It was the best of shots under the worst of circumstances. I’m on the tee of the par-3 12th hole at Augusta, cleverly disguised as the seventh hole at Renditions Golf Course in Davidsonville, Maryland. From the back tee it is a 167-yard shot, slightly uphill into a mild breeze. It’s a 5-iron, no question about it. To this point I have been mired in a day of golfing hell. They say a bad day of golf is better than a good day at the office. I disagree, especially when the bad day of golf is compounded by a constant cell phone link to the office.

The day was a dilemma from the start. The particular project that had consumed most of my time the previous two weeks was done. I could hang around the office and wait to tidy up a few loose ends – and if it weren’t for the technology of cell phones, that’s exactly what I would have done – or I could stuff the cell phone in my pocket and accept the invitation to Renditions that afternoon.

I hate cell phones on the golf course, and if this group had been anyone but three longtime golf buddies, I wouldn’t have gone. But your boys always understand. They would always rather you be there with the cell phone than not at all. On the second tee, the cell phone began its afternoon cacophony. “What do I do about this? How do I handle that?” The questions came like the bogey train – continuously and annoyingly. The few loose ends became a rope unraveling. I played holes from around the world this day but all were within roaming distance.

I’m on the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass in Jacksonville, Fla., and the office needs to know whom to contact about this problem. Splash. I’m on the sixth hole at Carnoustie in Scotland. Damn, those stacked-sod bunkers are hard to play from when you’re trying to explain something for the third time.

By the time we got to Long Island (No. 16 at Shinnecock Hills), the round is shot. I am cursing the guy who invented the cell phone, sentencing him to the genius’ hell. Never has technology been so infuriating.

We get to Amen Corner. A frost delay and a temporary green have combined to make the 12th at Augusta our 17th hole of the day and the second time we play it in this round. I step up to the tee, place the cell phone on the ground and the Callaway on the peg. I pull the 5-iron. The clubhead meets the ball in that perfect union that sends the instant signal of a job well done. The swing itself is surreal, as if I am standing there watching someone else take the club back, the shaft perfectly parallel to the target line at the top, the clubhead staying exactly on plane as it makes its pass at the ball. From the exact instant of impact it feels right. This is the swing I have been searching for. For 20 years, hundreds of rounds, thousands of shots, hundreds of thousands of red-striped practice balls. This is the swing I have been trying – mostly in vain – to achieve.

As my head comes up, I see the ball flying with a fade so gentle you would have to wash it with your wife’s delicates. It’s heading for the pin. Satisfied I will have a reasonable birdie opportunity amid a day of bogey opportunities, I turn back to the cell phone and begin work on another problem.

My buddies start yelling: “It’s in. It went in the hole.”

I give them the sly “Yeah, right” smile. Like I can’t see through that thinly veiled attempt to give me a raft of crap on a day like this.

“I swear to God it went in the hole,” one says.

Well, it was a pretty good shot, I allow myself before snapping back to reality. This time I say it out loud.

“Yeah, right.”

We’re riding up to the green, their commotion and my cell phone conversation continuing. I do notice there is no ball where I thought mine would be. There’s one on the green short and right where not even the real 12th at Augusta could have deposited my fine shot. The others missed the green. I figured mine skipped through the green and into the rough or the bunker.

I’m walking. I’m talking. I’m looking.

“Jeff,” says the longest of my longtime golf buddies. “This could be one of the biggest moments of your golfing career. I’m not going to let you be on the cell phone when you pull the ball out.” I give up.

“I’ll call you back.”

Now I’m becoming convinced it is in the hole. And it is.

My first hole-in-one. My only hole-in-one. The cell phone hole-in-one. The hole-in-one I was too tethered to the office to see, too consumed by business to enjoy. I get it on the 12th at Augusta (now that’s a story), but it’s the seventh at Renditions. And thanks to circumstances I could not control (weather that caused a backed up tee sheet), it’s the second time in the round that we played the hole.

Renditions was only a few months old at the time. I thought maybe I’d gotten the first ace on its rendition of the 12th at Augusta. But not even that would go my way. The plaque on the clubhouse wall already had one name on it. Good times. Bad times. Golf has a mystical way of evening everything out – even a moment so special as your first hole-in-one.

I pick the ball out of the cup and call the office back. I’m talking, answering questions, solving problems. I manage “My honor?” as I walk to the 13th at Augusta, the eighth at Renditions and our last hole of the day. I tee it up and blast it through the dogleg and into the woods. As we search it dawns on me: I have just blasted my hole-in-one ball into oblivion. If this were the real Augusta, it would be sitting on the pine straw plain as day. But no. My hole-in-one ball is in a swamp of standing water, fallen leaves and thick undergrowth. My hole-in-one ball is lost.