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The one aspect of golf that, in my mind, elevates it above other sports is a simple thing: Enjoying the game doesn't depend on the skill level of who you're playing with.

This is partly because you're always able to play the course itself. But mostly it is due to golf's brilliant invention, the handicap system. To use the words of an old pal in Scotland, the system is "the perfect balance between greed and ego." If you want to win more matches, it pays to get the additional strokes that come with having a higher handicap. If you want to be thought of as a player, you need that sporty single-digit handicap.

This perfect balance helps make golf the rare sport in which a player of considerably less skill can join up with a better player and everybody can still have a great time. It may be the most democratic of sporting contests.

You need to be careful, though. Sometimes that democracy can come up and bite you in the grass.

When I was attending the University of St Andrews in Scotland, a friend visiting from Cambridge insisted we play the Old Course. I didn't even know he golfed, but I was happy to play and happy to discover that he shared my love for the sport. I didn't ask him what his handicap was, or how much he'd played. I figured we'd sort all that out before starting.

The first tee of the Old Course is as hallowed a place as any in golf. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews is right behind the tee. Tourists and golfing pilgrims wander by. It's the nerve centre of the game.

We got to the first tee on a day that was, thankfully, a bit chilly, which meant the course wasn't crowded. My friend, whom we'll call Sam, was sharing my clubs; I'd cleared this with the imperious autocrat in the starter's hut. I hit my drive down the first fairway, then handed Sam my driver. He grasped it rather awkwardly, looked at me, and said, "So how are you supposed to hold this thing, anyway?"

It's possible my jaw actually dropped. "Excuse me?"

"Well, let's face it," he said. "It's kind of tricky. Do you put your hands together, or can you do it like a hockey stick?"

After 30 seconds of staccato interrogation the CIA would have been proud of, I discovered Sam had never played golf, and only wanted to play the Old Course to cheese off his golf-loving brother back home. "Why would I play golf?" he concluded. "It's a pretty weird game."

I went to the starter's shack and told him to let the next group play through, that I'd need a minute to work out a sudden kink in my neck. He eyed me suspiciously but agreed. Behind the shack, I gave Sam 20 hours worth of lessons and etiquette in just under four minutes.

We went back to the first tee. The starter watched from his shack. Sam knelt on the ground and pushed his tee in with both thumbs, then put a ball on it. He stood the way I'd showed him, held the club the way I'd showed him, took the club back - and then whiffed, completely missing the ball. Then he did it again. And again. And again. He missed the ball seven or eight times before making contact, sending it skittering perhaps 20 feet in front of us.

"That's not very good," he said, half to himself, as he jogged up to his ball, brought it back, and then proceeded to whiff another half dozen times before making real contact and sending it 80 yards down the fairway. "Yes!" he half-shouted. "That was pretty good."

I looked over at the starter. His expression was unreadable, as if he couldn't decide whether to commiserate with me or revoke my annual pass. I'm sure it was only because it was a cold, quiet day that he let us play on.

When we holed out on the first green, Sam put the flag in the hole as I trudged off to the second tee. Instead of following me, he looked back down the first fairway and began ticking off fingers. There were people waiting to hit and they began barking at him to move.

"Sam, what are you doing?" I said.

"Counting my score."

Over the four hours our round took, we let about a dozen groups play through. I gave Sam every putt under 10 feet. I didn't record the whiffs on the scorecard (which he insisted on keeping, to show his brother, I suppose); nor did I count any shot that didn't move more than five yards. If we had played by the strict application of the rules, his score would have been well into the 400s. He still shot 186.

But we finished. Finally, we finished. Sitting in the Jigger Pub afterwards, he seemed quite jaunty about the whole thing. I was like a shellshock victim, drained, glassy-eyed.

"That was actually kind of fun," Sam said as we headed back to my flat. I stopped and waited for the inevitable, cringed when it came. "Maybe we should play again tomorrow."

Mercifully, the golf gods intervened 12 hours later by bringing in some really foul weather off the North Sea. The Old Course remains the only golf course Sam has ever graced. Since that day, I will not fix a game without first establishing that my playing partner knows which end of the club to hold.

In retrospect, though, I wonder if the handicap system shouldn't be revised somehow to indicate just how bad someone really is, since it does place a maximum on the handicap one can carry (36 for men and 40 for women).

I imagine the limit is there purely to stop people from blatantly sandbagging and getting 80 shots a round. But on the other hand, even a little forewarning would have saved me that day. If I'd thought to ask Sam his handicap and the reply had been 324, I think we'd have hit the range a couple times before striding to the first tee of the Old Course.

All golfers can be equal, the handicap system tells us. Still, as I'm sure George Orwell meant to say, some golfers are more equal than others.

Curtis Gillespie is the author of Playing Through: A Year of Life and Links along the Scottish Coast. His most recent book is the novel Crown Shyness.