Albatross

Somewhere in the sun-soaked, pre-twilight landscape, deep amongst the thorny shrubbery - solitary and cold - it is lost and alone in so much rural sprawl, obscured and exiled to the sand and dirt under sticks and rocks, forced to commune with the rush and sedge, waiting (just waiting) to be found, celebrated, ultimately exonerated for it's wayward wanderings. Beneath a boulder perhaps, cloaked in the waning day's whisper of dew, yearning for absolution forgiving its mistaken meanderings.
Eureka!?! Could it be? A glint of stark possibility within a melange of kelly and emerald vegitational tincture. An ensnared orb, grinning a dimpled smirk, half-buried in mud - lost, yes...but not forgotten!
I have found my golf ball.
And so continues this sub-Carnoustian round of perpetual yips and mulligans. Each time my beleaguered, discontinued Callaway X-out caroms off my knockoff discontinued Callaway club, it retreats into the dense, thick scrub and brush - begging, pleading, yearning not to be discovered. For it is a curious and undesirable thing, being batted around with some hybrid rutter by a 45-handicapper with an apocraphal score card. And, evidently, a dictionary.
But I love golf. Or rather, I love the idea of golf. For me, it's not so much a competition as an excuse to be outside, smoke cigars and eat hot dogs at the turn after the ninth hole.
The problem is - I'm terrible at the actual game. I shoot consistently in the hundreds, am usually involved in a cart accident and look absolutely ridiculous in knickerbockers, argyle socks and tam o'shanters. My hands blister, I burn easily and I sweat rather profusely. It's altogether a fairly uncomfortable experience.
Yet I've spent thousands of dollars on clubs, balls and greens fees, but no amount of practice seems to do me any good. I've had lessons and club fittings, spent hours on the driving range, read books and web articles on how to fix my swing - but none of it helps.
There's an amateur rule that says if you shank your tee shot and it doesn't reach the red ladies' tees, you have to spend the rest of the hole playing with your trousers around your ankles. If this rule was enforced to any degree, I wouldn't even bother wearing pants to the course. I'd just show up in the clubhouse in my boxers and saddle oxfords, putter in hand, ready to play.
Technically, that kind of shot is called a plonker. Just one of many fascinating words associated with the game of golf.
For example, if you told a non-golfer that you just hit a sandy scramble shamble chippy sticky golden ferret using a mashie niblet, they would probably back away and point you to the nearest insane asylum. But if you told a golfer that, he'd say, "Oh, you hit the flag from the sand bunker using your six-iron and it went in the hole. Nice shot."
But I would never hit a sandy scramble shamble chippy sticky golden ferret using a mashie nibblet. Why? Because I usually sprachle.
So I continue to pursue the elusive holy grail of my golf game: a score in the nineties. The score that says, "I'm just good enough not to embarrass myself at this second-rate municipal course, yet I probably possess enough accuracy to hit the ball picker on the range." In the end, that's all I really want.
That, and a hot dog for the road.