The (nay) My Swing

Right now for some reason, I feel like I am about to take my clothes off in front of a crowd.  There was a movie, whose title escapes me at the moment, where the character says when giving a speech he imagines everyone in the audience is naked and it helps with his anxiety.  Maybe I'll imagine everyone reading this was naked?  It might help... uhm... Nope, it didn't.  Most of you are likely to be middle-aged men or older with little time to exercise and hairy...  OK, I'm stopping right there.  Nope, that did not help at all.  Why don't we all keep our clothes on, shall we?  Great, let's move on.

I am about to share some videos of my first swings early on.  Talk about anxiety and baring a man's soul.  If I was more skillful with video/photo editing software I would blur my face out but I am not.  And besides, it doesn't matter.  None of you know me and if anybody I know is reading this I am denying I am "The Golf Dummy".  I am taking my identity to the grave (except for that post on "About The Golf Dummy") or at least until my swing improves and we can laugh at the buffoon in the pictures and videos together!

Let's begin and start with something fun.  The video below is not really one of my first few swings.  This one is maybe 4-6 months in.  I have since gotten better.  Meaning I don't really react the way I do at the end anymore.  I still want to, I've just been able to fight the urge much better.  Word of warning: I do not endorse this type of behavior at home, on the driving range, and especially not on the fairway.  Read the following lines in your best Sean Connery accent: "Yerr goats tah kip yerr heid on yah, lad.  Galfs (golf is) a gents game!"  Anyway, you'll understand what I mean after you see it.  As for the swing?  It's pretty much perfect for slicing the ball almost precisely perpendicular to the right EVERY TIME.  Hence, the end of the video.

http://youtu.be/ljgETOUCw6k

I was told that the swing above wasn't really that bad and that, in fact, it looked pretty good for a beginner.  Truth be told when I first started out with golf I didn't really care about how my swing looked.  I just so desperately wanted the ball to fly straight.  I would have stood on one leg, held my nose, and put on a goofy smile while swinging the golf club if I thought it would get the ball to go straight.  I just had such a bad slice!  Hindsight is always 20-20 and looking at the video now I can sort of point out the areas for improvement and some of the things that need adjustments.  But my mistakes and the changes I made to get a little bit better are subjects for another blog post.  Here's a video of what my swing really looked like when I started:

http://youtu.be/21GeSQ5xWH0

I know.  It's pretty bad.  It sort of makes you think "Well now that I saw THAT, the first video doesn't look so bad!" - and I agree.  But such is the irony of this game.  It'll embarrass you, ridicule you, and make you feel worthless - and you fall in love anyway.

I was hooked.  "Obsessed" might be a better word.  I started taking more videos.  Buying golf apps and watching tutorials.  I went to the driving range.  I even got a few golf pro lessons (who taught me different, sometimes completely opposing things).  I was determined to make my swing into the swing...

The Beginning: Too Cool for School

Strictly speaking, I was first introduced to golf in high school.  My brother had been working for a few years in the corporate world and he had picked up the game.  Well that and scuba diving, ice hockey, and airsoft guns. At the time, my young naive mind considered his activities "pretentious".  One day he convinced me to hit the driving range and take a few swings at some golf balls.  I had thought to myself "Sure! Why not? Seems easy enough with all these old farts playing it."  I was a high school varsity basketball player - arrogant, self-absorbed, and cocky.  Needless to say I had embarrassed myself that day. I swung helplessly at a defenseless dimpled white ball.  I could have sworn it was alive and dodging my mighty swings.  After flailing my arms and screaming like a little girl whose barbie just got taken away, I gave up and forever swore off the game of golf.  I called it "a game that only people with no athleticism played."

About 15 years later, I'm playing basketball with my regular Saturday group.  I am accustomed to being one of the better players.  So when one of the newer players in the group bring some young guns to the court, I have this instinctive urge to prove to the youngins how it's done.  I had done it before, put punk kids in their place and show them who's the alpha male on this playground.  Of course it had been a few years since we had any new blood on the court but in my mind it made no difference.  I'm the king of this hill and these boys will bow to me.  

The game proceeded as expected. And by "the game proceeded as expected" I mean we picked teams and started the game tied at zero points. After that, the game DID NOT proceed as expected. We were getting our asses kicked. I remember one play, I was coming off of a missed shot by the other team and was sprinting down court for a fast break. Actually it may not have been so much a "sprint" than maybe a brisk jog but I remember it to be a sprint and this is my story so we'll stick with it. I had one guy left to beat. It was one of the youngins. I thought to myself "OK when you get to this guy, you're going to faint right, crossover left, go behind the back, and if by some miracle he's still in front of you? I'm going to spin move and lay it up right passed this bum!" I could almost hear the "oooh's" and "ahhh's" from the guys on the sidelines watching. It was going to be an epic show of skill. Except it wasn't. It was like my body didn't get the memo from my mind. The faint to the right didn't even happen! It was like my body said "If we're going left anyway why bother with a fake? It's too much effort. Let's just go straight to the crossover." And it may have been all right except that when I tried to cross I dribbled the ball off of my left foot. And as I watched the ball drift out of bounds in slow motion, I could see the corner of the young punk's mouth rise into a grin of satisfaction. The same kind I used to get when people would crumble at my weekend-warrior's crippling defensive stare! Alas, those days were long gone and that play was the first basketball plays of many that reminded me of it. It's almost criminal how life just takes that away from you with age but doesn't take away the competitive mindset. My mind still feels like it's 23, unbeatable, and able to leap the tallest building with a single bound. My body humbles me and tells me that unless that building was built by tiny elves, I have trouble just jumping over my son's stack of legos.

I still play basketball once in awhile but some time around my late 20s and early 30s I decided it was time to change sports. My ego and pride couldn't accept the demotion in stature even if it was just on a playground basketball court. So one day I found my brother's old set of golf clubs in my parents house and took it. I thought to myself "Let's try this again." There was something comforting about starting over and being a beginner. No expectations. No insecurities. No baggage. I just wanted to learn. I took that old set of clubs and started swinging...

Full Disclosure

All right, before you start reading this blog let's make a few things clear.  I am not an expert nor am I a golf pro.  If you have come here looking for textbook tips and tricks or how to play golf the "right" way, you've come to the wrong place - please leave now and forever hold your peace.

This blog is about a regular guy with a day job, wife, and kids, who has come to grow to love golf.  I started this blog to share my golf story and my experiences as I go through learning the game.

Right now, I suck at the game.  I'm pretty bad.  I have been playing for a little over a year (maybe twice or thrice a month).  While I acknowledge going to the driving range is important to improve your game, I have to tell you I'm not a big fan of the range.  I prefer the fairway.  As soon as I figured out how to hit a golf ball with a club (note that by "hit" I mean the ball usually violently sliced to the right), I headed straight to the fairway. This probably explains why I have broken 100 only a couple of times and if I'm really honest about it (meaning count the mulligan/s), I probably have never legitimately broken 100.  For the newbies out there - "breaking 100" means scoring (or taking) below 100 strokes to finish 18 holes. Right now, I score in the high 120s give or take a few strokes.  Most of the time its so bad I don't even count or take the scorecard!

But I have grown to love this game.  It's hard to explain.  Round after round I come back for more heartbreak and frustration.  Once in awhile, you hit that shot where the ball hits the club on its sweet spot, and you hear that elusive "swoosh" the ball makes when the flight is just perfect, and it lands 6 feet from the hole from 160 yards away.  Man, that feels good!  It's an amazing feeling.  In fact it's so good you forget that you 2-putt it from 6 feet away.  It doesn't matter.  That one shot in a round of 18 makes it all worth it, it makes you come back.

I like to think that my love affair with golf is similar to what most regular guys go through.

I struggle with the right grip, the right back swing, the right swing plane, etc. etc.

I struggle with hitting the ball straight, the driver, getting out of bunkers, etc. etc.

I struggle with the practicality of golf - the cost of green fees, memberships, equipment, caddies, and shoes; having enough time to play; etc. etc.

But I digress and I'm getting ahead of myself.  I'd like to share with you how it all started, why I picked up the game, and what drives me to stick with a game that tortures me so much.  Let's start from the beginning...