It's a dewy morning at Tiburón, Greg Norman's subtropical homage to his game at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort, Naples. The sun is just an hour up, water birds preen in the water hazards, a breeze ripples through the cypress trees, and from where I'm standing, near our golf carts, all is right with a world that seems almost golden.

Then my reverie is broken by Trevor Gliwski asking: "So how long have you guys been playing?"

There are four of us in today's class at the Rick Smith Golf Academy: Tom, an orthopedic-equipment salesman from New York; Brad, a contractor from Kansas City; George, a retired businessman from Philadelphia, and me. The three of them recite their golf experience, which by my calculation totals just shy of a century. All eyes turn to me.

"I've never played golf," I say.

"Never?" says Gliwski.

"Never," I say.

Silence . the kind of silence that typically follows land-mine explosions and thunderbolts and jokes by Carrot Top.

The others consider me with new eyes, eyes that beg the question: "How could a 50ish male who lives in Florida, breathes air and walks upright have possibly reached this stage in life and never played golf?"

Gliwski takes a deep breath and exchanges a look with fellow instructor Mike Jonges. It's a look that says: "It's gonna be a long day."

As we head toward the first station in our seven-hour class-the putting green-Brad, the contractor, edges alongside me.

"You lucky bastard," he says.

"Never played golf, no bad habits to break, nothing to unlearn," he says. "Man, I'd give anything to be in your shoes."

He is speaking figuratively, of course, since my shoes happen to be a pair of cruddy old New Balance sneakers and his, like everyone else's, are those expensive saddle Oxford things that golfers like to wear. They're decked out in polo shirts bearing logos of legendary courses they've played; I'm in something from the Gap that I typically wear fishing. They tote bags filled with fancy clubs; I lug some borrowed sticks.

My clubs are left-handed, which I am, that being one of my excuses, though a lame one, for never having taken up golf. Growing up, I could never find left-handed clubs to borrow to see if I liked the game, and I was too cheap to go out and buy some. My other excuses are many, but all variations on a theme of: I've got so many other diversions that slice my time-reading cheesy mysteries, cooking, eating, going on long walks with no real destination, drinking rum, arguing politics, cooking and eating some more, hanging out with my wife, raising children-that there's nothing left for golf.

Yet here i am, at one of the world's premier golf academies, a veritable Harvard of golf, about to get a crash course in a sport that takes even its most talented practitioners years to think they have learned. It's absurd to expect that in the course of a single day I'll develop skills that will allow me to go out and shoot par and win bets and do myself proud before other golfers, but maybe it will give me a bit of insight into the mysteries of the game. Maybe it will even illuminate the greatest mystery of all-namely, why are so many people attracted to a sport that (viewed solely from the perspective of a non-player, mind you) is just so damn boring.

One thing I learn about golf right away is that it's a game that is ruled by truisms. Like all truisms, they sound almost profound when you first hear them, but the more you think about them the more baffling they really are. And the number-one truism, the pronouncement I keep hearing all day long, is Trevor Gliwksi saying: "You aren't swinging to hit the ball. The ball just gets in the way."

He is telling me this as we stand on the putting green, with me squared over the ball and trying to put it in the hole maybe six feet away. For some reason, I thought the golf lessons would begin with tee shots and learning how to make those mighty whacks that send oohs and ahs through admiring crowds of onlookers. But no. We are going to work our way backward to that, minus the admiring crowds.

"We start with the short game because it is really a reflection of the big picture," says Gliwski. "And if you have problems with your swing here, then those problems are only magnified when you extend them to the broader aspects of the game."

My problem is rhythm. My swing doesn't have it. I draw back at one speed, move forward at another, and when the putter hits the ball, my swing comes to an abrupt halt. Which is, of course, a violation of the number-one exalted truism ("You aren't swinging to hit the ball. The ball yada-yada.") To fix this, Mike Jonges places a metronome on the green alongside me-yes, the same kind of metronome that Beethoven, another left-handed non-golfer, might have used-and tells me to adjust my swing to its syncopated rhythm.

Pretty soon my swing is smooth and rhythmic, a beauty to behold. The only problem-my shots aren't going anywhere near the hole. I either hit them way too hard or way too soft.

"Did you play much baseball growing up?" Jonges asks me.

"Yeah," I say. "I played a lot."

"Well, you know that instinct you have for how hard you have to throw the ball to get the ball from center field to second base as opposed to getting it all the way home? That's the same instinct in golf," Jonges says. "All you are really doing in golf is throwing the ball toward the hole. You are just using the club to help you."

It really does make perfect sense-if you don't think about it too hard, in which case your head will explode-and my putts are soon beelining it into the hole. OK, that's a major exaggeration, but I am sinking a few of them every now and then.

We move on to pitching and chipping, which I am sorry to report, I cannot distinguish between. I think pitching is something you do at a greater distance from the hole and chipping is what you do when you are a little closer. But it could be the other way around. In any event, it is no cake walk, I'm telling you, and having spent the better part of an hour pitching and chipping (and cussing and whining), we find ourselves in what I have always considered Golfer's Hell-the bunker.

"Not so," says Gliwski. "A good golfer would rather hit a shot from the bunker than from the rough any day. It's just a matter of following a couple of basic rules."

Rule number one of the bunker shot, of course, is that Zen koan thing about the ball not really being there. And Rule number two is to swing so that you make a complete mess of the bunker and sling sand all over the green. This is quite a lot of fun, actually, and I find that I'm pretty good at it. Of course, I'm not hitting the ball and it is not heading toward the hole, but since it is not really there I don't see how it really matters. Yep, I'm getting this golf thing down.

About that time, Mike Jonges sidles up beside me and offers yet another nugget of golf wisdom.

"Always remember," he says. "It's not how good your good is, it's how good your bad is."

Then he walks away, and I swear to God, my head is still spinning over that one.

And so the day proceeds. We work on our swings and our grips and our stances. We watch videos of great golfers and their swings. We watch videos of ourselves and our swings. We tuck our tails between our legs and slink back out and try again.

As the afternoon wears on, we wind up on the driving range, attempting those mighty whacks for which I yearn. Gliwski and Jonges both spend much time on the mechanics of "The Swing," which as far as I can tell, consists of about 463 separate and conflicting motions, none of which can be conducted in harmony with the others unless orthopedic surgery is later involved.

But as the sun is sinking over Tiburón, I have my moment. I do not solve the mystery of golf, but I get a clue. I square off over the ball and, well, everything just comes together. I connect with a shot that -pardon my sappiness-makes my heart soar. It is straight and true and it goes and goes. For one brief and fleeting instant I think: That felt good. I kinda like this game. I might even get good at it.

Man, am I ever in trouble.