Steve Marble -- NOTEBOOK

You lower your head and stare downward and contemplate prayer. This time,

you tell yourself, it will be different.

But it’s not. It never is.

You concentrate. You clear your mind. You look up. You look down. Your

adjust your hands, slowly rolling your fingers. And then you swing.

The tiny white ball hangs there -- not in the air, not lost in the puffy

white clouds, not arching over the emerald fairway -- but there on the

tee, mocking you.

You smile. What else can you do? “Practice swing,” you mutter. You don’t

look up. You sense your friends are snickering. Check that. You know they

are snickering. You adjust your feet, look up again, tighten your grip

and ...

Golf is the cruelest sport. For years now, I’ve attempted to figure out

the game. On the surface, it seems easy. Ball. Hit ball. Watch ball roll

toward hole. Hit ball again. Watch ball go in hole.

For the professionals, like those who will visit Newport Beach this week

for the Toshiba Senior Classic, golf is a graceful game, slow and

precise. You sense these people don’t even perspire.

When Tiger Woods or David Duval or Arnold Palmer hit the ball, it screams

into the sky, so quick it vanishes for a second or two, almost as if it

breaks the basic laws of physics. And then, just as suddenly, it

reappears and touches down, rolling perfectly toward the hole. Sometimes,

when they reach the green, the ball kicks backward, almost as if it knows

it has missed the hole and needs to change directions.

How do they do this? Me? Haven’t a clue.

For all the apparent ease and beauty of the sport, it is a misery in my

hands. And I learned that again the other day when I hit the links with a

group of friends.

I was heartened going in because one of my friends had played golf about,

well, something like zero times. I had to be better than he was. Had to

be. Perhaps, this time, I could do the snickering, smiling with the

knowledge that my game is good. My game is tight. Just another golfer

hanging with his friends.

On the first hole, my pal hit the ball about 10 yards. To the right.

Practically a 45-degree angle. I smirked. Laughable. What a mess he is, I

said to myself.

So I lined up, adjusted and readjusted my grip. I looked up. I looked

down. I swung. The ball went about 10 yards. To the right.

By the third hole, it was clear, my rookie friend, the guy using the

junior clubs I’d borrowed from my son, was beginning to find his game.

Sure, there was the occasional sand trap, the splattering shots onto a

neighboring fairway, the nearby eucalyptus he’d smack, the little

dribbler that rolled -- oh so pathetically -- a mere two feet from the

tee.

But he was hitting the ball. And I wasn’t.

On the next hole, I lined up my shot, which to me is an act of complete

blind faith. I hunched my shoulder, reminded myself to keep my head down

and tried to find a sense of calm. I swung. I swung hard, bending my

knees just a bit, knowing that something good might happen this time.

The ball sat there. Motionless.

I untangled myself. That’s fine. No problem here. Little practice swing.

All set now.

I swung again. And again. And again.

Four times. Four misses. I was a mechanical mess by now. My friend, the

newcomer, chuckled. Beyond excuses now, I’d again wandered into the

neighborhood of pure humiliation. I knew my friends would make sure that

this moment hung with me for a while. Not just today. Not just tomorrow.

But for a while.

With nothing left to lose, I stepped back toward the ball and swung.

And that’s when something wonderful happened. The ball screamed into the

sky, hanging there for a moment, and then flopped back to earth, bounding

in the general direction of the green.

The next shot of course was different, back to form, as it were. But in

that one second, I lived the feeling of a great golfer, a man in control,

savoring the ease and the grace of a beautiful game.

Like life, golf is a deeply mysterious thing to me. You swing and you

miss. You swing and you miss. And suddenly you connect. But you don’t

why. And you don’t know when it might happen again.

* STEVE MARBLE is the managing editor of Times Community News. He can be

reached at o7 [email protected] .