by Paul V. Arnold

My name is Paul, and I’m a hacker.

While I thoroughly enjoy golf, I now publicly admit that I’m among the 80 percent of the sport’s participants who fail to regularly break 100 for an 18-hole round. I am a hacker.

Some examples of my golf ineptitude:

• I recently shot a round of 118 and grumpily lost by one stroke to my wife, who has rarely played the game.

• I hit a drive last year that executed a right-hand turn in mid-flight and took off after an unlucky golfer. The poor guy tried to take cover, but it bored in on him like a heat-seeking missile and connected.

• On another tee shot, this one during a company golf outing, I snapped the head off of a Big Bertha driver that an MRO Today co-worker lent me. The head barrel-rolled down the fairway and wound up 15 yards past my ball. It was as awesome as it was awful.

All this probably explains why Eric Smith, an executive with a Cleveland-based sister company, skipped the pleasantries and greeted me at a corporate meeting this year with “Paul, how’s your crappy golf game?”

Why am I telling you all this?

Well, I wanted to get it off my chest. I admit, it makes me feel a little better.

The admission also serves as an introduction to my cover story on Dunlop Slazenger’s plant in Westminster, S.C., one of the world’s largest golf ball manufacturing facilities (click here to read it).

Dunlop makes a lot of golf balls (384,000 per day), which ensures that hackers like me always have a mulligan ball at the ready. But the story isn’t about producing tons of golf balls. It’s about deciding not to live with mediocrity and taking the steps necessary to transform yourself into something better.

The folks in that Dunlop plant’s maintenance department admitted that they functioned in a firefighting mode (the maintenance firefighter is the philosophical cousin of the golf hacker). After four years of hard work and financial investment, they are now functioning proactively and professionally.

These people are an inspiration to me and my crappy golf game.

I know I don’t have to spend the rest of my life as a hack golfer. To transform myself into a decent player, I need to follow Dunlop’s lead. I must stop making excuses and devote myself to proactive improvement. It begins with me. I need to spend more time on the driving range and course working on my flaws, and invest in some professional instruction.

My wife, coursemates, co-workers and I would welcome the change.

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