I recently had a golf lesson with Tex, the golf professional. Tex is according to Golf Digest, one of the best young teaching golf professionals in America. Tex also works with PGA Tour professionals Matty Greg (whose career he resurrected) and Big Stew E whose swing he is in the process of fine tuning. He also works with a bunch of Nationwide Tour guys. So Tex knows a thing or three about the golf swing and all of its quirks.
I had the pleasure of working with Tex, in 98 degree Dallas heat, late last summer for five hours over two days. At the end of the second day Tex took me aside, put his hand on my shoulder, spit tobacco over his left shoulder and said "Mike, I want you to take two weeks off from golf, just git away from it, reflect on what we have worked on the last couple of days (spit again) and then... I want you to quit the game entirely."
And with that he walked into the air conditioned comfort of the pro shop. I assume to purge from his mind the assorted angles, dangles and rectangles that is my golf swing.
My love/hate/hate relationship with golf started with my nineteenth birthday when I got my first set of golf clubs. They were a set of Northwestern woods and irons for which I believe I paid the grand total of $49.95 plus tax. This led me to Ernie and Joe's (E&J's) Driving Range which later became, for me, Ernie and Joe's You Hit 'Em, You Get 'Em.
In poor weather, when they could not run the tractor Ernie and Joe would allow me to shag balls by hand and hit every fifth basket I could drag into the pro shop. For a poor college kid with a golf addiction that was a deal. E&J's is also where I learned the value of a hard hat. (What nervous twitch and memory issues?)
E&J's was also the place where I learned to re-shaft clubs as hitting the ball straight was not as easy as you might think and I had a... bit of a temper. And being at the lower end of the I.Q. scale I tended to break things when things didn't go well... usually golf shafts. It wasn't uncommon for a round of golf, any round of golf, for me to include a broken club or two. Maturity and better throwing skills have greatly reduced my broken club incidents. (Note: A horizontal club throwing launch angle is preferable to a vertical club throwing launch angle if you do not want to break the club. Not a guarantee but the percentages are in your favor).
One of the more memorable incidences involved me with an errant shot into the trees. I was still in bounds so I tried to play it to the green. Sadly the ball went further right and out of bounds. And I responded, like any real man would, by slamming my club against a tree (baseball swing style) snapping the shaft and sending the bottom half rocketing directly over my head like an arrow with the severed end sticking into a tree just above my head. Picture someone leaning against a tree with an apple on their head and an arrow splitting it and the arrow pinging back and forth in the tree and you get the idea. That was the closest I ever came to wetting and killing myself on the golf course.
However that was not the most embarrassing moment for me on a golf course. The most embarrassing moment involved me, a duck hook, a corn field and three of my friends. After hitting a smoking "duck" deep into a corn field I went in after the ball. I had a line on it so how hard could it be to find it? Well, it turns out pretty damn hard!
After twenty minutes of being lost in a corn field (Unless you've been in one don't laugh. What happens is you dive in thinking I can just turn around and walk out. Wrong! The corn is ten feet high and there's no reference point, all you see is blue sky, the same blue sky everywhere) I stumbled out of the corn field on the wrong hole with mud half way up both legs, holding my left shoe in my hand and no lost golf ball.
The damn shoe had gotten stuck in the mud and I had to get down on both knees to yank it out and in doing so, you guessed it, landed flat on my back in the mud. But I got my Footjoy back. My buddies were two holes ahead of me laughing their asses off.
In fairness my golf career has not been a total disaster. On two, twenty-two, ninety-two, on the second hole on the second nine (i.e. #11), while playing with two M.D.'s I hit a Pro Staff #2 with a six iron into the cup for the only hole-in-one in my life.
It was after they quickly accepted a second round of drinks after the round in honor of my ace that it occurred to me that perhaps America's health care system was in need of an overhaul.
By now my club breaking abilities had become legendary. However, after about the twentieth re-shaft job, Ernie was "kind" enough (I had actually become a "Profit Center" for E&J by then) to let me buy the materials (shaft, tape, grip, epoxy) for the repairs and then he would show me how to make the repairs and then charge me for the "consult" the whole time reminding me how stupid my actions were. Reflecting back, I can honestly say he was a great guy.
Golf instruction for me and I suspect for most people has always been a hit or miss proposition. Mostly miss. I have taken over a hundred golf lessons in my life from over... well a lot of golf teachers and all with the same result... not good. (Note: At some point you realize the problem ain't them). It is common knowledge that most golf lessons only fix the one thing that balances the fourteen swing faults you have that allows you to hit the ball at all.
Golf lessons work like this: show up, get a swing fix ("Swing the club back by turning your left shoulder") hit balls, pay seventy-five dollars or a hundred dollars, wait a month, swing turns to turns to crap and repeat.
You go back to the same pro, get a swing fix ("Swing the club back by turning your right shoulder while saying three Hail Mary's") hit balls, pay seventy-five dollars or a hundred dollars, wait a month and everything turns to crap and repeat.
So, you go to a different pro, get a different swing fix ("Swing the club back by swinging your hands back, not the shoulders") hit balls, pay a hundred dollars or a hundred and twenty-five dollars, wait a month, everything turns to crap and repeat.
Then of course there are the golf schools. Now we're talking big bucks for a fix that lasts about as long as it takes for the blisters on your hands to heal. It is at these schools where you can learn to do the following:
"Turn your body and let the arms follow the turning of the body."
Or
"Swing the club back with your hands and arms and let your body turn to accommodate the hands and arms."
Or
"Swing the club back, while breathing in, on an upward vertical plane and let gravity return the club back to Earth striking the ball at the greatest point of inertia."
Or
"Swing the club back on a horizontal plane, while exhaling, feeling the weight of gravity while returning the club to the back of the ball in the optimal force vortex."
You get the idea.
But I think I have finally found the golf school for me. Maybe you have heard of it. It is called the Music Man Golf School and it is located in River City. Our teacher, Professor Hill doesn't have us hit balls (Look, no blisters). He has us think about hitting balls, over and over and over again. I think I can hit a 280 yard low running stinger just like Tiger and I think I can roll in a fast-as-lightning 25 foot right-to-left breaking putt to win the U.S. Open. And here's the kicker, you should hear me play the French Horn!
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