I’ve been using Five Iron Golf’s indoor simulators regularly over the last two months, ever since my orthopedist, when I asked him if I could play golf again, gave me the okay, though he wasn’t as positive about the violin, as I had never played that before.

March 6th was my first time using Trackman software, which we were told is more realistic than the other software we had been using. Clearly that’s so, because, on this first occasion, I got a hole in one, on the 11th hole at St. Andrews, not the one in West Chicago, but the real one, in Scotland. Well, not the real one, because we were playing on a simulator, and no one was speaking with a brogue, but it was a simulation of the real one.

Years ago I got a few holes-in-one when there were windmills and clowns’ mouths involved, but this is the first time with an actual golf club in my hands, even if the ball only travelled 10 or so feet into a screen, not 147 yards into the gray skies of Scotland.

I can’t remember the last time I was so excited – well maybe it was when I flunked my Army physical. I was like North Carolina State basketball coach Jim Valvano, when his team won the NCAA men’s tournament 54-52 in 1983 on Lorenzo Charles’s shot at the buzzer, and he famously began running around the court looking for someone to hug.

One of the guys on staff took my picture, I think just to shut me up, not to bask in my glow, but he also said something about having to follow Five Iron on Instagram in order to win a prize for my shot. The odds of that happening are longer than they were for the hole-in-one.