I AM about to embark on the next chapter of my golfing odyssey. My 30 decorated years in the game could be fitted neatly into five chapters to date: The Early Years – a tale of falling in love with the sport and falling foul of elderly members. The Golden Years – one junior title, three national finals and the onset of the shanks. The Lost Years – a new love, lager top, and a new hobby, 10-pin bowling. The Double Hit Years – an unfathomable inability to lay clubface on ball from any lie. 

And, finally, the Hybrid Years – a merry-go-round of clubs in a desperate need to have an approach shot.

Chapter six now beckons, the Member Years. In the next few months I am looking to make a return to the club scene, not a revisiting of Ibiza (which led to chapter three of my non-existent book) but the rejoining of a golf club. Twenty-eight years on from when I last did it.

Then, I joined a bustling junior section at Wimbledon Park, following a very pleasant chat with a very pleasant then captain, Ted Smith. But the 12-year-old who sat through that interview in his school uniform is now a very different animal. 

The happy-go-lucky individual, who saw every hole as a new adventure, now sees obstacles.

I love golf, I work in golf, I want to be a good member, I want to play in competitions, I want to support the club in any which way I can. 

If the Basil Woodcock Salver is up for grabs then stick my name down. 

Except, in all truth, I probably want to befriend three people – five at the most – that I can knock about with every week. 

Given the choice, being totally honest, I won’t be putting my name up for the mixed foursomes and there’s every chance I’ll be ‘away’ for the captain’s drive-in.

A chance to demonstrate that I can behave in a very acceptable manner for over four hours with total strangers. I have a solid grasp of the general rules of the game, I am interested in getting to know all my playing partners and I handle the good shots with the bad in equal measure. 

Except, in all truth, I am far too competitive. I won’t throw clubs or sulk but I will know exactly what my playing partners are up to and what is required to try and take them down. 

If the president needs a two-footer on the last for a half, then he’s going to have to make it. And he can put the flag back in, too.

I play well in bursts. On a good day I can play nine holes quite tidily. 

But then the wheels come off, there is nothing to fall back on and spare tyres begin bouncing down the hard shoulder and spark plugs start flying into the central reservation. 

When I’m hot I’m lukewarm, when I’m cold I’m abysmal. There is rarely any middle ground. And so there is every chance that come the end of our four-hour adventure my new handicap will have shot up nine shots. 

And yet I still won’t be able to play to it. This lies very heavily and I’ve not yet joined anywhere. My last medal came in the last century. 

It featured three 8s after some general to-ing and fro-ing around the green and finished with, ironically, an 88. And it featured an air shot which, when I shut my eyes, I can still picture. 

Which, when I place a wedge in my hands, I can still feel. 

A 10-yard chip over a bunker, from centimetre-thick rough, which didn’t move. A slither of earth moved, covering my ball, which I then had to peel back to play another finessed flop 20 yards over the green.

And, following my handicap assessment, I will already have firmly established which hole(s) doesn’t fit my eye and which one(s) I will routinely blow up on for the next 30 years.