GOLF:

It was a day I circled on the calendar, much like Tiger marks the first week in April.

The date is March 3. The event is the Shot from the Top. It is my major championship, really all I had to live for, and as defending champion in the media division I wanted to keep my crown.

To recap last year for those of you who didn’t see the major network coverage and my one-hour sit-down ESPN interview, The Toshiba Classic has an event that pairs a high school player with a Champions Tour player and a media hack thrown in for comic relief. We all take turns hitting a ball off the top of the Marriott Hotel in Newport Beach to the second green at Newport Beach Country Club — 162 feet below.

Michael Yiu of Laguna Hills High hit a shot that came to rest 3 feet, 2 inches from the cup, the closest shot to date. The high schools play for computers to get donated to their school. The media have a separate contest and the winner gets 12 laptop computers to donate to the charity of their choice.

Last year I managed to hit a golf ball to 12-feet, 3-inches and not fall from the top of the 16-story hotel.

It was a Cinderella story, a former cub reporter, now Shot from the Top champion.

My year was a hectic one with all the appearances at grocery store openings and orphanages. Between that and working on the yet, unsold, un-represented, proposed book, “My Shot to the Top” it left little time to prepare for this year.

It was time to train. My mind was right, now I just had to get my body right. Had to perfect that swing that lucked me into glory the year before.

I set the alarm for 5 a.m. to do some roadwork. Had a little setback, though; got tennis elbow and carpal tunnel from hitting the snooze button 25 times.

Carpe noon I always say, so I arose with my gray sweats and went out to swallow raw eggs. I don’t keep a lot of food in the house. I thought I had eggs behind the chocolate milk and Velveeta cheese, but the mold that was growing out of the cottage cheese container I had since the Clinton presidency was blocking further access to the back of the refrigerator.

No problem. Instead of five raw eggs I went to McDonalds and had two egg McMuffins.

I felt a little bloated after breakfast so canceled the roadwork. Instead I pedaled a stationary bike at the gym for a solid five minutes until I really felt the burn.

Now with the aerobic exercise out of the way, it was time to hit the weights. A strong core is crucial to success in any competition. So I wrestled some of the five-pound dumbbells away from a 70-year-old woman (she had been hogging them I thought) and started pumping iron.

I could really feel the pythons bursting out of my sleeves on my fourth bicep curl, but had a brief run-in with security with two curls to go. It seemed grandma was yelling something about assault and battery, so I was asked to leave. When did senior citizens get rights, anyway?

It was now time to swing the golf club I just wasn’t sure where I could go to recreate the shot from the top of the Marriott.

A perfect way to simulate the shot I thought was to stand atop the bluff at Hoag Hospital that looks down on Pacific Coast Highway. I could bring my wedge there and hit golf balls onto PCH. Then some killjoy at Hoag told me they had enough patients already and that I should try and find a place where I wouldn’t cause a Sig Alert.

I was going to ask Art Perry, the golf coach at Estancia High, but his team hasn’t ever won the competition, so I figured that was pointless.

Since I couldn’t get a shot from top to bottom, I reversed the process, using my last math class, high school geometry. I took my wedge and hit a normal shot and when it got as high as I thought it needed to be, I quit. It only took four swings. I should be fine.

JOHN REGER’S golf column appears Thursdays.