Everyone remembers significant events in their lives with exacting, precise detail.  Whether it’s the first day of kindergarten, the day your Little League team won the championship, your high school prom, graduation, your wedding day or the birth of your first child, you can recall what you were wearing, who was with you, what the weather was like, certain smells, sounds and probably even what the newspaper headline was on that particular day.  The memories are so clear, so vivid, that it’s like it happened just yesterday.  Those milestones are forever etched in our memories with fondness and sentimentality.  And that’s the way it should be.   However, for Inga, thinking back on the day she got her first hole in one will be anything but.

For starters, due to circumstances beyond her control, Inga could not attend her niece’s wedding in Europe.  How frustrating it was to have planned and prepared to travel over six months prior to the wedding only to have all of her efforts thwarted by unnecessary, tedious government red tape.  That kind of mental annoyance is a hindrance to any golf swing!  Secondly, Saturday golf for women has been growing at such a rate that three tee times are booked to accommodate up to twelve golfers.  But on this particular Saturday, like a harbinger of doom, only three showed up.  Maybe more like only one-and-a-half.  One of the golfers suffered from a pulled hip muscle and could barely turn through her swing.  The other, concerned with possible rain showers, worried about being electrocuted if water were to sprinkle down on her hearing devices.  All that mental distraction simply does not belong on the golf course, let alone bode well for good scoring!

The threesome teed off, agreeing to Baseball, or Nines, as the game of the day.  Everything seemed to be going well for the first several holes.  Of course, tightness in the hip caused a few errant shots, real or imagined rain drops blocked positive swing thoughts and rough, patchy greens all but preempted those hole-winning one-putts.

“Ugh!  I just can’t get my body to turn all the way through,” cried Roxanne.

“<GASP!> I think I just felt a rain drop!” whined Peggy, visions of lightning bolts burning through her head, causing a lobotomy.

“No,” corrected Inga, “that wasn’t rain.  It was probably just bird droppings!“

“BIRD DROPPINGS?” thought Peggy, now more worried than ever!  “That’s probably worse than rain!!  That’s ALL I need . . . with this Coronavirus wreaking havoc, what if it mutates and becomes the BIRD FLU!  Should I quit playing now and go home?”   

But a birdie on Hole #6 turned her thinking around!

“I think I’m going to quit after 9,” Roxanne announced.  “I just can’t turn right.”

And so, the round continued, Roxanne feeling an increasing pinch of pain and Peggy hyper-fixated on the sky, watching for rain clouds and now, birds.  Inga was the only one of the three focused on golf.  She parred Hole Number 7 while the other two wrestled with their issues, one physical, the other mental!

Up on the 9th tee, the threesome assessed the pin location and the weather conditions before committing to club selection.  Peggy, convinced that another drop of “something” had just landed on her head, was the first to play.  She hit a solid shot, but thoughts of electrocution, brain death and bird flu precluded a fluid swing.  Her ball landed in a right green side bunker.  Next up was Roxanne.  She selected the perfect club for a front green pin placement, but the “hitch in her get-along” impeded her process and she, too, ended up on a right green side bunker.  The two of them stepped aside for Inga to play her shot.

“Oh my gosh!” whispered Roxanne, “I have to go home and use the roller on my hip!  It’s so tight that I just can’t play today!  I lunged into a lateral stance at tennis yesterday and that’s when I felt my muscle tense up!”

“O.K.,” agreed Peggy, “it’s no fun playing golf when your body doesn’t cooperate!  I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to play anyway!  I keep thinking I feel rain drops on my head!  I don’t want to get stuck way up the canyon on the Back Nine when it starts to downpour!”

While the two of them performed their post mortems on their poor tee shots, Inga was left to play her shot alone.

“It’s IN THE HOLE!” she cried.

“What?”  exclaimed the other two, Peggy thinking she’d said, “Where’d it go?”

“IT’S IN THE HOLE!  I JUST MADE A HOLE IN ONE!” she screamed again. “Didn’t you see it?”

“NOOOOOO!  We were talking about our shots!  DO IT AGAIN!” they said.

“Oh my gosh!” cried Inga, “I get a hole in one and NOBODY sees it, except me!  You two are over there talking, there’s no caddy and I watched and watched and watched and the ball hit the green, rolled closer and closer and then dropped into the hole!  I can’t believe you didn’t see it!”

“We can’t either,” they said, greatly apologizing.  “Inga, you need better friends!  We’re so sorry!  Come on . . . we’ll take your picture when we get to the green!”

“That’s the best zero-putt I’ve ever had!” exclaimed Inga gleefully!

“I guess that takes a little bit of the sting out of not being able to go to your niece’s wedding, huh?” said Peggy.

After snapping several photographs, numerous High-Fives and a group text to our gal pal golfing friends, Roxanne peeled off to nurse her hip, leaving the remaining twosome to play the Back Nine hoping to beat the rain.

“I can’t believe it,” began Inga walking down the fairway, “My very first hole in one and nobody sees it, nobody came out to play today and nobody but you to help me celebrate!”

“I know,” agreed Peggy, “and to make things worse, you and I don’t even drink!  Of ALL the people for you to be stuck with today, it’s me!  That’s o.k., we’ll have champagne together when we finish, I promise!”

After finishing the round, Wendy congratulated Inga and agreed to join us for a celebratory glass of bubbly.  We posted our scores, changed our shoes and arrived at the bar upstairs only to realize that the Grill was closed!

“This CAN’T be happening!” Inga whimpered, “it just keeps getting worse!  I get my first hole in one and we can’t even have a drink?  Are you kidding me?  The BAR IS CLOSED?!”

“No,” said Peggy, “we’re going to have a drink!  You can bet there’s at least one bartender back in the Men’s Locker Room!  We’ll get one of them to bring us something!”

A quick visit to the front reception desk and one phone request to the Men’s Locker Room solved the problem.  Two individual serving size bottles of champagne were delivered to the bar, just for us!

“Cheers to you and congratulations on your first hole in one, Inga!  I’m so sorry there aren’t more people here!” said Peggy.

Wendy arrived shortly after the initial toast, but there was enough champagne left in each of the two bottles to pour one more glass!

“Here’s to you!” began Wendy, “your game just keeps getting better and better!  You’ve taken how many strokes off your handicap in the last couple years?  You are wonderful, amazing and a true gift from God . . . here’s to you!”  And three glasses clinked in honor of that spectacular hole in one.

Milestones are indeed memorable, indelibly etched into our minds’ photo albums.  They are to be celebrated in grand style with lots of pomp and circumstance.  In no way should Inga’s first hole in one be discounted because of her rag-tag playing partners of the day.  But . . . everyone can agree that a hole in one should be MUCH more fun!