Gratification, at Last

Practice, drudgery, false starts, endless research online and reading library books—finally my first golf season was over. As I recounted in my first post, I practiced right through the winter, going out almost every day in my Sorrel boots, hitting plastic practice balls in my backyard.

When spring, 2008, arrived, I started going back to the range and occasionally going out for nine holes with my friend, Clint. To me, the results were extremely disappointing. I still couldn’t hit a driver very far, and I felt short with all the other clubs, too. I had no distance, and I didn’t have any accuracy, either. For nine holes, I would usually shoot around 50 at best. The thought of taking up a board game, like Parcheesi, occurred to me often. Masochistically, a dark part of my brain kept whispering, “No, golf defeats you. Let’s keep trying.” My golf adventure had become the myth of Sisyphus, the figure in Greek mythology condemned to roll a huge rock up a steep hill, only to see it roll down again, over and over again, for all eternity. Pointless. Meaningless. The crux of the Existentialist dilemma.

But we golfers, we who want to join the initiated, we are heroes of a sort. We do not give in easily. We accept failure. We persevere. And that is just what I did.

After a few desultory rounds with Clint, I decided that I wasn’t going to go out and play on a golf course again until I had a reliable swing. This was in July, 2008. I have spent the rest of that summer and fall and, now, the winter practicing. I have not set foot on a fairway. And I will not until I have a swing that pleases me. This decision has turned out to be pivotal, and I should have made it much earlier, except that there is no timeline or guidebook for learning golf. Each player has to figure it out for himself. “Dig it out of the dirt,” in Hogan’s famous aphorism. Finally, things started to improve. I could see it and feel it.

Although I had devoted myself to practice, I knew I needed help. The books, the videos, YouTube—that wasn’t enough. I also needed a swing coach. Fortunately, and conveniently, I found my swing coach less than a mile from my house. Over the hill, a nice little driving range is tucked into the otherwise commercial occupants of the main road where heavy traffic thrums by my house. And—just my luck—a new pro (soon-to-be manager) had just taken up residence. Jeremiah (JJ to those who know him well) became my swing coach. In actual practice, he was more my golf psychiatrist, for reasons that I will describe in my next post.