GOLF:

If you ever want to shave years off of your life while under the auspices of having fun, may I suggest playing in a Horse derby.

The premise is simple; take as many suckers as you can find, make up two or four-man teams, choose an order and play the ball in the order you have selected.

So if you have a four-man team, player one hits the first shot, player two hits the next and so on, until the ball is in the hole. The order stays the same throughout the competition.

Teams are eliminated on each hole until there are three remaining teams, finishing in win, place or show.

This was the torture I found myself participating in at the recent member/guest held at Mesa Verde Country Club.

It was bad enough I was playing three consecutive rounds of golf — something I hadn’t done since a golf trip to Ireland 10 years ago — but on top of it, my partner was the men’s club president, Bryan Rolfe.

Rolfe, who recently played in his first SCGA Senior Amateur, is near a scratch golfer and he probably should have protested playing with me, but he is such a gentleman he spent three days with me and pretended to enjoy it.

When derby time came, he and I were paired with another two golfers and went to the par-three, 169-yard No. 3 hole.

The fun is the betting, though I saw none of it at MVCC. I have been told however, that people in and out of the event will wager on teams to finish in first, second or third.

The pressure was evident on the first hole we played. We picked an order that we thought could best help our chances. Translation: I hid as best as possible.

That flawed strategy was exposed on the first hole. Rolfe hit the tee shot uncharacteristically left and it landed in a bunker.

The original scenario was for us to have Rolfe hit the ball to about five feet and if our second player missed the birdie, I would clean up the tap in for par. Then our fourth would hit the drive on the following hole, a par five.

Instead our second man hit his bunker shot to about four feet, a great shot. Now I am faced with a par-saving putt and I can feel my knees shaking as I line up over it.

It’s hard enough to make that putt with three guys watching to push a simple skins game. But this was in front of 20 four-man teams and other spectators.

I managed to make the putt, but more importantly, didn’t have a heart attack. My turn out of the pressure cooker lasted three shots then I was faced with an 85-yard shot to a pin that was hidden behind a large front right bunker.

If I am short we are definitely out of the contest, so I aim for the middle of the green and manage to keep the ball on the green and we advance to the next hole.

Now we are down to some pretty good golfers and par isn’t going to cut it anymore. Three teams including ours par the long par-four hole and we enter a new level of potential choking: the chip off.

A spot off the green is selected by the pro officiating and the three representatives from each team hit a shot from there.

You guessed it, my turn again. By this point I was hyperventilating. This was a short side chip shot and if I got the ball 10 feet from the pin I would have been happy.

The other two guys went before me and you have to turn your back so you don’t get an unfair advantage. I could tell by the crowd noise the other two shots weren’t that close.

I figured a flop shot was the only chance I had. I hit it and the ball came to rest four feet from the hole.

Now the nerves were leaving. I had made three shots under pressure and executed them all the way I wanted to.

We finished fourth, which I thought was pretty respectable and I learned something about my game. What started as fear turned to confidence and if I ever have those shots again, I’ll be able to remember that I executed them in the past.

JOHN REGER’S golf column appears Thursdays.