As a social hacker, the last time and only time I saw a golf professional was at the undulating St Clair Golf Club in Dunedin.
I was in my mid-to-late 20s and the golf pro there was a diminutive but witty bloke, Ron Johnston, sporting Cliff Richard-type spectacles of that era.
I was "a natural" with the irons and woods, according to my former golfing colleagues at the Otago Daily Times although I had never picked up clubs before that.
The truth is I had kept to the budget with a $60 set of odd clubs from a second-hand shop downtown to hang out with workmates to beat the haw frosts on winter mornings.
The blade irons, I hasten to add, weren't peripherally weighted, I was to discover years later.
However, Johnston impressed on me that after his maiden half-hour lesson I was going to lose the plot, as it were.
He was spot on. I lost everything from my swing to my putting and with it any foresight I ever had.
I couldn't see the point in going back to someone who had supposedly turned my golfing world on its axis.
But, oh, how wrong I was in not persisting with Johnston, who I found out this week died about this time last year in Sydney after losing his battle with cancer.
Now that I'm a shade on the other side of my innings in the game of life, I've decided to go back to the drawing board.
Enter PGA professional and a former elite New Zealand amateur coach, Brian Doyle, of Hastings, at his hub in Golflands.
Doyle isn't just a master mentor of his craft but also someone who boils things down to a non-jargonistic level for hackers like me to comprehend.
Akin to All Blacks coach Steve Hansen, he doesn't just ask you to pick up a club, correct your stance and grip then feed you with valuable tips.
No, Doyle uses Hansen's tactic of brainstorming where the proteges do the thinking before realising, firstly, why what they're doing is causing the ball to slice or hook and, secondly, what they need to do to bring the ball to heel.
The 60-second sermon on laying a solid foundation for a sturdy structure is gospel to living on prime real estate.
"It's a miracle," I said, beaming this week after manipulating a seven iron and three wood to keep their trajectory with more consistency than I have ever done.
"No, Anendra. It's practical," Doyle replied with a grin.
I have no intentions of making the cut one day for a club's pennants or Coronation Cup team, let alone the interprovincials.
Hell no, I simply want to look course savvy and, occasionally, know I'm capable of flirting with an under-40 score over nine holes when the sun aligns with the moon and stars in my horoscope.
"Of course, if you want to get better you have to practise your shots," says Doyle after showing me footage on his camera but mindful my lifestyle won't always allow me that luxury.
Old habits die hard so my biggest challenge is to ensure I don't regress to a poor constitution, especially on seeing someone else blast the ball into orbit and get lucky.
There's one Doyle mantra that will forever be etched in my mind and one I'm not shy to plagiarise when sounding like an old man after watching someone more youthful trying to resurrect his soul following some fairway carnage.
It took me back to my ball-bashing days here more than a decade ago.
Watching me belligerently smash a bucket of balls at the driving range, Doyle could stand it no more and came charging out of his perch at the office.
"Anendra, you can only hit that ball as far as the club will let you," he had said with a polite frown although, it seems, I heard him but to date haven't been listening at the cost of back ailments and other related injuries.
Oh I'm definitely going back to Doyle again once muscle memory sets in on the two Vs and ball alignment, even though my scorecard may look sorry right now and I contribute to the traffic jam at the Golflands fairways.
