See that picture of me standing on the first tee? Notice the happy smile. It will be the last time I smile for the next four hours.

I have a love-hate relationship with golf — I love it, and it hates me.

After countless lessons, hours on the driving range, paying through the nose at various links, and purchasing the latest and greatest clubs that promised transformation, I can proudly report that my handicap has risen steadily. I’m getting worse with expensive consistency. It’s pathetic. It’s maddening. But they say I have a beautiful swing.

The worst part of my game is the tee box.

Put a tee under the ball and my brain shuts off. The ball just sits there. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t grin. No one is throwing it at me. No one is yelling in my back swing. No one dares laugh — I am holding a driver, after all.

And yet I mishit it about 80 percent of the time. I pull it left. I push it right. Or I hit it so high it wouldn’t be a home run in a phone booth, as Harry Caray might say.

My tee game is so tragic I once wrote a poem called The Tee Box Blues.

“Lord, I’ve got them old tee box blues…”

In a moment of scholarly desperation, I looked up the origin of the word golf. I assumed it was coined after all the other four-letter words were taken — especially the one that rhymes with “duck.” That theory collapsed quickly.

Then I considered the old myth: “Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden.” Also false. My wife was pleased to learn that — and gave me the hairy eyeball for even entertaining the idea.

Turns out the Scots coined the word in the 15th century. They called it gouf — pronounced like “goof.”

That tracks. Because I look like a goof out there.

Would you believe in 1457 the Scottish Parliament actually banned golf because it distracted men from practicing archery, which they considered more useful for national defense. Given my age and my slice, I’m unlikely to be summoned for either.

Perhaps I should take up dancing or drumming. If I put in as much time at either as I do goofing — excuse me, golfing — I might achieve mastery. The problem is, I don’t want to master dancing or drumming.

I want to be respectable at golf.

It’s time with buddies. Light wagering. Cold drinks. Boasting about great shots and inventing dogmatic explanations for bad ones. In my case, I’m convinced the golf gods interfere selectively and with malice.

Just the other day, they insisted I deposit at least one shot per hole into the desert. Sixteen desert excursions in eighteen holes. Each one adding strokes and eroding dignity.

And then — irony.

A brutal par five. Lake left. Arroyo front. I hit three pure shots and left myself a tap-in birdie. Nearly holed the eagle putt. It was textbook. Flawless. Glorious.

I still didn’t break 100.

Explain that.

How does one flirt with eagle and still stagger home with triple digits? It defies mathematics. It may defy physics.

More irony.

In Cabo, on a beautiful ocean side course, I once recorded three birdies in a single round. Three. I’ve never done that before or since. Surely that was the day I broke 90.

Nope.

Defying logic, I’ve played that same course three or four times since. Haven’t broken 100.

Then there’s the sand bunker, perhaps my greatest adversary. Recently I paid $50 for a clinic to improve my bunker play. I hit 49 out of 50 balls cleanly out of the trap. I did so well the instructor joked that perhaps I should be leading the clinic.

The clinic, however, does not travel with me.

In the trap, the ball lies there sunbathing while I stand over it rehearsing instructions I’ve memorized: open the face, hit two inches behind the ball, trust the bounce, follow through. So I open the face. I commit. I trust. I follow through.

Boom.

The sand leaves. The ball does not.

I may need my $50 back.

Golf is the only game where you can experience brief perfection and sustained humiliation in the same afternoon. Perhaps that’s the real hook. Control in golf is an illusion. The ball sits still. The target is clear. The yardage is known. And yet the outcome is wildly uncertain.

You can do everything right and still lose strokes. You can do everything wrong and stumble into brilliance.

It’s a four-hour seminar on humility — and like an addictive drug, I keep signing up.

I’ll be back on the first tee next week.

Smiling.

Because hope, apparently, is my most reliable club.