While deciding to play the golf team, I knew there’s no worldly way I’d be able to keep up on a real golf course. I can’t drive. I can’t chip. I can’t pitch.
But what I can do is putt through a windmill or into a fountain or around a dragon’s tail. Sadly, Missoula’s lone mini golf course at Westside Lanes — best known for its bowling — has no wacky obstacles. Still, it’s better than fairways and sand traps.
Through the first five holes we’re dead even thanks in part to my ability to not screw up. Over the next four, Rose gets good. She ends the round with birdie, par, par. Conversely, I 10-putt my way out of the running and end 13 strokes back.
Now I would expand on some of the putt-putt conversation, but like most golf talk, very little other than profanity was said. That tends to happen when your ball is only like six inches from the hole and your putt lips the edge of said stupid hole and there happens to be a hill right door that you already spent three strokes climbing and now the ball rolls right back down to the bottom again. Hypothetically.
On to the back nine, a clean slate.
Things were going as usual. A few putts landing in the “rough.” A few swear words. A few witty comments from yours truly. All was normal until that fateful hole No. 6. She was a par 3, a long straight path down the middle, a slight hill at the end ushering the green to the right on toward the hole. A sharp dropoff directly behind the hole could cause havoc for over-hitters like myself.
I watched Rose send her bright pink ball off the green. I recalculated my shot, sending my yellow smiley-faced ball into the bend of the hill. The hill in turn delivered my ball directly to the hole and in.
Time for a Happy Gilmore-esque celebration!
My triumph was short lived though when Rose delivered her own hole-in-one on the ensuing hole. Thunder stolen, I lose again.
Oh well. Why change things up now I suppose.