A quick introduction

Image courtesy pdclipart.org

You know what this world needs?

I'll tell you what it needs.

It needs another blog about golf.

Not one of those "ooh, this is how PGA champion Joey Hoffenfooter hits the green using a 4-wood that he had custom-made into the shape of a tree stump in order to sink the eagle putt on the 18th tee at St. Hoozitz in order to win the 675th CSI championship after defeating an entire field of excellent experts, which is only natural since Joey's been playing long before he left the womb." I mean a blog for us mortal golfers.

And by "mortal" I don't mean "scratch." I'm not entirely sure what that word means.

I also don't mean "hits in the low 90s, mid-80s when no one from the USGA is looking."

OK, what I really mean is those of us who are crappy golfers. The ones for whom par is as unrealistic an ideal as world peace, whose supreme goal is to break 100 before we have to shuffle off this mortal coil, and who fool ourselves into thinking that we got into this sport for the exercise, dammit.

Part of the impetus for Golfing Noob was a book by the excellent novelist and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen. Hiaasen wrote a book a few years ago, "The Downhill Lie," about returning to golf after a 30-year layoff, and his comical misadventures as what he considers a bad golfer. In the book, he starts hitting in the 90s and dreams of dropping his score into the 80s, with only occasional success.

I don't have any sympathy for Carl Hiaasen.

I'm one of those golfers who has yet to break 70 -- on the front nine. This blog will chronicle my efforts to shave not just 10 points (do they call it points?) off my score, but 56. If you, like me, are one of those perpetual beginning foozlers who has a golf score closer to a bowling score, I hope you find something here with which you can relate.

And if you're one of those -- what do they call it? -- "good" golfers, maybe this will take you back to the days when you really sucked. Or it will give you a chance to laugh at those of us who still do.

Either way, welcome aboard. Feel free to comment.