'Six I hit into the lake, seven I threw'

I'm a crack whore when it comes to golf.

I'm a nappy-headed, barf-stinking, "will-work-for-dope" sign-holding junky. My clubs are the glass pipe and the course is my ass-smelling squaters apartment. I drive by courses and the pours in my skin open up waiting for the sweet elixer of fresh cut grass and duck shit off the lake. I look at them and the DTs begin. I yell at Wife to stop the car, but she's the perfect GA sponsor (Golfers Anonymous) and instead of being an enabler she keeps motoring by, leaving me licking the windshield wishing for one more toke on stale hot dogs and flat beer from the course snack shop.

So, when my golfing buddy posed the idea - "Hey, you want to play golf this weekend" - I said yes faster than a senior racing to the early bird dinner at a Furrs Cafeteria.

The two of us have seen our games get slightly better over the years. Gone are the days of shooting in the mid 120s, nowadays it's the low 100s, and if one of us get close we take note.

"Hey, asshead, you could crack 100 today. You got the elephant nuts to pull it off or are you going to choke it like it's Friday night at your house with late night Cinimax on the tube?"

And just like jinxing a no-hitter in baseball before the game's over, the mere mention of snapping the 100 barrier sends either of us into pure panic-attack mode. The sphincter tightens and we swing as if we have stiff robot arms.

But for those days when we're scary close to that magical number of 99, there have been days like another friend had yesterday on the links.

Golf is a maddening game. Just like crack, you get whiff and you need more. You hit a beauty shot that puts you on angel's wings, taking you along on a high. It scents the air with vanilla and roses, the birds sing aurias and everyone you see looks like Salma Hayek in a sun dress.

Then the course designers slap a lake between you and the green on a par 3 and everything changes. The air smells like the Las Vegas Strip after New Year's Eve, the birds shit in your hair and everyone you see looks like a West Virginian inbred love child (incest is best, as they say).

I'm sure that's what our buddy thought. The hole looked enticingly close, and the card said it was just 140 yards, tee to green. The first of our group smacks it to the left of the green, my regular golf buddy puts it in his typical spot on this particular hole - across the street, and then the newest golfer to our crew of hacks skips across the lake (how one skips a ball - a sphere - across a lake is one of those mind-bending physics questions that would drive the dude on Numb3rs insane), and finally I skied a nine-iron that would be out driven by a thrown ball a few minutes later.

That's right, the new guy ended up throwing a tee shot.

There's something about a par 3 hole on a golf course. You hear the tales of folks topping tee a shot and the ball still rolling in for a hole in one. And you see how it can be done. The hole is so close ... soooo close, it should be as easy as the office slut. You get in the box, tee up the ball and wail on it like it's a battle between you and the ball and you're afraid it will attack first. Then you watch hopelessly as the topper you just hit bounds down on a 15-hopper into the drink.

So you tee up another rather than utilizing the drop zone. You set up, sure you know what went wrong with the last swing. You address the ball - "OK ball, I don't like you, you don't like me, so what do you say I smack you and you go in the hole?" - and then swing away, before feeling suicidal after watching another tee shot - this time a hot liner because you finally kept your head down on the shot - wade into the pond.

Our buddy went through this three times, and three balls down he found a way to beat the ball-eating lake - chuck the ball like it was a flaming bottle of dog piss.

As we shouted out the scores to our official score keeper (the only guy in the bunch who can add eight and seven and come up with the correct answer on a fairly consistent basis) our water boy counted his strokes: "six I hit into the lake, seven I threw, a chip and two putts for 10."

I'd like to say that was the first time I'd seen someone throw a shot on the golf course. But it's not. And I'd like to say I have never thrown a shot, but we all know that ain't the truth.

During my first tour of duty playing this game (age 15-20) the Old Man and I would often head out after work/school for nine holes at the local dive course. It cost five bucks to walk it, so the price was right, and it was house free, so there was no worries of angry homeowners charging out their back door weilding a bazooka because we just put a dent in to their Gen. Patton plastic lawn-ornament statue. I think we both enjoyed these week days, despite often locking horns. Could you blame us, though? At that time, the Old Man was teaching me to drive, so patience was neither of our strong suits. But it also brought us closer - they say shared near-death experiences draw individuals closer, and me learning to drive was a near-death experience everytime I stepped behind the wheel - to the point where we were becoming friends.

On one particular day wasn't a particularly good day for the youngster, and the Old Man wasn't doing much better. My slice was working overtime and the ball-gulping lake had swiped three for the day. We meandered through eight-and-a- half holes easily cresting 50 (that's the high-water mark when I play a niner) a hole or two previously. On this course, the final hole is an elevated tee, so an easy shot will carry like it's a red-tailed hawk. And that's what the Old Man and I do, we sail our tee shots like he was Jack Nicklaus and I was Tiger Woods. We traded high fives, believing - finally - we got this game (and maybe our Old Man-kid relatioinship) figured out.

The green was also elevated, leaving with a nice little uphill chip for a second shot. I pull out my nine-iron, swing (believing it looked so good some golf scout would spot me and immediately hook me up with a Tour card- nevermind there aren't golf scouts, let alone those who hang out at Echo Mesa Golf Course in that garden city known as Hemet, Cal.) and zing the ball into the one friggin' tree guarding the green. I swear the groundskeeper planted that damn thing while we were approaching our second shots.

"Did you see it come down?" I ask my Old Man.

"No, but I'm sure it's out." I believe him because you're supposed to believe your Old Man, even when he tells you the best way to get a girl into bed is to ask her, "You want to get drunk and screw?"

He proceeds to whack his shot into the same tree, and then lets the phrases fly. Words I'd never heard ooze from the man's mouth.

"Get my axe out of the car," he says, and I couldn't agree more at that point (we lived in the mountains, and there were two things always in the car - a gun and an axe - because you never knew when dinner might cross your path or if the wood-burning stove needed more firewood so us child'en would freeze our goochies). Then we started looking for our shots. We looked under the tree, around the tree, behind the tree, to the right of the tree, to the left of the tree and finally, on a whim, we looked on the green. No balls anywhere. We looked up in the tree, and still nothing. My only thought was while the Old Man was setting new precedents in the area of expletives and me marvelling at his prowess with the English language, Pepe the tree-growing groundskeeper shimmied up the tree and stole our range balls (we're cheap, instead of buying brand-spanking new Titleists, we just grabbed handfuls at the driving range - it's almost like they're free). Either that or it was the same tree that gobbled up Charlie Brown's kite everytime that dumbass decided to drag the sucker out.

Fed up, physically tired, mentally tired, and golf tired, we dropped our next shot, looked up at the green, looked at ourselves and then at the ball lying at your feet. We read eachother's thoughts, and laughing, picked up the balls and threw them at the green.

It took two throws and five short kicks to sink finish the hole, and I'm pretty sure we wrote down pars for the hole.