I want to tell you the story of my first par on the golf
course. It was 1960 and our high school wrestling team had a vacancy in the 156
pound weight class. My good friend, Ben, fit the bill and I convinced him to join
the team.
Over the course of the season, Ben helped us a lot. Even in
losing, Ben netted us point that would have been taken away by forfeits, and
when he won, which he did, it was a great boost to the team, but what does that
have to do with golf and my first par? For that, we have to fast forward to the
beginning of golf season. Ben was on the golf team and they needed a fourth
player. It was payback time, and I became the fourth player on the golf team.
Believe me when I tell you Ben was a better wrestler than I
was a golfer. I may have set the Guinness record for the most lost ball, even
before our first match of the season. In that match, I spent more time looking
for my balls in the rough and the woods than I did walking the fairways.
After a frustrating few hole of playing hide and seek with
my golf balls, I teed off on a par three hole.
A big part of my problem was the fact that because of an eye problem, I
have the depth perception of a one eyed man.
As a result, I often lost sight of the ball after it left the tee. This
hole was no exception It looked like it looked like it hooked to the left. So after
spending the next five minutes searching the rough and the woods, I was just
about to give up when someone said, “Who has a Titleist 4?”
That was my ball and it was resting just six inches from the
cup!!! Not only did I just miss a hole in one, I was set up for my first
birdie, even before I got my first par. With
a big grin on my face, I walked up to the cup and if you remember the title of this blog entry, you know what happened next. That's right. I TWO putted!
Well I never got a birdie, but I did get first and ONLY
par. Mercifully, a few matches later we picked up a fourth who was considerably better than me Arnold Palmer breathed a sigh of relief as I slipped
into retirement and ended my golf career.
I will never forget my first par, and it has been over forty years now. We were playing at a golf course in Lakewood New Jersey and there was one par 3 right up against a busy highway. It was deafening, so I teed up and blasted off. The ball landed a few feet from the cup and I was able to tap in for par eventually.
ReplyDeleteJarrett @ The QATSPY Golf Approach