That cursed little white ball!

There is nothing more relaxing than standing in the parking lot of your favorite golf course. The familiar smell of grass clippings and cheap senior aftershave. You reach in and pull your overstuffed golfbag-filled with water bottles, left handed gloves, a couple of range balls (oops!), short pencils from who knows how many different courses, a wad of old scorecards, and two four year old unidentifiable candy bars melted into a small glob at the bottom of your bag-out of your trunk. With each heave your muscles are bulging in hurcurlean form. You drop the bag into the cart and the straps automatically flip around as you pull it through with one finger. You drop your shades over your eyes before the brightness of summer permanently contracts your pupils. You kick the cart into forward as you launch yourself down the path to start an excited, riveting round of the greatest game of the rest of your retired life. You take out your glove and tighten it firmly over your hand. You pull the sliver of wood from behind your ear as you look to tee up your ball. You pick up your brand new golf ball. Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle. See how the lights bounces of from it like the holy grail. All 336 dimples have been thoroughly examined and polished. You then with your one free arm, pull out your monstrous driver. Yes, the mighty club! Now here is a piece of scientific genious. Long skinny flexible shaft, with a oversized head big enough to stop a charging rhino. You plunge the tee and the perfectly positioned ball into the tee box. The smell of imported grass seed and fertilizer is soothing. It's like standing on your own little greenhouse oasis plateau. You stand up and gaze down the well groomed fairway that gently fades toward the green. The little red flag almost taunts as it shakes in the wind. Knowing that it better not provoke. You lift you club and point it to the far horizon, like Babe Ruth would when he was going to hit the ball out of the park. Your mind now starts to race as it fills with adrenaline and the small instructions of old start to fade into oblivion... keep your eye on the ball, let the club do the work, keep your shoulder down... All seems so insignificant now. You begin you back swing, like a 200 foot mouse trap being pulled back to snap. You feel your body start to drift back on your heels and you release the dam of might and power. Your arms now flexed tight, your veins are bulging with oxygen rich blood, your vision blackens out, you let a out a mighty roar as the club starts it deadly descent...
Then your mouth drops wide open, and you watch in sheer horror as your little white friend starts in this mighty trajectory up, up, up, then as if some laws of science have been broken, the ball screams at a 90 degree angle to the right. Over the trees and out of site. In your mind you believe that you can hear the ball crying out to you...save me daddy, save meeeeee... There is not a friend in the world that can console you now. You have just killed the little white ball. You're a murderer! You look around to see if anyone saw. Your gaze flies toward the driving range, then the clubhouse, you search all the fairways and approaches of the neighboring holes. Maybe no one saw! Then, all of a sudden. A small laugh slips out fom nowhere. It's coming from behind you, near your cart. Oh no! You lok back. Your partner, yes, your own partner is red-faced from holding in laughter. But now nothing is holding it back. It just rolls out of their mouth as they can't control it any more. The huge chasm of embarassement now wide open. They fall out of the cart and then double over comic hardship. Oh-the humiliation, Oh-the shame, Oh-the pain of losing a loved one. What can you do? You start to answer yourself as you grab another ball. Don't do it you say, don't you do it.

You thought I forgot, didn't you?
Hydrophobia - A fear of water
Dendrophbia - A fear of trees
Atychiphobia or Kakorraphobia - A fear of failure or defeat