Waiting for an ace

It finally stopped snowing and with a week of vacation in the books, I finally got back on the golf course last week.

While visiting Detroit for a friend’s wedding, I was able to go out on the links a few times with my dad and a couple friends. I didn’t play well, and using old clubs I’ve had sitting in a garage in Michigan for five years, I didn’t expect to, but getting out was refreshing. Also refreshing was what I was drinking to keep cool in 90-degree heat with what seemed like 135-percent humidity.

Most importantly, I got some sun, I had some fun and I lucked up into a fantastic shot one time.

Just once.

But, as well as I did, that one really lucky shot is still eluding me.

Here at the newspaper, in our little corner of the office, we’re sent scores of faxes and emails each spring and summer telling us of all the local golfers that have hit a hole-in-one. We get a few a week, sometimes a few a day. We add them to the sports section, not just as a point of interest, but also so that somewhere there’s proof that the best golf shot of that player’s life actually happened.

The lucky few range from kids yet to hit their teens to adults that have been playing these courses forever. They are men, women, amateurs, pros, former pros, former amateurs and in some cases just plain lucky. They come on long par-3 holes and short ones. They are hit with long irons, woods and wedges and sometimes, however dubiously, with clubs that don’t match the distance of the hole.

As different as they all are, they all involve one thing. They don’t include me.

It’s agonizing at times writing up about the 14-year-old having hit his third hole-in-one, or the older gentlemen that hit his seventh. I feel like they’re hoarding. Share the love.

The worst of them all came before I ever worked at a newspaper.

A friend in college once called me from the golf course after hitting his first ace. I was proud of him, though extremely jealous considering I helped introduce that friend to golfing earlier that summer. I’m pretty sure he was using my old clubs.

I won’t kid myself to think that I’m talented enough to hit a hole-in-one. Most times I’m fortunate to get my shots on the green. But, man, I’ve never even been on the witness list. I just want to be lucky enough to be one of those guys that gets bought a drink at the end of the round and talks about how great a shot I just saw.

Sure I probably have to get better. Learn to hit my clubs the right distances and the right direction. I probably, at minimum, have to find better golfing partners to increase my chances of at least being within eyeshot of an ace.

When it comes down to it, for most golfers, me included, luck is most of it. One lucky bounce, a lucky roll, a lucky pin placement, a lucky carom off a birch tree and a cart path.

I haven’t been that lucky. Yet.

All it takes is one time.