AS AN INVETERATE fan of TV mysteries and melodramas, I never cease to be amazed at the rather messy methods that suicides select to dispatch themselves - hanging from doorknobs, playing "chicken" with oncoming trains, drinking British Airways coffee. Were I ever to get the urge, I'd choose death by golf.

For sheer power to drive one to distraction, apoplexy and straight into a plot down at the marble orchard, there are few forces more body- and soul-destroying than pasture pool (except perhaps a 53 percent rent increase from the landlord, or finding a deep-fried lizard in your fast food French fries).

Either as divine punishment inflicted by the Almighty for claiming that oatmeal is edible or as half of a two-part pact with the Devil (the other half for claiming that oatmeal is edible), the blame for golf can be placed squarely at the tartan doormats of the Scots.

Strange folk, the Scots. They make delightful drinking companions and for the occasion invented a brew that one of them, his tongue obviously paralytic after a few drams of the stuff, called uisge beatha. He meant "water of life," but the rest of us settled for "whisky" (until the sixth or seventh round, when it becomes "whushskobbobluh," or even "uisge beatha").

But for every Scottish Yang, there has to be a Yin. Such as cramming oatmeal and calf's innards into a sheep's stomach, giving it a name like "haggis" and insisting it is fit for human consumption. The Sons of St. Andrew also have to live with having inflicted the telephone on us, but that is a study in demonology of another sort.

Here we are dealing with the ancient art of pounding a tiny white pellet around several thousand acres of grass, trees, lakes, swamps, dunes, quicksand bogs, alligator pits, lawns, swimming pools and car parks and calling it "relaxation."

I can get more relaxation from seven hours of having my taxes audited by Inland Revenue (British institutional terrorism's version of the IRS), or playing tackle dummy for the Chicago Bears, or pulling out my fingernails by the roots.

Mark Twain or someone once described golf as "the ruination of a good walk." I know, because I've been there, and rather than set foot on another golf course, I would sooner massage my naughty bits with Tabasco sauce.

My disenchantment with the sport was born about two minutes and 46 seconds after I stepped onto the first tee at the Whittle Springs Golf Club in Knoxville, Tennessee. Or at approximately the instant my initial drive landed about seven feet from the hole. On the adjacent green. The 18th.

It was the start of one of the longest, angriest days of my life. It was, in fact, the longest day of the year, June 21, 1953, when my best pal, Bryant Metler, and I set out to learn what looked to be an exciting new sport. Which goes to prove a couple of old adages: 1. First looks can be deceiving, and 2. Ignorance is bliss.

Before that day was out, I had toted up 169 strokes for 16 holes. That it wasn't worse can be attributed to a method of calculation that would have done Al Capone's accountant proud, plus not counting all the 14 balls I lost by driving them into the houses, lawns, garages, tennis courts and the like adjacent to the rather long (I thought) 10th fairway.

The score was, as I say, over 16 holes. At that point, the night watchman insisted that we get off the land.

Still, I persevered over the next few years, grimly determined to heed a doctor's advice that I needed to relax (that word again) and blissfully ignoring my blood pressure rise toward Vesuvius's level an hour or so before Pompeii. My temper was keeping pace, and a spell in the slammer for manslaughter by four-iron was ever a distinct possibility.

Ten years to the day from that opening round at Whittle Springs, I found myself involved in a press/PR golf tournament at the Rockledge Country Club, near Cape Canaveral. For the first three holes, I was doing rather well, at only 12 strokes or so per hole. But at the fourth, my game began to fall apart, and double-quadruple bogeys were becoming double-quintuple and even triple-quadruple bogeys.

Also in my foursome that day were old friend and news agency foe Howard Benedict, a chap named Orville from the Pentagon and a fat tub of mouth named Doug Something-Or-Other. It was on the 16th that I hooked into a yawning lake, the tub made some sort of observation, I grabbed the four-iron (my favorite) and the chase was on.

About a third of the way down the fairway, with me closing in on the tub, I heard a scream: "Al, don't do it!" It was Benedict. "Wrong club!"

Whereupon I hiked back to the tee, picked up my clubs, stuffed the unused four-iron back into the bag, trudged to the clubhouse, picked up my three awards ("Worst Score," "Worst Dressed" and "Worst Language") and headed for the bar, severing diplomatic relations with the Auld Game once and for all.

Oh, yes, my score - 172 for 16 holes. My golfing technique over 10 years amounted to exactly minus-3.

Over the intervening years, I've watched from the comfort of my bar stool at various pubs as friends steamed in, faces like overripe tomatoes, streaked with sweat and molars grinding, aneurysms-in-waiting, one stroke away from that water hazard called the River Styx.

If I need that sort of stress, I can go for a ride on London public transport, or go walking barefoot across the La Brea tar pits, either of which is infinitely less dangerous to my cardiovascular system than coming within six leagues of little white balls atop bits of wood.

A few years back, a chap named David Terpoilli carded 9-21-9-16-11-13-1-11-9 on the back nine at a course in Pennsylvania. His score for the day totaled 193, whereupon he packed up his clubs and promptly retired from the wretched game, remarking, "How could I top that?"

My hero.

Thought for the Day: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

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