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001908 Visit since
| Learning
the game - Part 2 | by Peter Gray
October
7, 2002. |  | Beginners
in Vista Vallarta Golf Club |
Assuming
you paid attention to my last article, you have been instructed on the etiquette
you should observe on the golf course. It is now time to consider how the game
is played. We will start off with the use of the driver - despite the old admonition
"Drive for show - play for dough!" Driving off
the tee is the best part of the game. Hope springs eternal and everything is possible
at that heady instant when a golfer prepares to send his or her ball on its way
to the green. This is also the delicious moment when your fellow players are a
captive audience and can hardly escape having to utter a word of praise if your
ball flies far and true. I must warn you, though, that men are particularly at
risk here because all the hard-wired machismo in their male genes continually
obliges them to attempt the utterly impossible. Before they approach the ball,
their brains tell them their best hope is to slow down and " let the club
do the work." Once the ball is placed in front of them, however, their male
ego will have none of this. Every ball must be hit with as much brute force as
their age and physical condition will allow. No matter that this means they continually
send balls flying over hedges, bouncing off walls and disappearing into thickets,
never to be seen again. You can glorify this bull-headedness by saying it is the
same adrenalin rush that sends men into battle or flying into space. But it is
a major and well-nigh incurable disadvantage on a golf-course. Women
definitely have the psychological advantage here. Forget the fact that the rules
of golf allow women to hit the ball from a spot a darn sight closer to the hole
than an octogenarian male is allowed to do. Their real advantage is that they
are free from the irrational blood-lust slopping about on the men's tee. Unincumbered
by such irrational exuberance, women simply step up and swing the club the way
it should be swung. As a result, while the men ferret about in the undergrowth
seeking their lost balls, the women are placidly waiting to play their second
shot from the manicured ease of the fairway. Let
us pass from the mental to the physical aspects of using the driver. First of
all, a beginner will have to decide what kind of club he would prefer to use.
Drivers used to have heads about the size of a delicate tea-cup. But in recent
years clubs have been introduced with bigger and yet bigger heads. Now some are
as big as soup-plates. I am sure it must be true that the bigger the head, the
harder it is to miss the ball completely. However, I am mistrustful of my ability
to cope with something the size of a discus. You might as well whack the ball
off the tee with a tennis racquet. So personally I have stuck with a driver of
traditional size. But don't let me put you off choosing the latest variety, even
if it does make you look as if you are hitting the ball with a balloon.  | Putting
in Vista Vallarta Golf Club |
The advice
you will get from your teacher, your books, your videos or your best friend on
how to use your driver may well totally disorientate and confuse you. You will
soon learn that the simple act of clouting a ball with a stick has been analyzed
into a thousand separate and vital parts. Starting with "How to hold the
club." I read early on, the advice of one of the golfing greats that said
: "Hold the club as if it were a bird. Tight enough that the bird cannot
fly away. Loose enough that you do not harm it." I went out determined to
follow that advice. On my first attempt, my club flew out of my hands and severely
incapacitated a caddy who had the misfortune to be standing nearby. Since then
I have held the damn club the way that feels comfortable to me. After
how to hold the club comes "Where to position the ball in relation to your
feet…and your arms…and your hips…and your shoulders …and your
head." I have not yet come across "…and your private parts,"
but I am sure this will be forthcoming. I have to confess that I have a serious
problem with all of this. As I swing the club - however slowly - my brain is totally
incapable of receiving information from all these parts of the body on what their
present location is and simultaneously issuing commands to get the hell out of
there and take up a position somewhere else. Most of
my long-suffering companions on the golf-course know better than to offer me advice
on what I am doing wrong. Probably because if they once got started the list would
be endless. But occasionally someone will say something like : " If I may
offer a word of advice, Peter, I think your elbow is not moving perpendicularly
to the axis formed by your right thigh and your left shoulder." The only
response I have figured out so far to this kind of verbal abuse is: " I'm
just trying something Tiger Woods has been experimenting with lately." In
mastering the use of the driver, each beginner has to decide what his or her tolerance
for suffering is. The number of gadgets that can be bought to aid you in developing
that perfect swing off the tee is endless. Some of them look as if they could
serve double duty in an S&M parlor. There are harnesses, strait-jackets, arm-braces
and leg-splints.  | Great
drive shot at Vista Vallarta Golf Club |
There
are dummy clubs that only extend to full length if you swing them according to
instructions. There are special mats with lines on them to help you at least point
your body parts in the right direction. And of course, if you want to go high-tech,
you can be filmed on video and someone will scribble all over the screen the twenty
most serious things you are doing wrong. Ironically, after
weeks or months of going through all this - probably with no sign of improvement
- your latest guru will have the unmitigated gall to say: " What you should
really be doing is concentrating on the basics." Yes, well, I think if I
had been left alone to just "concentrate on the basics" I wouldn't be
several hundred dollars out of pocket and I would quite likely be hitting the
ball more often. Once you have learned to swing the club,
there is only one more thing you have to learn. This concerns the serious business
of " How to Address the Ball." Perhaps you have seen Sergio Garcia's
way of accomplishing this. He taps the ground with the concentration of a crazed
woodpecker making a nesting-hole. Sometimes his fellow-players catch up on their
correspondence while waiting for him to reach a state of absolute oneness with
the ball that permits him to actually hit it. This is called " The Routine."
Every golfer has to have one. Your "routine" may include such things
as tugging at your shirt-sleeve, pulling up your pants, sweeping away imaginary
bugs, tossing bits of grass up in the air or simply waggling your club about in
an exaggerated fashion. The choice is yours. But you have to have one and it must
be performed every time you drive off a tee. If
you are interrupted for some reason while in the middle of your "routine"
it is obligatory to step back and start it all over again. Note that this is not
to be confused with a practice swing. Practice swings have a utilitarian purpose.
Routines are ceremonial - like offering up incense or the blood of chickens. Routines,
in the case of men, are like prayers before a battle. What men do not realize,
unfortunately, is that the time taken performing their "routine" is
also the time necessary for their bodies to manufacture that adrenalin rush which
will ensure yet another case of swinging their golf-club like a battle-axe. And
that means yet another visit to the briar-patch. Archives
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