It is well known and documented that almost no one wants to hear (1) how nice the new vehicle you just bought is and/or (2) a breakdown of anyone’s latest round of golf.
Well, it’s been a while since I bought a new car, so you’re safe there.
However …
I’m just giving you advance notice that I completely understand if you’d like to skip down to the bottom of this column where it reads “Contact JJ at …” and be done with it. In fact, you might even want to actually contact me with thanks for the five minutes of your life you would have otherwise never gotten back.
But since you have decided to hang with me to this point, I hope will you appreciate how 55 years of anticipation finally came to an end earlier this week in, of all places, Glencoe, Ala.
There’s no reason to bore you with the details of any of the other 80-some-odd shots from Sunday’s round at Silver Lakes on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.
All that matters is one.
It’s the only one I took on the fifth hole on the Backbreaker course (there are three nine-hole layouts).
For those of you who have experienced a hole-in-one, you know how this is going to go. There are different ways to witness – some are visible from the tee box, some you think might be in the hole and some are totally blind – but the feeling is the same once you see that dimpled orb staring back up at you at the bottom of the cup.
If you’ve had multiple aces, I’m guessing the feeling never gets old. Then again, how would I know?
I started playing golf when I was 10 years old at Querbes Park. Over the years, I’ve stopped playing two or three times, but never for very long. So that’s a lot of rounds of golf to never have had an ace. I’d hear about everybody else’s stories over the years and knew my time would come. But it never did. And I’ve had my share of close calls; probably at least five times I’ve been within two feet.
Here’s what’s even crazier: Until 2016, I’d never even seen a hole-in-one. And that was basically an accident when one of my playing partners got a lucky bounce off a hill to the left of the #4 green at Huntington and saw it carom dead right and went into the hole like a homesick gopher.
Every year, our small group goes to the RTJ Trail in Alabama for five rounds on five days. This year, I was woefully underprepared with only three rounds played all year. And it showed.
On Day One of the trip, I might as well have been playing left-handed. Thank goodness we could rained out after seven holes so at least I could salvage a rain check.
The following day, I figured a little extended time on the practice range would help. But the more balls I hit, the worse I got. Shank-a-potamous. I finally just shut it down, lowered my already low expectations and calculated what would be the most amount of money I’d lose if I didn’t win a hole.
On the fateful fifth hole, my swing thought was simple: Just follow through and don’t shank it. The hole was 143 yards uphill to a long but narrow green. With a slight breeze into me, that’s an automatic 7-iron.
When I made contact, my first thought was somewhat a shock because I hadn’t hit a ball squarely on the club face in quite some time. When I looked up, I was just happy that it was airborne and headed toward the green, just a little left of the flagstick.
One of my playing partners gave it the obligatory “that might go in the hole” – how many times have a heard that? – but since it was uphill and the pin was in the back of the green, the ball disappeared over the horizon. I just picked up the tee and was thrilled that I had actually made good contact.
There was zero expectation as we drove to the green, even though we could now see most of it. Yes, I’ll admit to walking a little more briskly to the green when we got there and even more so when I could see no golf ball.
I surveyed the landscape and the thought ran through my head that I was about to be disappointed again. I’ve looked in cups many a time to see nothing, then find the ball beyond the back of the green.
Five feet away from the hole, I still had not allowed myself to think it was possible. Two steps later, there it was; a Titleist 3 ProV1 with a red dot staring back up it me as if to say “You looking for me?”
I didn’t scream, I didn’t dance around the green and, most importantly, I didn’t pass out in disbelief. I turned to my playing partners and simply said “I finally did it.”
(OK, so there were some pictures and videos and FaceTime calls before I finally grabbed it out of the bottom of the cup.)
By the time the tingling sensation wore off, one of my partners had already teed off on No. 6, denying me the chance to say the standard line of “Anybody beat a 1 on that last hole?”
Suitably pumped up, I hit my best drive of the day on the next hole. That was followed by an easy wedge from the middle of the fairway … which landed in the water in front of the green.
No, it was not the Titleist 3 ProV1 that landed in the drink. At least I knew enough to take that ball out of play.
At least I learned something the last 55 years.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com