The latest environmental danger: terrible golfers

Great day for golf.

The intent seems noble enough: create a wildlife sanctuary in a public golf course. I don't know how much the animals enjoy the constant threat of errant golf balls flying into their habitat.

In this weekend's round, I mercifully missed their homes as often as I missed the greens. No animals were harmed during my game at Colonial Acres; only my golf score.

Colonial Acres is a public, nine-hole golf course in a suburban development outside Albany, N.Y. It's also an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary, meaning if you hit your ball into some of the wildlife-inhabiting hazards along the course, you're not allowed to go looking for it, lest you disturb the habitat of the fauna within. The course has wide, forgiving fairways combined with vicious greens that make the course much tougher than it appears. Thankfully, none of the protected animals actually served as hazards.

I was in town for a family reunion. It turns out that the only three people in my extended family interested in golf are my brother-in-law, my father (whose "interest" level is somewhere below the Fed's prime rate) and me. And we all live within 15 minutes of one another.

I started strong on the first hole with a bogey. The tee was less than 90 yards from the flag and I overshot it with my 7-iron. Two more shots got me on the green, and a nice, long putt – the best putt of the day, and probably of my life – gave me a 4 for the hole.

My brother-in-law got a 5; it is probably the last time I will start the next hole before him.

After that it was a series of topped shots, slices, overshot greens and general mayhem. I didn't score the dreaded 10 (or 3 in binary) but on two of the nine holes I got a 9. Only three other times did I even triple-bogey. Twice I hit my tee shot on to a different fairway.

On hole six, I ruined an otherwise good tee shot by playing the wrong ball. My first shot went straight-ish, landing in front of some trees to the left of the fairway. I looked everywhere for it, finally spotting a white ball about 50 yards or so from the tee. It took me five more shots, including one from a bunker, to get onto the green, where I (at least) was able to two-putt for a 9. But somewhere between shots four through eight I noticed a little swoosh on the side of my ball; I'd hit someone else's Nike after my tee shot.

Oh well, I thought. The Wilson Titanium ball I started with must have been lost to oblivion. Maybe one of the animals on the course appropriated it.

The next hole went in the opposite direction. I hit my tee shot wildly to the left, onto the fairway of the aforementioned hole (Why couldn't I have done that earlier?). As I approached my ball, I found Wilson , not 30 yards from the last green, just six inches off the fairway.

No wonder I couldn't find it before. I hit it too well.

A trip to the par-3 Village Greens course seems in order this week. I need to work on improving my short game and my putting as evidenced by some horrid three-putts I can't blame on Colonial Acres' cruel, cruel greens.

On a plus side, I didn't lose any balls to the wilderness or the water hazard on hole 9. And I came home with a Nike.

Here's the brutal truth about Saturday's game, also known as my scorecard:

Colonial Acres was also the first time I tried scoring with the free Golfshot app on my iPhone. I'll post those stats here periodically, too.

That one bogie looks awful small in the pie.