"I was going to play golf my way -- and love every minute of it."

As part of Golf Digest's "Fun" issue Ron Kapriske has dared to go forward at the expense of his manhood and guess what? He had a blast.

I started at the forward tees (5,301 yards) for the first round and shot an 81. The next day I moved up to flat spots about 20 yards in front of the forward tees, created my own teeing ground, and shot a 78 from 4,941 yards. I learned from those two rounds that, because I'm fairly long off the tee but my short game is suspect, my best chance to score would be if I played from a spot that allowed me to reach nearly every par 4 with my tee shot and every par 5 in two. That way, I could still two-putt for birdie or save par with a chip and a two-putt.

My strategy worked. I reconfigured my course to 4,792 yards and shot one-under-par 70. I won't bore you with all the details, but I did drive the first hole from 260 yards and two-putted for birdie, then drove the second hole from 240 yards and made a curling, 30-footer for eagle. I'm here to say, being three under after two is exhilarating. So was dropping birdies on 16 and 17 to all but clinch my sub-par round. What it came down to was putting. Most of my birdie putts come with a side order of terror. I can backhand a six-footer into the cup for triple bogey, but I wouldn't give myself a birdie putt outside of five inches. But that was the old Ron. Not Mr. Scoring Machine. With 12 birdie putts in a round, they become routine. I finished the round with 29 putts and only one three-putt.

Stats aside, this was the first time I felt a round of golf was truly fun from start to finish.