golf

I spent the morning last Friday playing golf with my lifelong best friend Mike. Mike's a regular golfer, and I'm a "once every couple years" golfer. The idea was mine, mainly just to spend some time with Mike and to give a little money to a VDOT benefit cause.

Golf, for me, is 90% looking for balls. Even on a relatively open course, I lost a lot of balls. Golf has a "critical moment", that millisecond where the club strikes the ball. If everything isn't perfectly aligned at that moment of impact, chances are good that I'll soon be poking through tall weeds looking for my ball. No matter how well I hit the ball on the practice range (and I do), I get nervous and tense up over my real shots. I usually swing too hard, squeeze the club, or yank my head at that critical moment, usually topping the ball. Ironically though, the only two good shots I hit were two iron shots out of the rough. I think it's because I was forced to hold onto the club very tightly to keep it from twisting in the rough before impact. So, for those two shots, I guess I kept a consistent grip and swing all the way through.

If golf is going to be one of the games of my senior years, I hope I get a bit better at it.