HAVE you ever lost four balls on one hole? How about taking 11 on a 100-yard par-three?
No? Well, until last week, I hadn't either - and then it all happened in the space of one hole.
The hole in question was the eighth at Farnham Park Golf Club, a nine-hole par-three course just down the road from where I grew up.
Looking at the scorecard, it really shouldn't be a difficult hole, measuring just 100 yards and rated the third-easiest on the course.
In reality, it's much harder than that. A pond, a ditch and some interestingly-placed railway sleepers guard the front of a shallow green, with out-of-bounds and another pond immediately behind.
However, I can't blame any of these hazards for the fate of my first ball. Attempting to play a full shot with my gap wedge, which is turning out to be one of my worst golfing purchases, I shanked it into the undergrowth no more than 15 yards from the tee.
After the briefest of searches, I returned to the tee and proceeded to push my third stroke (after a penalty) right, leaving the pond between me and the flag.
This was where the problems really began. I was a bit hampered by a bush behind me and thinned my first effort straight into the water.
Taking a third ball out of my bag, I drew my lob wedge and duly duffed what was my sixth shot into the water as well, a sequence repeated again immediately afterwards.
I changed clubs and managed to clear the pond with my 10th shot, before sinking a 12-foot putt for an 11. Not pretty.
Rather annoyingly, that proved to be the only blip in an otherwise impressive round. I had been pretty steady in the seven holes that preceded it, even managing to rescue a four when I produced possibly the worst shank of my life on the fifth.
Things soon got better after the disastrous eighth as well. A four on the 170-yard ninth saw me to the turn in 41 and I played really quite well second time around, never taking more than four and shooting 32, a personal best.
If I'd managed to just take a seven at that eighth hole, I'd have come away being able to say I'd played 18 holes in less than 70 strokes. Guess it's not meant to be.
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