Last Sunday, I completely lost my mind and decided to play an actual round of golf.  The sweltering summers serve a dual purpose for the Arizona golf scene:  saner people retreat to air-conditioned TV lounges, while the hopelessly insane slither noiselessly out of desert rat holes, to tee it up gleefully when the thermometer peaks at 100˚ F.  In June, green fees at some of the finest tracks in Tucson resemble movie ticket prices, as opposed to the traffic violations you’ll be written up for in April.  Burning my hand as I slammed my Toyota’s molten metal trunk lid at 1:30 pm, thirty slim bucks later I was swiftly admitted to the lunatic asylum at Arizona National golf club, a place I had received treatment at some months earlier.

The first hole was closer to shock therapy.  Having wisely invested in a dozen Titleist NXT Tour balls instead of the preferred and costly Pro V1’s, I quickly donated two dimpled spheres to the saguaro and snake infested waste area on the port side of the fairway, using my best screaming snap-hook swing.  My fellow inmate Juan, a pleasant single I had joined up with in order to avoid playing behind The Brady Bunch (a family of hackers who had finished excavating the practice range and was headed slowly to the first tee), quietly sought the protection of his cart as I finally put a third ball in play with another low raker.  We didn’t speak much after that.

Actually, Juan turned out to be a high-handicapper who spent his whole day searching the starboard side wastelands, and thus I was left to dance alone with this beautiful bitch nestled into the foothills of the Santa Catalina mountains.

Beautiful as she was, it didn’t prevent her from tap-dancing on my forehead with spiked heels for the next seventeen holes.  By the time I arrived at the eighteenth, my scorecard was sprinkled like spikes on a cactus with bogeys and a meager par or two, even though I was hitting a lot of quality shots.  I was both surprised and pleased that my hard-won golf swing hadn’t abandoned me during my long, self-imposed season of Lent, and I smiled confidently at two college-age men who Juan and I found waiting patiently on the final hole.

The young men were waiting for the eighteenth fairway to clear, because the finishing 513 yard Par-5 had an elevated tee box, the kind of breathtaking desert view that thrills everybody (except the golfers themselves).  I could tell by their practice swings that these men were skilled players, one a lanky white lad with high clubhead speed, and the other a Barack Obama look-a-like with a setup like Tiger Woods.  From the “respectful” looks on their faces, I could also tell that they were planning to put on a little show for ‘ole Grandpa (me).

Yes, the testosterone began to flow as four proud peacocks – one a crusty old coot who refused to be driven from the playground -- began displaying their tail feathers to the Golf Goddess, whose gaze remained austere and icy in spite of the afternoon heat.  Juan, his eyes narrowing to take careful note of the dense housing tract guarding the right side of the hole, promptly deposited his ball into a wealthy Tucsonian’s swimming pool.

One down, two to go, I thought to myself.

The Goddess, displeased with Juan’s errant offering, sniffed haughtily and turned her cold stare toward the first young gun-- the skinny Caucasian, who had eagerly stepped in behind Juan and was waggling his stick in a distressingly proficient manner.  His brisk, athletic swing produced a laser-straight drive, the ball sailing down, down, down into the fairway, where it bounded considerably further and finally came to rest, easily a good 300 yards away.  The young man had stuck his finish expertly, and his smug expression revealed to us all that he was quite pleased with his effort.  Barack, feigning excessive politeness, motioned me to the tee.  “Go ahead.”  With our current location being only miles from Tombstone, Barack may as well have been Val Kilmer:

“Say when!”

Maybe it was middle-age hormones morphing into the competitive juices of an overextended youth, or maybe it was just blind luck, but I could have sworn I heard a girly squeal from the Golf Goddess when I smashed my first real drive of the day:  a high, arcing draw, that started well out over Juan’s angry neighbors and then curved subtly into the fairway.  A (deceptively) faraway lake guarded the faraway final green, and I wondered aloud, completely sincerely, whether my ball would reach it, because I knew I had struck it well.  I had felt it in my hands.

“No way, dude.  You didn’t hit it that good.”  The lanky one had spoken, and I wasn’t inclined to disagree with him, because it was my first time playing the course.  Plus, I honestly thought the young man had outdone me, or had been certainly my equal.

Barack, now feeling that insane pressure that comes with teeing off last--behind good players no less, set up a little stiffly behind the ball, and proceeded to take a vicious rip at it.  On any other day, Barack would have challenged my best drive easily.  Today, however, Obama had decided to visit Juan’s new neighborhood, as his blocked shot soared into the starboard skies, only a distant “thunk” signaling its eventual rooftop resting place.  Visibly exasperated, Barack reloaded and overcompensated, his second ball hooking dead left like my first swing of the day.

When our three cart caravan arrived at the first found ball, it was identified as Barack’s (Juan’s was long gone).  Thirty yards ahead was another ball--the lanky kid’s ball.  As he looked up from his inspection, the expression on the lanky kid’s face told me everything I needed to know.  He was staring at another ball, nestled barely in the first cut of rough on the left side, approximately forty-five yards further up the fairway.  The golf carts were equipped with GPS, and as we sidled up next to it, our indicators read “156 yards to the hole.”

I had struck a 363 yard tee shot, and the Bitch… er, Goddess, nearly swooned at the thought of having to endure my sweaty, 40-something embrace.  Maybe I would screw up the rest of the hole, she privately prayed to herself.

But it was simply not to be.  Smiling inside like the Chesire Cat, I took out an 8-iron and smoothed it perfectly out of the longer grass, playing a low draw that found the right front edge of the green, bounced once, and then skidded and rolled to within 5 feet of the pin.  My approach shot had flown right up the skirt of the Golf Goddess, who immediately went into cardiac-arrest, because all the old man had left for an eagle 3 was an uphill, right to left breaking putt!  As I canned it, youth was definitely served -- a plate of cold, heartless beans -- by a 46 year old man.

Come on, baby… give me a kiss.

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