The first set of clubs I had were Sam Snead blades and persimmon woods. I learned to expect instant feedback when I had mishit a ball; I didn't really even need to watch the ball flight to know where I had hit it on the clubface. The insert on my first driver was raised almost a quarter inch above the rest of the face so mishits that caught the edge of that raised surface were interesting to say the least. I soon developed a well deserved reputation for wildness off the tee amongst the group I played with.
After I had been playing regularly for a little while I invested in a set of irons. I bought a set of Spalding Pro Flight cavity backs for $180.00. Of course this was only the beginning of my investment in golf clubs. The Pro Flights were good clubs but I always had problems controlling the trajectory on them as everything went very high from my steep downward attack. Still.... for the most part I was just happy to make decent contact most of the time and wasn't as worried about trajectory as I was directional control.
I soon found a used Powerbilt driver that I fell in love with. It was the burnished light brown color of caramel with a red insert and a smooth silky overall finish. It was a beautiful club and one that I played with for several years. I learned to tee it high and hit it on the upswing and revelled in the beautiful feel and flight of purely struck balls. Granted, I didn't do it very often but when I did it was a sight to behold. I made my first eagle a week after I bought the club when I drove a short par four and made the putt. This was immediately followed by a two out of bounds 9 on the next hole but it didn't matter as I was convinced that I had found the secret of golf. I loved this club so much I kept it for many years after I quit using it and would use it to practice with at times when my swing got way off. I had to have it reshafted after it collided with a ball washer on the way back to the cart at high speed after pummeling a ball all the way across the next fairway and into a water hazard. I felt bad about the broken shaft but it had it coming.
I friend of mine had a Cobra Baffler five wood that I liked the feel of so I started looking around for one of those as well. This was the persimmon bafflers with the brass baffle on the bottom of the club which made it feel heavy and stable throughout the swing. One of the private country clubs in town sold them so I ordered a 3 wood and a 5 wood. They were a perfectly black with a red insert and felt like a well balanced hammer to me. The 3 wood was a heaven send in that I immediately figured out how to hit it very hard and very high with little movement on the ball. I had my second eagle with it a couple of months later when I hit a par five in two and tapped in a 6 inch putt. Truthfully, I could have played better if I hit the 3 woood off the tee all the time but couldn't bear to give in to the wild rides high and left that most of my tee shots with the Powerbilt were.
Lefty clubs were and are hard to find in much variety. Most manufacturers aim for the big market of people who want game improvement clubs to help get the ball airborne. While this is only natural and to be expected it can be a pain in the butt if you want something not designed with that in mind.
Putters were something I went through with great speed and reckless abandon. I started out with a Sam Snead blade that looked like something you would find at a Putt Putt course. This was followed by several others that I found in bargain barrels and usually discarded after having learned they were not a bargain after all; they were only worth a few dollars as paperweights or door stops. I was playing on crappy greens and had developed a crappy stroke. I stood open to the line and pushed putts toward the hole with my left hand. I soon learned to hold the angle in my left wrist which helped control distance but I was by no means a good putter for many years. I had my putting stroke described as a rusty gate after losing a team match one time. One of my teammates suggested that I hit the ball like a rocket launcher but could probably putt better if I kicked the ball. I took it as a compliment and briefly considered asking if kicking the ball in the hole was a legal method of putting.
I soon settled on a rotation of two putters. A Ping Anser and a Ray Cook Mallet were my standbyes for years. As a matter of fact I still have both of them even though they haven't seen the light of day for a few years. I putted with whichever one I hadn't missed a short birdie putt with recently. I will say that the Ping Anser was hands down the best for throwing as it was weighted much better and I could get the pleasant helicopter sound and motion when I hit my release point just right.
I once had a playing partner admonish me for slamming a club in the ground after a bad shot on a par three. "It ain't the club's fault" he said. Now I wasn't in the best of moods after the shot but I especially didn't appreciate volunteer wisdom from someone I was beating by five strokes at the time.
"That's the reason you play like shit," I told him. "Your clubs have no respect for you. Mine KNOW whose fault it is when they hit a bad shot. They start cringing the moment the ball comes off the clubface wrong because they know what is in store for them after they hit a bad shot." I was only halfway kidding.
more later.....
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
In the Beginning
I still remember my first golf experience. I was in my thirties and had taken up the game on a dare from some guys on a basketball team I played on. One of them had a set of old left handed Sam Snead blades with a persimmon driver and a persimmon 3 wood. The grips were hard and dry rotted and the insert on the driver was raised some 1/4 inch from the rest of the face from being exposed to moisture and swelling.
We went to a municipal course the city runs that was right next to the airport. The greens were baked and crusted bermuda and the fairways were hard as the airport runways they bordered. I had never actually hit a golf ball before that day but had bought some plastic whiffle golf balls and knocked them around the back yard until I could hit them without a definitive boomerang effect. I remember laughing at the guys steel spiked shoes and remarking that I would probably hurt myself wearing them.
The second hole was a straightaway par five and I hit a perfect drive. It was effortless and smooth feeling and seemed to fly forever straight down the fairway before stopping some 200 yards from the green. It was the only shot I hit all day on the center of the clubface. One of my well meaning playing partners suggested I cut down on my overly long hard swing to get some accuracy but it was too late, I had already bombed one further than anyone else hit one all day and was never going to be satisfied with short but straight. I hit magnificent arcing slices that left the golf course at high speed and a lot of topped balls for the rest of the day but I hit all of them with the same ferocity and the same loopy, long swing.
I was hooked. The next six months were spent tearing up my back yard with ferocious iron and driver swings that sailed whiffle balls in all directions. I read everything I could get my hands on about the golf swing but discarded anything that didn't feel like the occasional elusive return of the first smoked drive that carried out of sight. My swing was built around the idea of swinging a rock on a string; long, slow and fluid with lots of snap at the bottom from a cupped, delayed release fully cocked right wrist and I learned to control the direction by hanging on past impact. When I timed it right it was magnificent. I hit high arching shots that settled softly and carried a long way.
I read about how divots were supposed to be taken in front of the ball and further steepened my iron swing so that the divots were deep and wide. The occasional pure shot that rocketed off those old blades was magical. The sound.... the feel.... the breathless beauty of a high arcing shot settling next to the pin was overpowering and mystical at the same time. The courses I played had brick hard greens and unwatered fairways that turned into baked clay in the dead of summer. I learned to chip with a 7 iron and putted the ball terribly but none of that mattered. It was the purity of a well struck shot that bewitched me and kept me struggling so hard night after night in my back yard.
I told one of the guys that had talked me into playing that I would be shooting in the 80's in a year and he laughed out loud. I offered to put money on it but something in the way I was so sure told him it was a bad bet. As it turned out he was right. It took me a year and a half to get to where I could shoot in the 80's and by then I had read so much about the golf swing I felt like I understood it; at least I understood how my own body could create a reasonable facsimile of it.
Then something else happened. I was playing a company tournament one day and struggling mightily. I just couldn't get the feel down that day. Everything was a little off and I was just not striking it very well. I tried to relax and swing slower but nothing seemed to help. I had hit a ball in the trees to the right of the fairway on a shortish par four. It was a dead over the top pull hook that only carried some 170 yards up the fairway before going deep into the pine thicket guarding the right side. That pine thicket wasn't a new aquaintance for me. I had visited it on several occasions and there was no way out of it besides a lateral chip out from where I had hit my ball. When I got to my ball nestled in the pine needles I was trying to figure out where to chip it out when I looked up. I don't even know why I looked up but there it was. An opening in the trees probably 3 feet high and 8 foot across. It wasn't exactly an opening as much as it was a small space that aligned perfectly with what I knew to be my 8 iron flight.
Any sort of mishit would have sent the ball clattering deeper into trouble but I suddenly KNEW I would not mishit it. I knew that 8 iron would make perfect contact in the loose pine straw and send the ball right through that opening and onto the green. I could see it clearly in my mind and even feel the dead soft crispness of perfect contact ringing in my hands. I told my partner what I was getting ready to do and he just looked at me with a look of incredulity. He didn't bother to suggest I should chip out but agreed to watch the shot in case it took the 98% possibility of hitting something and getting deeper into trouble.
I made the shot and the 2 foot birdie putt afterwards. I had a beautiful three holes of pure ball striking before that feeling left again. I got out of my own way and played the shots I saw in my mind without trying to figure out how to hit them. Golf is like that sometimes. An impossibility wrapped up in the ability to allow it to happen.....
We went to a municipal course the city runs that was right next to the airport. The greens were baked and crusted bermuda and the fairways were hard as the airport runways they bordered. I had never actually hit a golf ball before that day but had bought some plastic whiffle golf balls and knocked them around the back yard until I could hit them without a definitive boomerang effect. I remember laughing at the guys steel spiked shoes and remarking that I would probably hurt myself wearing them.
The second hole was a straightaway par five and I hit a perfect drive. It was effortless and smooth feeling and seemed to fly forever straight down the fairway before stopping some 200 yards from the green. It was the only shot I hit all day on the center of the clubface. One of my well meaning playing partners suggested I cut down on my overly long hard swing to get some accuracy but it was too late, I had already bombed one further than anyone else hit one all day and was never going to be satisfied with short but straight. I hit magnificent arcing slices that left the golf course at high speed and a lot of topped balls for the rest of the day but I hit all of them with the same ferocity and the same loopy, long swing.
I was hooked. The next six months were spent tearing up my back yard with ferocious iron and driver swings that sailed whiffle balls in all directions. I read everything I could get my hands on about the golf swing but discarded anything that didn't feel like the occasional elusive return of the first smoked drive that carried out of sight. My swing was built around the idea of swinging a rock on a string; long, slow and fluid with lots of snap at the bottom from a cupped, delayed release fully cocked right wrist and I learned to control the direction by hanging on past impact. When I timed it right it was magnificent. I hit high arching shots that settled softly and carried a long way.
I read about how divots were supposed to be taken in front of the ball and further steepened my iron swing so that the divots were deep and wide. The occasional pure shot that rocketed off those old blades was magical. The sound.... the feel.... the breathless beauty of a high arcing shot settling next to the pin was overpowering and mystical at the same time. The courses I played had brick hard greens and unwatered fairways that turned into baked clay in the dead of summer. I learned to chip with a 7 iron and putted the ball terribly but none of that mattered. It was the purity of a well struck shot that bewitched me and kept me struggling so hard night after night in my back yard.
I told one of the guys that had talked me into playing that I would be shooting in the 80's in a year and he laughed out loud. I offered to put money on it but something in the way I was so sure told him it was a bad bet. As it turned out he was right. It took me a year and a half to get to where I could shoot in the 80's and by then I had read so much about the golf swing I felt like I understood it; at least I understood how my own body could create a reasonable facsimile of it.
Then something else happened. I was playing a company tournament one day and struggling mightily. I just couldn't get the feel down that day. Everything was a little off and I was just not striking it very well. I tried to relax and swing slower but nothing seemed to help. I had hit a ball in the trees to the right of the fairway on a shortish par four. It was a dead over the top pull hook that only carried some 170 yards up the fairway before going deep into the pine thicket guarding the right side. That pine thicket wasn't a new aquaintance for me. I had visited it on several occasions and there was no way out of it besides a lateral chip out from where I had hit my ball. When I got to my ball nestled in the pine needles I was trying to figure out where to chip it out when I looked up. I don't even know why I looked up but there it was. An opening in the trees probably 3 feet high and 8 foot across. It wasn't exactly an opening as much as it was a small space that aligned perfectly with what I knew to be my 8 iron flight.
Any sort of mishit would have sent the ball clattering deeper into trouble but I suddenly KNEW I would not mishit it. I knew that 8 iron would make perfect contact in the loose pine straw and send the ball right through that opening and onto the green. I could see it clearly in my mind and even feel the dead soft crispness of perfect contact ringing in my hands. I told my partner what I was getting ready to do and he just looked at me with a look of incredulity. He didn't bother to suggest I should chip out but agreed to watch the shot in case it took the 98% possibility of hitting something and getting deeper into trouble.
I made the shot and the 2 foot birdie putt afterwards. I had a beautiful three holes of pure ball striking before that feeling left again. I got out of my own way and played the shots I saw in my mind without trying to figure out how to hit them. Golf is like that sometimes. An impossibility wrapped up in the ability to allow it to happen.....
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