I’ve got my golf clubs and my trolley

I’ve got my golf shoes and golfing glove

Just in case I’ll take my brolly

To play this game I truly love,

At the first tee it clouds over

The wind starts blowing from the east

Cold enough to freeze the clover

But it’s not raining yet at least,

I place my ball and check the distance

Four hundreds yards, slight dogleg right

I calculate for wind resistance

Then start to swing with all my might,

My practice swings are pure precision

Tiger Woods would envy me

Yet when ball and club meet in collision

It barely wobbles off the tee,

Still I’m on my own and no-ones looking

I’ll put it back and start again

Trying to avoid the constant hooking

That always seems to mar my game,

Two more swings and the ball soars skywards

A beautiful shot or I’ll be damned

Ok, I might have struck it awkward

And God only knows where it will land,

But there it goes above the tree-line

Above the fence that lines the course

Hits the top and makes a “B” line

Straight for a window pane at force,

It might be time I have decided

To practice from another tee

After hearing what somebody shouted

They were going to do to me,

On the second tee there’s no improvement

Nor on the third the fourth or fifth

And I’m analyzing every movement

That seems to pay off by the sixth,

For there the ball fly’s through the heavens

Along the fairway toward the green

Landing in an eight foot bunker

Someone had placed half way between,

Still never mind I have my sand wedge

No not ham and cheese, I mean the club

And after ten long minutes of frantic swinging

There’s a three foot crater I have dug,

While the ball still sits there where it landed

Now on a pedestal of sand and clay

I could almost hear the damned thing chuckling

Until a lucky swing knocked it away,

Across the green just like a bullet

A more powerful shot you’ll never see,

Hits the pin that pings it backwards

Into a thick set clump of trees,

Another hour of desperate searching

Through long grass, brambles, roots and shrubs

Then five more strokes trying to dislodge it

From what’s laughingly described as rough,

Divots fly in all directions

And I’m about to blow a fuse

I’ve thrown my club along the fairway

Further than that ball has moved,

But finally with endless patients

I sink the ball successfully

Then take my bent and battered golf clubs

Onward to the seventh tee,

The seventh passed without occurrence

Except for the occasional prayer

And the accidental slice I’ve mastered

That sends the ball off course somewhere,

On the eighth I took the shot I’d dreaded

And I curse my birth, my life and luck

As another golfer’s knocked unconscious

Before I can shout or he can duck,

But as the paramedics rush to help him

And take the injured man away

My ball rolls inches from the flagpole

It’s the best shot that I’ve done all day,

Then comes the ninth and final challenge

A very difficult par three

Where water guards the short approaches

And bunkers ring the green,

But my tee shot goes off perfectly

Two hundred yards at least

What a shame it’s headed west

And the green lies to the east,

My next two shots land in the water

The next is bunker bound

Then out of the sand and across the fairway

Into a rabbit hole it found,

I think these golf clubs must be faulty

Because every shot turns out the same

I don’t know why I ever bought them

I really hate this stupid game,

But at last it’s done, the game concluded

That’s one game of golf I won’t forget

I count my strokes, and would you believe it?

Two hundred and ten,

                                    My best round yet.

By S.E.Ralph

5-4-2012