Maybe my golf game isn't so hopeless after all

Me with fraternity brother Jim Eglin after the recent Sig Ep golf tournament.

Sometimes wonderful things seem to happen completely unexpectedly.

Seriously.

I have played so little golf in the last two years that when I do get out on the course, great shots are about as rare as Donald Trump apologies.

So you can imagine how I felt after I signed up to play in a charity golf tournament my college fraternity was hosting.

Add to that the fact that I rarely play well the first time on a course and Oct. 20 was looming darkly on the horizon for me.


The first thing that gave me some hope was learning that the format was a scramble, with four of us playing best ball. Second was that the other three guys in my foursome were only about 10 years younger than I am.

At 67, though, I was the oldest guy playing in the tournament. That gave me one of the door prizes, Oldest Golfer.

Two other prizes -- Closest to the Pin on No. 7 and Longest Drive on No. 10 -- seemed unlikely, even though the only time I had played in a tournament like this before, I hit a fluke shot that would up being 18 inches from the pin.

That wasn't going to be possible this time. For one thing, there was no hill with a 45-degree slope for the ball to roll down toward the pin. Indeed, the seventh hole at Pleasant Valley, 155 yards and over a large pond, reminded me in one sense to my favorite golf hole in the world, the seventh hole (coincidence? I think not) on my favorite course, the now defunct Empire Lakes in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

Pleasant Valley

That hole was a 170-yard par three that if you wanted to attack the hole for a birdie required you hit over water that pretty much went all the way from tee to green.

The biggest challenge at Pleasant Valley was the green itself, which sloped down from left to right and had a sand trap just left of the green.

On this day, the pin placement was brutally difficult. It was near the front, almost as far to the left as possible. In fact, it was less than 10 feet from the edge. A shot to the right would roll away from the pin and a shot even a little too far to the left would fall into the bunker.

Almost anywhere on the green would be an easy two-putt for par, but to have a chance at closest to the pin, that relatively tiny portion of green on the left was pretty much the only hope.

In addition, I'm not capable of one of those beautiful shots where backspin comes into play. Unless I hit the ball really high, my shots hit and then keep rolling.

But I had been hitting the ball better than I usually do, and I had very little to lose. I aimed my shot right at the flag.

Surprise, surprise. I hit it almost perfectly. A high, arching shot right at the flag.

The green was elevated enough that I couldn't see the result, but everybody else seemed excited. When I got to where I could see it, the ball was sitting just a few feet from the hole.

Six feet, five inches to be exact.

A dent in the green showed that it had hit a foot or so closer and then rolled a few inches farther away.

As I said later, it might not have been my best shot ever -- in 1997 I holed out from 167 yards away at Santa Anita -- but it was certainly in the top three. Oh, and I made the putt for a birdie two.

It wound up being closest to the pin by about six feet.

Score one for the geezer.