" to a satisfactory level. But I learned what most golfers know intuitively, though never admit to themselves. (Starting as an adult) You go from terrible to bad in your first three years, and there you remain, unless you seriously do something to improve beyond that level. You don't get any better from year to year, no matter how much you play. When you start as a child it's a whole different thing. If you learn a good golf swing before you are twenty, you will be fine for the rest of your life. But if you DIDN'T learn that swing when you were a child, you can never re-capture that opportunity. Muscle memory dies at age 20. But I digress.
So in the past 20 years, I estimate that I have played 18 holes of golf every week during the approximately thirty week Western Pennsylvania golf season (two nine hole sessions) since I took up the game. (Some years I play more - especially since I retired - but that's about it). Approximately four of every 18 holes is a Par 3 on which I have a theoretical chance of hitting a Hole in One. That's two thousand four hundred shots over the past twenty years when I could have hit a hole in one.
On two previous occasions on Par 3's, I have hit my first shot "into the woods" where it was definitely lost forever, then teed up again and hit the ball into the hole. Those are technically not "Holes in One," although they are gratifying in the extreme. On the scorecard those shots are recorded as "3's".
As stated above I am not a good golfer, and I can say quite honestly that other than the two shots mentioned, I can't remember having the ball stop within, say, 18 inches of the hole, on any Par 3 since I started playing. I have had fewer than twenty-five birdies on par threes.
Obviously, over the years I have met hundreds of other golfers, most just casual or instantaneous acquaintances, and most golfers have never hit a hole in one. In fact, I know several avid golfers - three or four times a week golfers - who have never hit a hole in one.
But yesterday I was playing in my league of Geezers, and the impossible came to pass. I was playing particularly badly on the front nine. My tee shots, chipping and putting were OK, but I was "spraying" my irons. That is to say, all of my iron shots were off-line, but not in any consistent way; therefore, it was impossible to make a correction since my flaw on every iron swing was different. Very frustrating.
On the back nine I started well, and my irons improved a bit. I parred 10 and 11, and bogeyed 12. The thirteenth hole is listed at 164 yards from the White Tees, although the tee markers were a little bit forward on the tee box, making the shot about 160 yards. I normally hit my 5-iron about 150, but the course was terribly dry, which led to balls rolling farther than usual after they landed. So I took out my 5-iron for this tee shot. The shot took off on a perfect trajectory, right at the pin, landed on the front of the green and rolled toward the hole. What often happens under these conditions is that the ball will roll OVER the hole, continuing for several feet. You can't see the ball from the tee box because it is partly obscured by the pin. I've seen shots that were actually 8-10 feet past the hole by the time we got to the green, when it appeared to have been a possible Hole in One. Approaching the green, none of us could see the ball on the green, and I assumed that it had rolled all the way off the back of the green, so I grabbed my pitching wedge and putter as I walked up onto the green.
Another of the golfers in our foursome - one more optimistic than me - had walked directly to the hole, glanced down into it, and looked over at me with both thumbs up. My distinctive ball (I had switched to a yellow ball to avoid losing one) was sitting in the cup. There were congratulations all around, and I marked the "1" with two circles around it on the scorecard while the others were finishing the hole. I texted my wife the good news.
Unfortunately, I had an urgent dentist appointment due to a suspected cracked filling, and I was on a time limit. We had planned to golf quickly to get our 18 holes in, but got delayed at the beginning, and I would not be able to finish the round. I played 14 and 15, but had to bail out of the last three holes, so I never finished the round.
There are two customary formalities when someone hits a Hole in One. All four golfers sign the scorecard and turn it in to the course. Sometimes the course gives some sort of prize, and usually the course will call the local newspaper and have the shot reported in the paper. It is also customary at some courses for the person who hits the HiW to buy a round for the other golfers, but in these Covid-19 days, that would not have been possible. Regardless, we didn't do any of that. The others may have signed the scorecard after I left, but it was satisfactory to me that I had scored the Hole in One and it was witnessed by three other golfers.
It was probably the only straight Iron shot I hit all day.
In the Big Picture, a Hole in One is the ultimate manifestation of the factor that makes golf "addictive." Psychologist B.F. Skinner did research many decades ago, proving that pigeons and - by extension - humans can be induced to do things over and over again almost to infinity, if they are "reinforced" on a random basis. That is to say, they get a great feeling of satisfaction from doing something, but it only happens randomly; you never know when the next orgasm of satisfaction will occur, so you keep doing it over and over again, hoping for another one. We golfers - even the bad ones - experience a great shot occasionally - usually on the 18th hole, and it's that occasional feeling of euphoria that keeps us coming back, week after week, year after year. Outsiders ask, "Why does he keep golfing? He sucks." But he doesn't suck ALL THE TIME. He occasionally hits a great shot and that's what keeps him coming back.
Despite playing a generally crappy round of golf, I'll be back next week.
