The Golfer's Nightmare

My fellow golfers, there’s something we have to talk about. I speak of a fear that grips us in the night. A dark thing that must be dragged out of the shadows and held up to the light. For if we can see it, we can understand it, and to understand it is to defeat it.

You see I have a recurring dream. Truly it is a nightmare. Even this act of describing it has me feeling uneasy. And the horror of it is that I know I’m not the only one.

What is this nightmare? It’s a simple thing, so simple, and yet, and yet.

Here it is...

I have a recurring dream in which I must hit a tee shot out of an unreasonably small room and I just can't find a spot where I can tee it up with enough space to make an unrestricted swing.

Yes silly I know. Haha, what a laugh! But it’s serious, quite serious, serious enough.

My informal poll of some golfing friends suggests maybe half of them have had this dream or some variant of it. Perhaps you have it, or someone you know.

For my personal hell, it’s invariably the first tee shot at some famous course. I'm puzzled and annoyed that a well-resourced club has such a ridiculous first tee in an insanely small room. Why don't they do something about it!?

Sometimes I'm expected to hit out through a tiny window, other times one wall is missing and that's the direction I’m supposed to hit it. Whatever the case, it’s always stupid and a little bit dangerous.

I look to my hosts for help, for any sign that this is some sort of silly prank. Surely they can see that this is crazy?

They never help. They just tee it up and swing away in this comically small room. No problem at all. Wankers.

My turn comes and of course there's always a crowd watching. First with curiosity… then some concern… and finally genuine anger. What’s wrong with this bloke? Why isn’t he hitting it?

These faceless spectres are genuinely oblivious to the difficulty of making a swing in this tiny room. It's like I'M the crazy one!

I'll sometimes take a practice swing in a certain spot and it will finally seem like there's just enough space. The relief is enormous. But as I start my swing the club bangs into some part of the wall or an immovable chair or a bloody table that wasn't there a second ago.

I re-tee and try again, not enough room. I re-tee, not enough room. And so it goes. Hours pass and I've never managed to get a shot away in one of these dreams.

Is this an allegory for life? A fear of failure? My current theory is that I’ve opened a mind portal to hell and I travel there in my dreams.

What does it all mean?