I shot my age recently.  Well, sort of.  

Every golfer dreams of shooting an 18-hole round with a score at or below their age. Since my good friend Tom Mitchell did it last year, my goal has been to do the same. Of course, getting older helps — as long as I stay physically the same.  

I can dream, can’t I?

I came close last year. After 14 holes at my neighborhood course, I was one over par, and calculated that if I could just shoot par on the remaining four holes, I’d shoot a 73 (my age at the time). Unfortunately, my scores for each of the last four holes included the word bogey. Note to self, never add up your score until after you finish a round.

But a recent round had me feeling much older than my age of 74.

A few weeks ago, I played the Reynold’s National course with family and friends in Greensboro, Georgia. National sounds like Rational, but there is nothing rational about this trek through 18 medieval torture chambers they dare to call a golf course. The greens are fast, and the only flat spots on the course are the tee boxes. The greens and fairways must have been landscaped by a former roller coaster designer. Let’s just say that if you walk this course, you earn a beginner’s certificate as a mountain climber. And to add more drama to a round, bunkers surround virtually every hole. I spent so much time in one canyon bunker that I had to take a pee break. 

I started off well enough, with birdies on two of the first three holes. Then, my yellow Titleist ball revealed a mind of its own. A three-foot putt for par should be a gimme. Nada! Catching the lip of the cup, my ball rimmed out and chose to demonstrate how far it could run away from the hole. My scores went downhill from there.

So, how did I shoot my age?

Easy.  I decided to self-identify as a 91-year-old because that’s how I felt after playing a course that promotes slices, hooks, chokes, skulls, shanks, and flubs.  Does that make me a trans-nonagenarian?  Hmmm.  Maybe this trans ideology stuff could boost my golfing ego.

On the other hand, I prefer to live in the real world.  Therefore, I will strive, on every round I play, to be like Tom and shoot my actual age rather than the age I feel.

Besides, playing golf with people you care about always makes for a fun day, no matter your score.