Tee time is 10:00 AM. Jim gives me a tour of the set of clubs (good ones) borrowed from Pico. How to hold the club. Proper stance. How to swing. I also have the advantage of having watched a three-minute YouTube video for beginners on how to swing a golf club: heart high, arms to the side.
Pico and Fernando are experienced golfers, and their skills show right away. They both drive long, high, straight shots off the first tee. Jim, more experienced than I but playing through a shoulder injury, sends one cracking through the trees off to the right. My turn. I’m inexperienced and unrelaxed, and the other three are watching and waiting. I manage an arcing line drive that has distance, but about halfway through flight hooks aggressively to the left and bounces around.
So the misadventure begins.
Toppers, flubbers, pipsqueaks, slices, divots the size of mortar explosions, even complete swing-and-miss strikes. I do my best off the tee, with a raised ball and freedom to swing, but only a few of the balls I hit fly straight.
On the putting green, I’ll sink one if I can get in another eight hours of practice. At first, I putt like I tee off, and send the ball skittering the length of the green. Then I ease back so much that every ball rolls to a lazy stop well before the hole.
Pico and Fernando keep score and have a good battle going. Jim and I follow along, doing our share of dropping a ball by one of their better shots and trying from there. I learn what a snowman is in golf: scoring an eight on a single hole. It’s a winter day for me, despite the heat and humidity.
But still, so much fun. Such verdant beauty on a golf course. I appreciate the camaraderie. And I’m in awe of anyone who has the technical skill, consistency, and swing composure required to hit a decent golf shot.
It’s true in almost any endeavor, athletic or otherwise, that you’re not going to be any good unless you put in the time. Such as ten thousand hours to become a competent writer (they say). In a sport like golf—or its country-club compatriot, tennis, which I play—that means countless swings of the club (or racket) and innumerable hours on the course (or court) to train mind and body to execute the right athletic move at the right time, all so you can feel that sense of satisfaction of a ball well struck.
Both tennis and golf have a steep learning curve. I’ll never have the time or passion to climb that curve for golf the way I did for tennis. And although I don’t play golf, I did write a passage about it in my novel, In Flight.
Robert:
He golfed for work when necessary in order to network with an important customer or partner, or when his company sponsored a local charity tournament. He never recorded a stellar round but neither did he embarrass himself on the course, and he’d told Sasha that getting beat in a close game by someone who was important to his company was not a bad business decision.
You don’t get that as much in tennis: the networking, the charity tournament, the business deals. Tennis is a more physical, fast-moving sport and not as social as golf. It doesn’t lend itself to chatting along the way.
But I’ve discovered golf is every bit as frustrating and fun!
