What I Learned From Plaid Trousers

After avoiding golf for years, a skeptic turns to the game to answer life’s bigger questions

- Ron Stodghill

THE TINY WHITE BALL sat in the sand, solitary and expectant, like an egg waiting to hatch. I stepped down into the bunker, golf club in hand, eager to fly it out of there and onto the green. It was a hot Saturday afternoon in the summer of 2010 at Birkdale Golf Club. I was a cocky novice golfer miraculously leading our foursome by three strokes. I stood over the ball, looked up, and smiled devilishly. For effect, I said something like, There’s a new sheriff in town.

But there on the par-four 15th hole, I would learn a hard life lesson. On my first swing, I brought the club down too steep and it swept through the sand, and I missed completely; on the second swing, I decelerated and watched the ball plop on the upward slope of the bunker and roll back down toward my feet; on my third and final sand shot, my club hit the ball thin and sent it careening across the green and about 50 yards back onto the fairway.

As I putted in, scoring a tragic eight, or four over par, my golf buddies looked on with a blend of pity and astonishment.They knew better than to try and console me, so they did something else: They laughed.