Bogey-like start to golf season for sportswriter

I would like to say my golf season is off to a “subpar” start, but I won’t.

Doing so, because of the sport’s strange vernacular, might suggest something positive.

And my initial tournament experiences of 2006 – from yanking my first competitive shot of the year out of bounds left, to spending a night in a Lewiston hospital – was anything but.

My two-day ordeal took place a couple of weeks ago when Bob Scott, the head pro at MeadowWood Golf Course, asked me to play in the season-opening D.A. Davidson & Co. pro-am events in Lewiston and Clarkston.

It’s an overnight adventure I’ve made in past years, with few complications.

But this trip jumped up and grabbed me by the throat – literally.

It started with a 4 a.m. wakeup alarm on Monday, so I could meet Bob and the other three members of our team and make the trek to Lewiston Country Club.

The drive down went fine.

My drive off the No. 1 tee didn’t.

It sailed high left, over a retaining wall and into someone’s yard. Turns out, I’ve developed a bad case of the “lefts” over the winter, and I’m not talking about some harmless little low duck hook.

No, the shots I’ve started hitting are majestic pulls – the kind that travel vast distances and hit houses.

My opening drive proved to be the first of five balls I would hit out of bounds that day.

But we finished in time to grab a bite to eat, settle into our motel and watch the championship game of the NCAA tournament – which didn’t go well, either, thanks to the massive bottle of Grey Goose that attacked during UCLA’s humbling loss to Florida.

Our tee time at Clarkston Country Club the following day was mercifully late.

Late enough, in fact, to put us out on the course during the wettest and windiest part of a cold and nasty day that produced shots that defied the laws of physics.

“This must be what it’s like to golf on Pluto,” I reasoned.

At one point, on my way to shooting a solid 93, I stepped drenched, chilled and hurriedly into our golf cart and nearly ripped a hamstring when my mud-caked rubber cleats slipped on the floor mat.

“That,” I thought at the time, “would be a fitting ending to a horrible two days of golf.”

But I was wrong.

I managed to come up with something better on the ride home, when we stopped for dinner at a local steakhouse.

I ordered the New York strip, medium, with a glass of the house merlot. The first couple of bites went down smoothly. The wine wasn’t nearly as ugly as the glass in which it was served.

But my third bite – which I gulped down, only partially chewed, in the middle of a story I was telling – hung up in my throat. I didn’t panic at first, figuring a good swig of merlot would help complete the swallow.

It didn’t, and I ended up racing from our table, past some startled diners and into the restroom to spit out the wine that couldn’t find its way past the steak.

I made several trips outside, hoping to dislodge the stubborn piece of meat, but soon realized it wasn’t going to happen. So, at the insistence of my golf partners, I checked into the emergency room at the local hospital.

The receptionist seemed alarmed to learn I had a chunk of steak lodged in my esophagus and asked if I was having trouble breathing. I assured her the only problem I was having involved swallowing. Still, they rushed me in ahead of a couple of other waiting patients and called in a gastroenterologist to pluck the meat from my throat.

When I woke up following the “procedure,” I saw a couple of nurses frantically mopping the floor next to the table on which I way lying. The doctor informed me that I had discharged the piece of steak – and a whole lot more of my earlier meal – while I was unconscious, so he was arranging for me to spend the night to make sure nothing had aspirated into my lungs.

Bob, my loyal team captain, had driven me to the hospital and was still in the waiting room. One of the nurses said, “I’ll let your son know that we’re keeping you here overnight.”

My son?

That hurt almost as bad as my throat.

Bob came into the recovery room and volunteered to get a hotel room for the night and drive me back to Spokane in the morning – a suggestion that made him “Pro of the Year” in the mind of my wife, who was spared an unexpected drive down to Lewiston on Wednesday morning.

My night in the hospital was typically restless. I had blood drawn at midnight and 4 a.m., and was wheeled up for a second chest X-ray shortly after 6. When I returned to my room, the phone rang. It was another golf pro back in Spokane, who had talked to Bob a few minutes before, calling to get an update on my condition.

He started the conversation with an off-color joke about a gerbil.

You pro-am regulars can guess who it was.

Then the doctor showed up, told me my chest X-rays were fine and said he would start working on my discharge papers.

Bob arrived a short time later and drove me back to Spokane.

His concern, and the fact that my other three teammates all called later in the day to see how I was doing, made me realize I’m part of a pretty special pro-am team – even if we failed to cash in either of the first two events.

Still, I couldn’t help thinking that golf shouldn’t hurt this much.

Or cost this much, either.