Temptation to cheat is strong, but real rewards lie in playing the game

I DON’T know if you’ve ever had ambitions in sport. Mine is a humble one - to some day reach a 14 handicap at golf.

Humble it may be, but it seems to be totally beyond my reach. I put a couple of decent scores together, make a bit of progress, think I’ve got the game licked, and then out I go one more time and it all falls apart.

Take last week. For the first time ever, I qualified to play in an intermediate scratch cup. Made a reasonable start, and even though there was never going to be a chance of the overall prize, around about the 14th hole, I began dreaming about maybe one of the minor prizes. Fatal mistake. A double bogey on the 15th was followed by another on 16, both of them caused by three-putting from a short distance. And as I faced another six-footer on the 17th, a thought occurred to me...