The ridiculous obsession

   I was unable to golf last season due to tennis elbow (pout, pout). It is fully my intention to make up for that this year. To that end, I have hit balls on the driving range four times, and played two rounds of eighteen already this year. Although, going by my total stroke count to date, some might guess that I had played three.
   Golf is an infuriating game, and might just be, in and of itself, a definitive proof of the existence of God. Not the namby-pamby, all loving God of the New Testament, but the wrathful, jealous God of the Old Testament. You know, the one who turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for failing to keep her head down. The one who killed all of Job's livestock, and family, and caused him to be stricken with leprosy, just for bragging about his handicap.
   Of course, he is much more subtle today than he was three thousand years ago. Oh yeah, there is no turning the water hazards to blood, or loosing plagues of locusts on the fairway these days. Today, the Punishment Of The Lord is simple. He keeps you coming back.
   There is no other way to explain it. When have you ever seen a golfer walking off the eighteenth green claiming to be happy about his game? But, we keep going back...voluntarily. So figure it out. Why would someone willingly and wilfully continue to engage in an activity that they do not enjoy?
   I think it is because of that one perfect shot a round. The five wood off the deck that sails high and straight, and leaves you a 75 yard pitch to the green, or the seven iron off the par three tee that rolls up to within six inches of the pin. That one shot that keeps you coming back, even though you blew the putt anyway. Every round has one of those shots in it, and therein lies the proof.
   After adding up the scorecard, and having to admit to your playing partner that your 122 has left the two of you one stroke shy of your opponents; after having to buy a new putter in the pro shop because your old one is beside the thirteenth green in two pieces; after gingerly peeling off your socks to expose the blister on your heel that you still get every round, even though your shoes should have been worked in two years ago; on the drive home you suddenly smile, and remember that one shot, and pick up the cell phone, and call to make a tee time for the following weekend. It is that one shot that somehow gets slipped into every round that keeps you coming back for more of the most exquisite punishment this universe can dole out that proves the existence of God. The Bastard!