The frustrating game that is golf

Last week, I was fortunate enough to play in a golf outing to help support the local YMCA.  It is a great event with a lot of cool prizes including a golf ball drop where the 3 closest balls to a designated hole on the putting green, dropped from the top of a fire engine ladder, win a large cash sum.  We stepped up to the first tee for the shotgun start (actual hole 18) and proceeded to swing away.  My uncle hammered one right down the middle that just kept going and going and going and he ended up winning the longest drive of the day.  If you look at him you would think that there is no way he can hit it further than me.  However hole after hole, he routinely hit it longer than everyone in our group.

Here is where the game gets interesting.  When things go well for one person, they seem to go well for everyone, and vice versa.  We all hit our third shot on our first hole.  It was like a game of top this until the last shot stopped only inches from the cup.  The same thing happened on numerous other holes.  When the shots were bad, they all were bad with one drive actually coming to rest in a tree.  Not on the ground at the base of the tree, but actually came to rest in the pine needles about 5 feet off the ground (as Goose would say "we have a really great Polaroid of it").  Golf is definitely an interesting game.  You never know what may happen from one shot to the next.  I have holed out from 50 yards for a 7 and have hit 2 great shots to the green only to 3 putt for a 5.  I have played 8 really terrible holes only to make birdie on the 9th and want to come back for more.  I am still waiting to join the elite, hole-in-one club but I love the game and I will play it until the day I die (hopefully with at least one hole-in-one).