100. It’s an arbitrary number, but one that I’ve been fixated on for some time. A goal that continues to elude me. I want to break 100 playing golf. That was painful to admit. It takes courage to throw open the kimono and let the world know just how bad a golfer you are. If you’re not a golfer… well, shooting more than 100 for a round of golf is pretty awful if you’re not a complete beginner.

100 means lots of lost balls. Balls sent flying into the woods. Balls sent to a watery grave in lakes and creeks. It means taking a mighty swing and chunking it a few feet in front of you. It means taking four or five attempts to putt the ball into the hole. It means attempting a four foot chip and sending the ball rocketing across the green. Shooting over a 100 means it often takes several minutes and all the fingers on both hands to add up how many shots you took on that last hole.

Shooting over 100 means you are not PGA material. The senior tour is probably not in the cards for me.

So why do I care? It’s a hobby after all. I care because I’ve never been bad at a sport before. With every other activity I’ve done, I manage to get to a respectable intermediate level before too long. Not so with golf.

I’ve taken countless lessons. I’ve watched a ridiculous number of hours of golf instruction videos. None of it seems to take. I can go to a lesson and do pretty well. I’ll go back to the range or the course the next day and it’s like I never had a lesson. It’s a mystery to me why this happens. It’s like the more I practice, the worse I get.

There’s nothing significant about a score of 100. For some reason, the scoring benchmarks people seem to track are breaking 100, 90, 80. Once you’re in the 70’s you’re nearly a scratch golfer and move to a whole different stratosphere of golf. My ultimate goal would be to be consistently in the low 90’s. But first, I have to reach that elusive score of 99.

I thought for sure it was going to happen this weekend. I was at an even 50 after nine holes. All I had to do was keep it together and play just as well for nine more, and then take one less shot than the previous nine. Just one shot less. How hard could that be?

Unfortunately it’s hard. So hard that I fell apart completely. Ended up shooting way more than a 100.

I just don’t get it. I guarantee I could pick up a baseball, football, or toss a frisbee right now despite not having done it in decades. I’d be willing to bet that with a little bit of practice I could probably surf or windsurf again even though it’s been at least thirty years. Skiing comes right back every year after the long summer hiatus.

Why can’t I just figure out a semi consistent golf swing?

Maybe the problem is that I took golf up as an older adult? All those other activities I started as a kid or in my teens/early twenties. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not cut out for golf. I really wish I didn’t like it so much, because I really hate it much of the time. The constant kick in the ego when I see an obese eighty-year-old hit the snot out of the ball is real. Especially when I walk up to the tee and immediately chunk it 50 yards into the wrong fairway.

It’s unclear who originally came up with the quote, but it’s the best description of the game I’ve heard – “Golf is a good walk spoiled”.

Sigh. But on the plus side, I did recently find a golf video on Youtube that I think is the secret move I’ve been missing. I’ll probably run to the driving range in a bit and practice some more.