The Hacker: Comfort from beyond the grave

It was last July that CC found a ball in the long rough at our club. To his delight, it was a Titleist Pro V1: one of the new breed of super-balls which outperform their predecessors for distance, accuracy and durability.

These are expensive items, and not ones that would normally find a place on CC's shopping list. But there was one snag. The initials JC were prominently drawn upon the ball with a marker pen.

It couldn't be Jesus Christ – although his name can be heard frequently around the course – and it was most likely to be a prominent member whom CC was reluctant to approach, because even if it wasn't his ball the sod would still have claimed it. So CC quietly adopted it as his own, and few relationships between player and ball could have been closer or happier.

Even those with a slim knowledge of the game realise that the average golfer and his ball cannot hope for a long association. Ditches, brooks, brambles and thick rough are voracious devourers of wayward shots and yet, wherever he hit it, CC would locate the ball as if drawn by a magnet.

A week went by without him losing it, then another and another. As the months began to accumulate, his game benefited from this strange liaison.

His affection for the ball was such that he was constantly putting it through the ball-washers, drying it tenderly with a towel. He was loath to hit it hard, trying instead to sweep it away smoothly, as the textbooks recommend. The ball seemed to appreciate this understanding treatment, and tried its best to do his bidding.

CC'splaying partners found it uncanny and not a little irksome. He was winning the cash too often, and they looked forward to the day when he would lose the thing and return to normal.

They thought that day had dawned in October. Playing the 16th, which runs alongside a cemetery, CC's swing somehow lost its rhythm and the ball hooked wildly through the trees and over the railings.

He rushed up, prepared to break club rules and clamber among the graves, but to his horror saw that the ball had landed among the mourners at a funeral service. He could just about hear the vicar's words and, somehow, they described CC's own thoughts as he turned away.

He was still comforting himself in the bar when he saw a bowler-hatted figure pass the window. It was the funeral director from the undertakers next door, and CC got to the door in time to hear him say to the secretary: "I believe one of your members lost this." He handed over the ball with the slight bow only funeral directors can master, tipped the brim of his hat and left. CC's pals were convinced it was a miracle, and respectfully endured another two months accompanying the inseparable pair.

Finally, on Boxing Day, CC boomed a long approach to the fifth and the ball skidded off the frozen surface and plopped through the thin ice covering the brook behind the green. CC did everything but call out the police frogmen. When it thaws, he might find it, but his incredible six months with the same ball is surely over.

What will he do now? Well, he could buy one. But that wouldn't be the same, would it?