Bad Golfer

 Among bad-golfers, it's scripted that when you complain about how terrible, how stinking bad, how horrendous you're playing, you look at the beauty of the golf course and the pretty white clouds scudding across the lovely blue sky, and say "Well, the important thing is that it's beautiful out and we're having fun." This is bullshit.  Okay, it's a nice day. The clouds are ever so pretty, and the green of the course is indeed attractive. But who gives a flying fatootie, really? I care about playing well. I want to hit satisfying thwacks and see the ball flying in a nice straight line towards the green. I want to not 3-putt. Sure, it's a nice day, but it would be a nice day if I was mowing my lawn, too, but that doesn't make it fun to mow my lawn.  Thursday was one of those lovely days. And my bad-golfing reached new levels of stench and rottonness. I started out with two sleeves of new balls. I thought that would be enough. After completing the firs...

 I hadn't been golfing with my best buddie, Calvin, all season. He's been feeling under the weather with a sore elbow for a few weeks now and using this so-called injury as a handy excuse not to come play golf with his old roomie. Poor bubbie. Cry me a river. You and I both know he was just afraid of being humiliated on the golf course by my shining, stunning golf skills.  So I sent him an email the other day, ordering him to man up already, eat a whole bottle of ibuprofen and come play golf with me! And that's an order! To my immense surprise, he obediently wrote back, "Yes sir. Book a tee time." What he didn't say is that he was already planning to be in Brattleboro anyway. Ha ha.  So, wearing our very smart and almost-matching coral-colored golf shirts, we headed over to the Brattleboro Country Club to play nine.  It seems to me that every time I play, a brand-new weakness in my game pops up to bedevil me. Sometimes it's the putting, resulting in my pin...

 Well, not exactly. First of all Mr. Kipling is dead these 85 years, so it would be a dull game. Though the way I play, he might be a good partner for me.  Nevertheless, my wife and I had the good fortune to attend an open house and garden tour of a house that Kipling lived in right here in Brattleboro. Called "Naulakha," after the book he co-wrote with his father-in-law (now there's a good son-in-law), it's a marvelous mansion that sits atop a hill in Dummerston. Owned by The Landmark Trust USA, the house is rented to well-to-do vacationers who can thrill to live for a weekend in the house where Kipling wrote "Captains Courageous," The Jungle Book (parts 1 and 2) and many of the "Just So" stories, which he read aloud to his little daughter on the very deck where we sipped an ice-cold lemonade.  This being a bad-golf blog, it would be remiss of me not to inform you, gentle reader, that there's a golf angle in my accounting of our visit to Naula...

 It was on the fairway of the ninth hole at the Bellows Falls Country Club, after another average round of bad-golf.  I'd hit a pretty decent shot off the tee, which got me just shy of the trees you see on the right side of the fairway. Picked up my 6-iron, my favorite iron these days for fairway work. Addressed the ball, took a breath, emptied my mind (never a difficult job) and thought only about hitting through the ball. Took what felt like a normal backswing, low and slow, and let fly. Simply, modestly and truthfully put, it was the single greatest golf shot in the history of the game. Perfectly shaped, long, straight as an arrow, absolutely gorgeous. Landed just shy of the green, just where I'd hoped to place it. It was not only the best shot of my round, it was probably the best shot of my entire golf journey. Man, it felt wonderful. Sounded great off the club, got a good followthrough, and the ball just arced and arced and flew and bounced perfectly. It was perfection....

 Two rounds last week to report on. To be sure, there's no danger of having to change the name of my little blog. I'm still a very bad, horrendous, stinking-awful golfer. But I comfort myself by looking on the interweb for some statistics that say that roughly half of all golfers are as bad as I am (meaning we shoot around 100-110. Not counting Mulligans or "practice shots" or gimmes or screw-its. But I guess I'm not the only bad-golfer out there, which is a little comforting. A little.  So I had made a tentative date with my buddy Alan to play a round last Sunday. I figured I'd go out on Friday and play a practice round to get into shape for my first round of the year not playing alone. It did not go well.  That's not entirely true: My first shot off the tee was textbook. Straight, long, beautiful, satisfying. Got a bogey on that first hole, which always puts me in a good mood. But I got a 10 on the second hole (not the first time on that hole,) which alw...

Address the ball.  Feet apart but not too far (aligned with shoulders, more or less) Don't groove the waggle Back straight, good posture, butt sticking out a little bit Deep breath Strong grip (knuckles visible) Club face correct left foot angled out just a smidge grip the club like you're holding a bird Deep breath again visualize shot shape Backswing inside the plane Trust your backswing low and slow hands, arms, shoulders, hips (in that order) head down, watch the ball straight left arm wrists hinged left knee bends a little inward but not too much club parallel to ground at top of backswing hips, shoulders, arms, hands (in that order) swing down to the ball, not at the ball swing through the ball pronate left wrist slightly at impact swing hard but not too hard (80%) swing just outside the backswing plane power in hip speed follow through belt buckle facing target arms straight only just after impact elbows toward target keep head still!!! don't spring up at impact Don...

 Back in the 16th century, when I was a kid, I loved baseball (still do, of course, Go Sox!) and I wanted badly to be a bad-baseball-player. My poor long-suffering Dad tried to help me in this hopeless endeavor, coaching me on a good baseball swing, and he always emphasized a good follow-through. This made no sense to me, and frankly still doesn't. How can what happens to the bat after you hit the ball make any difference whatsoever in how well you hit the ball? I'm still mystified by this, if I'm honest.  But it turns out the same is true in golf. Who knew? If you follow the impact of the ball with a full follow-through, the ball goes further, and it goes straighter. This I found out on the range, and it was confirmed the other day when I played my first round of nine holes of the 2021 season.  It started off well. I felt confident, thought about my follow-through as I went through my pre-shot routine, and hit the first ball of the season with a satisfying thwack. It fle...