Horror Hole

It’s said that even a blind squirrel finds the occasional acorn, and in much the same way the amateur golfer occasionally produces a rare moment of golfing genius that even our brothers in the professional ranks couldn’t better. Few things produce a broader smile than the knowledge that Rory or Tiger couldn’t have done it any better.

On the flip side, and touching on the darker side of our psyche, there’s a satisfaction – a schadenfreude – that comes with witnessing a Tour Player notch up a score in double figures.  It’s a freakishly uncommon occurrence, but now and then it does happen.  Just a couple of weeks ago John Daly did it, notching up a 10 on a par 3 and making us all feel a little better about our games in the process. A year or so back Kevin Na managed a 16 on a par 4 at the Valero Texas Open. They are human, after all! Admittedly, it’s clutching at a very rare straw.

For the rest of us the ‘Horror Hole’ isn’t something we normally expect (at least, hopefully not), but it’s less of a shock when it does come along. I bet most of us have already had one or two this year and the snow has hardly left us. But if you had to hold up your hand to admit your finest catastrophe, what would it be?

Mine arrived at Leatherhead GC in Surrey during an Open Competition about 10 years ago. It’s amazing how easily the mind can recall every detail of such torment.  I can remember standing on the tee of the gentle dog-leg right par 4 as if it were last week. I contrived to snap-hook my drive under a large fir tree positioned well to the left of the innocuous looking fairway. Still, nothing to panic about yet, and my decision to take a penalty drop was a sensible one (borne of much experience). I duly lobbed out to the middle of the fairway to lie 100 yards away in 3 shots – OK it wouldn’t be my best hole, but still no crisis.

Quite how I managed to rack up a dozen shots I will never fully understand, but the offending scorecard proves the inescapable truth that somehow I did.  My fourth effort was a thinned sand wedge that fizzed across the green like an Exocet missile before thudding into a small shallow ditch behind the green. Not the kind of shot befitting a scratch golfer and, in hindsight, it was at this point that my mind turned to goo. My decision to attempt a stabby, forced, lob on to the green with little more room for a backswing than the distance between my ball and right shoe was somewhat misguided. Perhaps I should’ve appreciated that after one attempt, but I didn’t, nor after a second, trying three times in vain and now here I was resting in the blessed ditch for seven.

Accepting that the only way out now was via a penalty drop and determined to make sure I didn’t plop it back in the ditch, I proceeded to knock an over-zealous chip all the way back to the very front of the green for nine. Inevitably I three putted (with a horseshoe lip out, naturally) to complete a magnificent twelve.

I still maintain that I actually played quite well that day, with the exception of one aberration, but such is the perilous nature of golf that it becomes pretty easy to rack up a cricket score without much effort!  I’m sure my dirty dozen won’t be the most disgraceful effort out there – perhaps you’re game enough to admit to yours?