Bob Bestler | A little taste of nirvana on the golf course

I like to think I'm a pretty humble golfer. Of course, as Winston Churchill might have said, with my game I have a lot to be humble about.

But you will have to forgive me if I gloat, just for a moment, about a round I once had at what Golf Digest last month called the toughest golf course in America.

That would be the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, the course that has brought so many grown men to their knees. (Can you say Mark Calcavechia?)

It was on that same course that I had the finest round of golf I've played since I first stuck a tee in the ground at age 16.

The occasion was a media event prior to the 2001 Hootie and the Blowfish After the Master's Tournament -- the only Hootie tournament held away from Barefoot Resort in North Myrtle Beach.

I realized it could be a special day on the fourth hole, a tough 395-yard par 4. My second shot sliced into a hazard well short of the green. I took a drop and put the fourth shot about 15 yards from the cup. I then made the putt for an ego-boosting bogey. And I was off.

I parred the next two holes -- a par 3 and a par 4 -- and finished the front nine with a 43. Nothing to write home about, except that on this course it was as good as I could play. Or so I thought.

On the par 5 11th hole, I chipped in to save a par and then, as we turned into the wind on No. 14, a 151-yard par 3, I put a 5-iron 12 feet from the hole. The shot was the closest to the pin for the day and paid off with a handsome Ocean Course poster signed by all members of Hootie's band. It hangs today on my office wall.

The best part, though, was not the poster I won, but the 12-foot birdie putt I made. Wow. What's going on?

I played away from the water on the treacherous No. 17 and happily settled for a bogey.

And on No. 18, with the adrenalin pumping on all cylinders, I needed only a driver and six-iron on the par 4 finishing hole. The pin was in front and my ball -- feeling its own adrenaline -- rolled all the way to the back of the green, stopping at the first cut, about 50 feet from the pin.--I needed two putts for a back-nine 39, and with unsteady knees I drew back and fired.

The ball headed right for the cup and the speed looked right. Just inches from the hole, it veered right and stopped. OK. A tap-in par gave me the 39 -- and a round of 82 for the day.

It wasn't my lowest round ever, but on the Ocean Course at Kiawah, now judged the nation's toughest golf course, it was a little taste of nirvana.

Now if only I could handle River Hills in Little River.