One of the resolutions I had going into the 2012 golf season was to finally break 80.

I have been chasing a dimpled white ball for a long time, going on 30 or so years now, and came close a few times but never carded a score in the 70s. Heck, scoring in the 80s always has been a challenge.

And so, with less than a week remaining in 2012, I suggested to GolfersWest.com CEO Bob Sherwin that we play one more round – on Dec. 31 at West Seattle Golf Club, a public course that is always fun to play and the price is right.

We decided to give it a shot, weather permitting.

As you know, Seattle weather in December can be inclement. Not that it has rained a lot in Seattle this year, but the weather forecasters are totally depressed.

“This is one of the most dismal periods I’ve ever seen here,” Cliff Mass of the University of Washington’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences told the Seattle Times of the 27 days of rain in December.

Plugged again, after tee shot on par-3

It did not rain on this day, but the course was, shall we say, soggy. Can you spell Q-U-A-G-M-I-R-E? The average roll for any given shot was measured in inches, not feet. I hit a 4-rescue club on No. 6 that landed on the green – and plugged. In the summer, that could be the first ace of my life.

 I lost two balls that were plugged so deep just off the fairway that I could not find. Bob found all of his errant shots, at least the ones that did not visit the out-of-bounds areas.

The 10:07 a.m. tee-shot temperature was 38 degrees. When I got into my car almost four hours later to drive home, it had climbed all the way to 40! But, for some reason, it did not seem brutally cold. There was neither any wind nor any moisture falling from the dreaded gray clouds hovering overhead.

We weren’t alone on the course, but the pace of play was the best we had had at the popular facility that must have 100,000 or more rounds a year. At least it seems that way.

Bob and I were joined on the first tee by Ben, an employee at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. He “smoked” the ball off the tee several times during the round, but never told us his final score. It probably was in the 80s.

Our mission was to shoot lower than the temperature on either of the nines.

Bob had a fried egg in the bunker at No. 8

Bob was cold on the front side, shooting a 48 and blaming his sore lower back for his score. I shot 47 and had no excuses. He was much better on the back nine, using two of my Advil tablets to shoot a 41. I abstained from the pills and shot another 47, once again failing to shoot 70-something.

He came close to the temp. I didn’t.

Therefore, the last of my resolutions for 2012 – to shoot a score of less than 80 – was broken.

Actually, I did shoot a 77 in ’12. Not on the same, mind you.

On May 21, I shot a 37 on the front nine at the luxurious Coeur d’Alene Course in Idaho and on June 3, at Sunriver, Ore., I had a 39 on the back nine at The Meadows. So, in you really fudge a bit, that is a 76!

And so, as we head into a New Year with the same old lousy swing, one of my resolutions for 2013 is to break 80.

If at first you don’t suceed. . . .