I should tell you that I have played in 33 courses over the last 3 years since I started playing serious golf (yet, I don’t understand how my handicap remains at 34.2...oh well.  34 if the list includes my home course.) 

I first started playing golf at the tender age of 13.  But my love affair with golf was abruptly stopped because of an accident that happened in the Villamor Driving Range in 1983.  My childhood friends  Grace Estuesta (who was a xxx champion and now a writer/contributor of Inquirer Golf magazine and GM of Sta. Elena Golf and Country Club) and her brother Richard were witness to this.  A pro was teaching us the basics of hitting balls using iron clubs and I was happily hitting balls in my assigned bay being served by a young tee girl.  Let me tell you that during those days, tee girls (or boys) would use the dirt to form a tee and that’s where they place the ball for me to hit.  While my tee girl was doing this, I swung the 7 iron high in the air but instead of hitting the ball, I hit her hand.  Ouch.  Actually, make that a double ouch.  Imagine the pain?

For a thirteen year old, that was, well, very traumatic.  So I quit. I did not go back to playing golf nor did I ever step foot on Villamor until 1994.

For years, everytime I would see Richard, he would always tell me that the tee girl lost her hand.  And that I was wanted by the tee girl’s family.  Scary.

Only after 11 years, did I start playing again.   By this time, I was already working and was convinced that golf will be helpful in my career in AT&T because I was in sales and was always dealing with decision-makers who played golf.  I had to get a pro to learn the sport properly.  So I went to Fort Bonifacio Driving Range (which is now non-existent and has been replaced by the new road and Essensa in The Fort Global City) and hired golf pro Flor who was then 70 years old and had a strange American English accent.  But he was in great shape and I’ve never seen anyone hit the ball that easily.  Plus, I suppose, I was enamoured by his accent.  I told him about the 1983 accident.  And Flor was kind enough to ask around about the story of tee girl who lost her hand because of me and he said that there wasn’t any story like that which anyone remembers.  So he said, “now you have no reason not to play good golf”.  And so my love affair with golf began.  Again.

Until I got pregnant that same year.