Hacker Status

If there were any one game I can’t get down, even halfway, it is golf.

Golf as a topic of conversation with someone goes something like this:

Them: “Do you golf?”

Me: “Oh yeah! Love it! But I accepted my hacker status a long time ago.” In other words, I’m really bad. That sort of self-deprecating humor gets me off the hook should I ever play with them.

My other retort, should scores and handicaps come up, is: “I think I’ve broken a hundred a couple of times. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure I cheated both times!” Nice attempt at humor, and probably true.

Lastly, I’ll say that I play “military golf.” My golf ball from tee to green tends to go left, then right, then left, and so on until it finally gets to the green, just like the drill instructor’s cadence to his troops on a march: “Left! Right! Left Right Left!!!”

But the thing is, I really don’t accept my hacker status. Does anybody really? And having a really high handicap and seldom breaking one hundred? It kills me! I mean, at this pace, I may shoot my age one day … if I live to be 100! (But even that could be problematic). And forget distance! All I want to do is hit it straight.

Watch a golf tournament on television, and if it’s close, you will witness drama at its best. The highest highs and the lowest lows. That goes for professionals and amateurs alike. Even for hackers like me. That one good shot you hit or putt you make will keep you going back for more. Only to bring you right back down with a shot in the water or a snowman (8) on what should have been an easy par five. Golf can humble the best players in the world. For hackers like me, it could drive you to tears (and drinkin’) if you let it.

I’d love just once to be able to step up to a par four tee box, crush my driver down the middle of the fairway (with a big old loft and long roll), hit the green in regulation with an amazing approach shot that lands a few feet from the hole, and hit the putt for a birdie. Up and down in three!

Not happenin’. At this point in my life, only in my dreams.

Now, with the amount of help I’ve had over the years, I should be better. I’ve been to golf school, had any number of private lessons, and bought some pretty good, “forgiving” clubs. But to no avail.

I have the utmost admiration for good golfers, those players who almost make it look easy and seamless. I long for their ability. To smash a drive. To make amazing approach shots from the fairway, rough or bunker. To cooly stroke a putt from twenty, ten, or five feet away having read the contour of the green perfectly.

So what does it take to be a “good golfer?” Well, not that I would know, but here a few of my theories:

1. You have that God-given athletic ability and hand-eye coordination.
2. You can mentally focus during a round and shut everything else out.
3. You took lessons and played growing up. You never lost that muscle memory.
4. You played baseball or hockey as a youth. It’s the same premise with the swing and contact with the ball/puck.
5. You practice, practice, practice. You are like a gym rat shooting hundreds of baskets, except you are on the range banging buckets of balls for hours, sometimes under the worse possible weather conditions.
6. You have the time to play and you play all the time.
7. You are competitive as hell!
8. You can relax on the course during a round, not letting a bad shot ruin the hole you are on or your round. Nothing rattles you.
9. You have the ability to approach every shot and putt analytically.
10. You just get how to use that club as a tool and how it should come into contact with the ball.
11. You just get the mechanics of the golf swing.

Sadly, most if not all of these theories do not apply to me.

And as the investment gurus say on Shark Tank: “For that reason, I’m out.”