My wife knows about my mistress, as does everyone does that knows me. What she doesn’t understand is my love for this mistress. But then, I don’t understand it either. What I do know is that she makes me to walk in green fields under skies of varying colors. Through gentle breezes and howling winds she knows I’ll pursue her charms…even when the rains pelt me like stones. Each time I am with her she teases me with gentle butterfly kisses. Too often she trashes me for four straight hours and just as I am about to quit her, to leave her, to remove her from my life forever, she lays on me a kiss so powerful, so seductive that she keeps me coming back.

She has corrupted me, perhaps beyond redemption. I’ll steal for her, well not really steal, but I’ll keep back part of my pay or work extra for money that my wife will never see…and I’ll spend it all on her. Green fees. Balls. Clubs. Oh my God, clubs…I have a weakness for wedges and fairway woods, most especially for wedges. I keep looking for that perfect combination of loft, bounce, and shaft characteristics to put me ever closer to the hole.

She has seduced me into club making. I tinker endlessly with my driver to create that perfect lethal weapon that will bring any course to its knees. I have no shame about these things, but I’ll lie in a heartbeat to hide what I’m doing with her. I don’t even think about it, it just happens:

“Where’ve you been?” She asks.

“Nowhere. Shit. No, I was with another woman in a sleazy motel having sex.”

She looks at my shoes, sees the grass. “Don’t lie to me, you weak SOB, you’ve been playing golf again.”

Weak. I am weak. My mistress makes me weak in the knees. Every day I dream about her. I see the shiny white-coated steel clubhead of my driver addressing a snow-white ball in my mind a dozen times a day. I sit in traffic and often daydream about playing golf in such spiritual places as Pebble Beach, St. Andrews, and Bandon Dunes.

I’m damned. I know it to be true. But to play golf, to strike the ball cleanly, to feel the near nothingness of a 90 mile per hour impact of the sweet spot against a highly moveable object and to see the ball soaring like a bird…my God, she makes me weak.

Occasionally, someone will tell me they are thinking about taking up golf. I ask, “Have you ever been the victim in a chronically abusive relationship? If so, did you enjoy it? If you did, then golf is the game for you.”