During a recent conversation with an uncle, I mentioned that I’d recently taken up the Royal and Ancient Game of Golf… Or more accurately, that the Gods that rule the Royal and Ancient Game had decided that golfers in southeastern New Brunswick needed someone to make them feel better about their own play, and that someone was me. I’ve lost 23 balls in a one round, shot over 200, and one time a blind man beat me by more than 30 strokes. Not pretty. My uncle mentions a book that helped him.

A couple of weeks later, a package comes in the mail. Inside is a book, Single Figures in an Irish Summer, with a handwritten note from the author inside the cover.  It’s the true story of the author’s quest to go from a 30+ handicap to single digits in sixty days. It does have plenty of technical hints and tips, but where it makes it’s biggest impact is where the great golfers all tell you it matters most: Your head.

It’s completely changed the way I look at the game, both on and off the course, and it shows… I’ve lowered my score by more than 10 strokes each time I’ve gone out since I read it. Two months ago I shot 129 at a local Par 3 course (that’s 75 over par, by the way). Last Saturday I shot 115, including my first green-in-regulation and first par hole. On Friday I shot 47 on the longer back nine (my first multiple-par round). On this morning’s round of 18 I shot 102, despite rushed and sloppy shots while fighting the cloud of mosquitoes that hounded me around the course. I could probably give that blind guy a run for his money.

That said, it’s far from being an instructional guide to improving your golf score. It doesn’t even try to be. Hegarty’s style makes it easy to get into, to the point where I’d sit down to read a chapter or two before bed, then suddenly realize that hours had gone by. People that don’t even golf could enjoy it, because in much the same way that the ring isn’t the point of Lord of the Rings, golf is just the vehicle that moves the story along. Single Figures leaves an impression that can touch all aspects of your life if you let it.

I feel like a better person for having read it.

Single Figure Quest