Do you play?

If it involves competition, the answer is yes. You name the sport and I'm up for playing or at least give it a try.

So recently when asked if I wanted to play in a foursome at a golf tournament, I said sure! By no stretch am I an avid golfer. I've played all of a total of no more than 5 rounds in my lifetime, but I've played. I don't own clubs and the last time I played was about 3-4 years ago. But in my book, do I play golf? Sure. It's no different than if you asked me if I play croquet, cricket or cross country skiing.

The tournament was last Friday and from the moment I arrived at the country club, I realized I was as they might say a few clubs short of a full golf bag. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and the weather was almost perfect, but it's questionable whether you can call what I did for those 4+ hours, golf.

My scorecard read 97, but that included a good number of 6's where in the interest of time, I just picked my ball up. I think I lost about 12 golf balls, but found 1 for a net loss of 11 on the day. We yelled "fore" for only one of my shots, but no word yet on whether anyone sustained injuries. If you were driving south of Lancaster on Rt 222 and noticed some low flying golf balls... To my credit, our team used one of my 18 drives and I had two other decent shots in the round. But I spent most of the time just enjoying myself - I had so many slices the corner deli called offering me a job!

I identified several years ago that my affection for golf stems from my having no drive to improve. It's the one sport that I feel no desire to try and learn how to play better, no pursuit to perfect my swing. I just like to get out, swing away and watch the ball fly, regardless of the direction so long as no one is injured and no property is damaged.

And such was my mentality on Friday. Let me note here that I had my team sign disclaimers prior to the tournament that my joining their ranks was not going to further their pursuits of winning any of the tournament prizes. It was clear from the outset that this was the best groomed course on which I had ever played and with my game living up to it's billing I realized that I needed to take some unconventional steps to try and keep my score respectable, forgetting standard shot selection.

And so, on several occasions when I found myself in the fairway with 100+ yards downhill to the pin, I pulled out my putter and power-putted away. To everyones surprise, I did so with relative success, reaching the green several yards from the pin. By no means conventional, probably deemed disrepectful to the game by some, but when a fairway is as high quality grass as the ones we were playing - I've seen greens that looked worse than that fairway - why not pull out the putter?

So while it was an enjoyable day, I came to realize that while I'll always be up for a game of golf, I need to change my answer to the question, do you play golf? No, I'm not a golfer.