I've never gone through immigration, but I'm seeking amnesty.

I'm not an immigrant. My grandparents and great grandparents were, but that's going back about a hundred or more years. Yet when I happen to see golf on television, I wonder if there was a class (GSL) that I was supposed to take when I left NYC for the 'burbs.

I happened to be at the gym when the US Open was on, and I might as well have been watching France play Italy in World Cup Soccer for all that I understood.

He's going for the third putt, says one announcer to another. They lament how bad the "rough" is on a particular hole. Tiger's plus 6 at 18, they tell us. I know that means he's six over par at hole 18, but I have almost no idea what par is. All I know is that, unlike the real world, to have six of something in golf is worse than having minus 6.

The only part I really understand is when the little white ball drops into the hole.

I have friends who adore the 'sport' of golf. They become vice presidents of banks and COO's so that they can spend half of their work weeks out there on the golf course socializing...I mean, getting to know potential business partners. I even have a friend whose husband sells photographs of golf courses that are so lovely I wouldn't mind having one in the kitchen or dining room. But somehow the language of golf has evaded me for years, posing an invisible but powerful barrier to intimacy with the sport.

Perhaps that's not such a bad thing-if I don't understand the fundamentals, I won't know what it is I'm missing.