They held the annual Boys & Girls Benefit Golf Tournament on Pinehurst’s No. 8 course on Monday, and once again, I learned the bitter lesson as to why I write about golf for a living instead of playing it for a living.

The first thing I want to do here is apologize to the other guys on my team. Ron Jones, James Grude and John Breting, I am truly sorry that I messed up your day.

But at least I know now why they call No. 8 the Centennial Course. I can’t break 100 on it. This was truly one of the worst rounds I’ve never played.

The cause doesn’t get any better than helping kids, and 60 players showed up to prove that they care. Most of them had a great experience on a great course for a great cause.

Me? I was there too.

But by the time I had completed the third hole, my driver had played itself out of the lineup. By the seventh hole, the 3-wood was history. The 3-iron was smother-hooking, and the 4-iron was even worse.

By then, I was down to a 5-hybrid, just trying to find something that I could keep in the short grass.

My three playing companions were doing all they could to keep our team afloat, but honestly, had it not been for my two mulligans, I couldn’t have finished a hole.

Ron and James and John kept giving it their best, but the load they had to carry was just too heavy. I felt so bad for those guys that I was volunteering to clean their clubs.

Seriously, the only thing I did all day to help out the team was tend to the pin.

The cause was great, the course was great and the guys I played with were great. But the game I brought with me stunk up the place. I’m just thankful none of the kids had to witness the spectacle.

I was the only guy in my group old enough to hit from the super senior tees, so it figured that I should be able to help with my tee shots. Right? Wrong.

It was on the 11th hole before I hit a tee ball we could play. I felt like a fifth wheel on a tricycle.

By the time I had finished the round, I hated my clubs. I hated the Nike ball I was playing with. I hated myself.

The reason I was playing with a Nike was because I had already lost the three balls we were given before teeing off.

The last one disappeared on the fourth hole.

Luckily, I found this Nike Juice ball, and for some reason, I couldn’t lose it. No matter how far sideways I hit it, it always showed up. Unplayable, of course.

It’s times like this that I wish I had the courage to quit this game and donate my clubs to The First Tee or some other worthy cause and take up lawn bowling.

Do they have 7-10 splits in lawn bowling?

I shouldn’t have been surprised that my game was so bad, though. I had warmed up for this event by playing in a church benefit tournament on Ocean Ridge Plantation’s Lion’s Paw course at Ocean Isle Beach on Saturday, so I should have known what to expect.

I was playing with three former buddies in this one, and it was about as bad as you can get. As horrible as some of my previous tournament experiences have been, I can’t recall playing in a captain’s choice event when my ball wasn’t used once.

Please don’t take this epistle as a whining release. I’m not whining, I’m whimpering.

I’ve tried to convince the BW that what I need is a new set of clubs. She convinced me that if I got a new set of clubs, I could also get a new BW.

It didn’t help matters when I tried to explain that the trade-in value wasn’t much for either.

That’s when the fight started, Your Honor.

It’s close to sinful to play the way I did on a course like this wonderful Tom Fazio layout. But you can live with the awfulness of it all if you keep remembering that you’re playing for the kids.