If you read the Beacon last week, you may have seen Tim Altork’s story about the 2011 PGA Championship coming to Johns Creek. However, since Tim was writing a standard news story, he had to leave out the part where him and I played the course at the Atlanta Athletic Club.

There are about four perks to working in the media: free food, free golf, you can sleep in until noon every day and the IRS doesn’t do anything when you mark the NFL Sunday Ticket or MLB Extra Innings package as a tax write-off.

Unfortunately for me, perk number two isn’t a perk at all, mainly because I’m terrible at golf. I am to golf what the Pittsburgh Pirates are to baseball which means I’ve been horrible for over 20 years and there is absolutely no hope for me. If I hired Tiger Woods’ swing coach, he would quit or kill himself within three hours, I am that bad.

The only reason I’m writing about my lack of golfing talent is because after last week’s PGA Championship announcement, the Atlanta Athletic Club (AAC) invited all media members to play a round of golf on the course. Since the membership fee at the AAC is more than my annual salary, I figured this would be my only chance to ever play on their course. On the other hand, I almost turned down the invite because when I’m on a nice golf course, the pace of play slows down dramatically. Imagine a baby trying to crawl a marathon, that’s how slow we’re talking here.

Fortunately, the people that run the AAC are smart, they know that most sports writers are sports writers because they were never good at sports, they cover sports so they can be close to them. When play started, each media member found a rule card in their cart – yes, we got carts, and again, I can’t emphasize the laziness of sports writers enough – rule No. 1 was aimed directly at me: In the interest of time, all golfers are asked to pick up their ball after six strokes or seven on a par 5.

After reading rule No. 1, I had one goal: to get a double-bogey on just one hole. One out of 18, that’s it. Now lets play a game called, “Guess what John’s score was and do you think he got his double-bogey?”

If you guessed 108 and no, you would be half right. I did not get a double-bogey. As a matter of fact, the only whole where I even got to attempt a putt for a double-bogey was the first hole Tim and I played which was hole 13 (there were 18 foursomes, so we all started on a different hole). Hole 13 is a par 4, but if I can get on the green in five shots, I fully expect 99.9 percent of PGA golfers to birdie the hole next year.

As for my score of 108, it didn’t happen. I prayed to God before the round started that it would thunderstorm so the course would close. Five holes in, God came through with the storm and we were all kicked off the course.

The only consolation of the day was that as bad as I was, Altork was worse.

High School Football

Starting this week, I’ll be at a high school football game every Friday until the end of time.

My first trip will be to Roswell this Friday to watch the Kell-Roswell preseason opener. On Saturday, I’ll be at Milton to watch Chattahoochee take on the Eagles. Each Sunday, I’ll announce where I’ll be for the following Friday’s game. If you ever see me, feel free to tell me I’m horrible at golf.