In Which We Play a Big Shot Golf Course

Thursday, September 24, 2009. Mark your calendars. WNMLF league players Katie and Vicki played 5 complete holes at Pinon Hills Golf Course today. Even more miraculously, we had a great time out there.

Katie had some whopper tee shots, and a beautiful chip shot on hole #2. Vicki hit the fairway on four of her tee shots (if you’ve played with her you realize the importance of this statistic), and hit a very impressive trick shot off a sandstone bluff that made a high bounce before disappearing into a chamisa bush.

We have discovered another potential WNMLF golf guideline—On big shot golf courses, play scramble and make sure you’re teamed up with at least one good golfer.

Operating on this principle today, we made par on 3 holes, and bogeyed the other two. In other words, we came in at only two over.

We must observe what has happened in the preceding paragraphs—all this golf on the big course has gone to our heads, and we are communicating in golf lingo, intelligible only to other golfers or maybe people who walk around with aluminum foil on their heads looking for alien spacecraft.

Look out LPGA. We might be in the rear view mirrors in your golf carts.

Meditation on "FORE!"

When you are out on the golf course, and you hear someone (or several people) yelling, “Fore!”, you understand right away that you are in imminent danger of getting bopped by a golf ball on your head or some other sensitive body part.

You are supposed to protect yourself when you hear this, but in our experience, this raises some very big questions.

Where IS that ball coming from? Where am I supposed to look? Which way am I supposed to move? What if I look up long enough to discover it is hitting me?

You don’t know where and how the ball is going to fall until you hear that unmistakable PLOP somewhere in your vicinity. Obviously it is then far too late to take any evasive action.

Why holler at all? We guess it is related to what one of our teachers told us early on in this learning process.

“Golf is a game of honor,” he said.

So we are left to guess it is honorable to at least pretend that you are trying to protect a fellow or sister golfer from a whack on the head.

This might even be polite. It seems like this is built into golf. And wouldn’t our mothers approve?

We Love this Golf Coach

Our Golf I class played 9 holes at Civitan today. As golfers were finishing up their rounds they gathered at the picnic table for parting words of wisdom from Coach.

Even as he was almost beaned by a line drive off the #9 tee, Coach bravely carried on and left us with important words of wisdom.

“I saw some anger and frustration out there today,” he said. “You’re going to have to give that up or it will ruin your game. Calm down. Have fun out there. That’s what it’s all about.”

It seems that WNMLF principles of deportment on the golf course are closer to being on target than we had originally suspected.

Thank you, Coach.

The Zen of Putting

WNMLF league practice round
Friday, September 4
Civitan Country Club

Special guest golfer and golf coach extraordinaire Stephanie joined us for the round. This woman can not only hit the ball and finish at 3 over par for the entire round—she has good golf wisdom to share that comes with positive reinforcement.

“Great swing,” accompanied by a high 5.

“Smooth stroke,” on a putt that almost went into the hole.

“What about the putting grip?” we asked.

“Ahh,” said Stephanie, “that depends on the artist who is holding the putter. It’s a zen thing. Tiger is so good because he’s creative in how he uses his clubs. You go for the feel to figure out what works.”

Zen mind. Golfer’s mind.

...and Things Get Better

Two days ago it was set up, swing, contact, and plop. Nothing worked right.
Today it was set up, swing, smack, and the ball flew down the driving range.

Does this make any sense?

Maybe it is the 420 dimples on the golf ball.

Maybe we kept our heads down and didn’t move our hips ahead of the ball.

Maybe it was the barometric pressure as the storm threatened to move in.

And maybe it was Golf JuJu.

In any case, we will go back. It is those occasional things that go right that make us keep going back and trying again to make it better.
Need we say it? More life lessons.

Full Swing Practice

Class #3. Out on the driving range, we share a bucket of balls with a partner and hit 5 balls each.

Vicki’s partner Brian said, “Hmm. You’re tall. With that club, those shots should be going longer.”

We agree, but are still mystified with the whole thing. Focus—bend over, straight back, address the ball, interlock grip but” banana hands”, loose wrists, back swing, ninety degree angle on backswing, left arm straight, swing, connect, follow-through, bend at the hips.

Plop.

Too much thinking? It’s a head game. When your head starts to explode, the shots only get worse.

On Thursday, we’ll go back out there and maybe—just maybe—those little white range balls will go flying past the target. It’s happened before and there is every possibility it can happen again.

This is a game for optimists.