The New Road

Golf zen

I have a love/hate relationship with golf. Which has pretty much left me in a state of contempt of golf. Not a hateful contempt. Just enough contempt to where I can feel good about sucking so bad at it.

I had golf lessons when I was 10 along with my brother and sister. We all sucked. I played for a while in Miami. I'm actually not sure how or why I did that. I didn't get any better and I'm now kind of surprised by the engineering types I got to go on the range with me.

Anyway, where I'm at now with golf is that I have this choppy 3/4 swing. I'm only good with the high irons, which is just blast the hell out of to get distance. Subtle, thou art not the name of my game.

But my mom, now she is into it. So we have been playing Tiger Woods online. And she tells me all the time about her new clubs and how she is doing on the course. Which is pretty amazing since she just survived her second bout with cancer. That leads me to my invitation to her to take her to any golf course in the states and I will golf with her and pick up the tab.

But I still suck, and I don't have any clubs. Luckily though there is a driving range with a Golf Mart right next to my office in Fremont. So I went there today, and I ordered some irons (they need to be specially fit to my size, which they will do for no extra money) and I got a wood.

Now I hate woods. I hate, hate, hate woods. Because they are tough to hit. But I got this Cleveland because everyone was saying the are easy to hit. I get out to the range, and I'm hacking at it, trying to slow down, trying to keep my head down, all that. And I tee up this new wood, do a full swing and bam, a sweet like butter shot that went about 220-230 with about 75% power. Oh, yeah. I think I can do this. It was unreal. Totally different from any other time I've played. The coordination, the smoothness, that sweet sound as the ball is just smacked so fine. It was zen. I know zen. It was zen.

I talked with the pros. Turns out that when I slow down my swing, loosen up and think about my position and the setup that my swing is actually ok.

It's not that I was worried about golfing with my mom before. I just figured that she would have more fun with a better golfing partner who took the game more seriously. Now I figure if I hit the range 3 days a week for 30 minutes or so, maybe take a lesson or two, I could be a passable player by early next year.