174 - Square One...

I made my return to golf tonight after a 3-month lay off when I popped along to the driving range at Aintree after work. I was looking forward to swinging the wrenches after such a long gap but as soon as I picked up a club I realized all was not well.

Going on the wise and sage advice from Golf Whine Monthly, I took a number of clubs to allow me to practice a variety of shots instead of just bombing little yellow balls up the range off the face of my driver. With that in mind I took my 3 wood, hybrid, 7 iron and 58* wedge – suitably varied methinks.

The thing I love about my 3 wood is that it has a stiff shaft and is a lot more consistent than my driver. Unfortunately the only thing consistent about my performance with the 3 wood today was its inconsistency (isn’t that a shit cliché? I feel ashamed.)

For every good shot I dragged out of my Mizuno F-60 (left) there were two or three that veered violently towards the fence to the right confirming that my battle with the newbie slice was far from over in fact you could say I was losing the war – badly.

It was a similar story with my hybrid. I did my research before buying the Mizuno MX Fli-Hi, all the reviewers creamed over the clubs forgiveness and performance. I must have a warped one as I struggle to get the thing to do anything remotely useful.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though, my 7 iron worked beautifully. Going back to the reviews, the word often used when describing the feel of the clubs is ‘buttery’ and I now know what they mean. Catch the ball just right and it glides through the air effortlessly.

I finished the session with a few chip shots, simulating the little approach shots from around 50 yards. The 58* wedge wasn’t perfect for this as it launched the ball higher than the distance it travelled down the range. The ball flew delightfully into the air before coming down covered in snow and landing a few feet away.

I trudged out of the driving range and slumped in my car, I was knackered, frustrated and annoyed. Despite all the practice I had put in over the last 18 months it seems that the 12 weeks lay off has done for me. I’m now back to square one. Maybe it is time for some professional help…

134 - Schwing...

As I write this article I’m struggling. My legs, thighs and back are seriously aching. The reason? I’ve just spent four and a half hours receiving some great golfing tuition from my friend Terry and my body seriously isn’t used to all the exercise. To add insult to certain injury, my head is spinning too.

I took the afternoon off and headed to Terry’s to find that he has ingeniously built himself a golf swing trainer (below). The device replicates the perfect arc that all golfers should create for each shot and if used regularly it is claimed to help promote muscle memory to make the swing more natural – clever stuff and clever Terry for making one.

After 10 minutes on the trainer it was clear that my swing is, to use a technical term, shite. From spaghetti arms to a wayward backswing and a nonexistent follow through there was little to applaud but with Terry’s help it improved almost instantly. Time to put the practice into theory.

We headed to the field at the back of the house and went through some drills. Not worrying about hitting it far or straight I hit a handful of balls ensuring my swing plane was correct and that I was rotating my wrists on follow through.

The results were impressive as my usual divot-scooping slice disappeared into the ether being replaced by reasonably straight, reasonably long shot after shot. It wasn’t a fluke either, I repeated the feat with my 9 and 7 iron too.

After the irons I started on my nemesis – the wood. As per usual I had a textbook newbie slice that irritated the life out of me until I had a bit of a breakthrough when I remembered something another mate said about ‘pointing where you want the ball to go’.

The idea is to focus on following through with the swing on the correct, straight path. By concentrating on this my wrists automatically rotated, my body turned correctly and, most importantly, the ball flew long and straight…until I started bragging about it which instantly put a hex on the whole thing.

After two hours on the field I felt I had taken a giant step thanks to Terry’s help. Ok, so the distance was a little lacking and there was still the odd slice but my ball striking was much more consistent. For the first time I felt pretty confident that I would be ok on a course, well except for with a wood but you can’t have everything, can you?

131 - Sick Of Being Sick...

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!! I’m sick of being sick of being shit at golf so I’ve decided to do something radical about it; I’m getting lessons...well actually I’m not, but I am really. I realise that I’m making as much sense as the instruction manual for a Chinese video recorder so I better explain.

A while back I was fortunate enough to get a free lesson from the Pro at Widnes Golf Club and my game improved immeasurably. I’m certain that with a few more lessons I would have been well on the way to my realistic target of playing off 18 but it never materialised and I soon slipped back into the bad habits which have left me on the verge of throwing my clubs into the canal.

I got in contact with the friend who hooked me up with the free lesson to see what the going rate was these days for expert tuition from a Pro; I was told to save my money as he could go through the basics with me for free – result. Terry is a decent player so I’m confident he will be able to help me out.

I’ve been told to bring a 3 wood, 7 iron, 9 iron and wedge and he will go through the routine with them all on the field at the back of his house. I might bring my 5 iron too so I have the full game set (how often do you use a 3 or 4 iron on the course?) Terry said he has a load of auld balls for me to slice across the field too so that is one less thing to worry about.

He also asked me to bring my putter too as we are going to his course to knock a few in on the practice green. I’m looking forward to this part as I’ve never really practiced my putting, I just turn up at the course and three putt my way around the 18 greens like a true clown. I want to see what the Bettinardi can do.

I’m not setting my sights too high but I’m hoping on getting the basics right so I have something to work on over the summer. Once I’m more confident about my stance, grip, alignment and swing I’ll go out with better players but at the moment I’m reluctant to make a fool of myself in front of them although I know they would be supportive and helpful.

It is a strange ‘Catch 22’. I need more practice with help from good players but I won’t go out with them as I’m not good enough. I should bite the bullet, swallow my pride and slice my way around Widnes Golf Club with Terry, Allerton Golf Course with Richie and West Derby Golf Club with Alan, who knows, I might actually get a bit better.

108 - Glorious...

I woke up on Sunday relatively hangover free despite going to a lovely dinner party in a friend’s house (fantastic homemade meal, wine and bubbly around the table – we even had candles and napkins!) so I decided to visit the driving range to blow off the remaining cobwebs before going to the match to scream abuse at a load of overpaid Nancy boys who don’t deserve my continued support. Ahem...

Like just about every time I have ever been to the range, it was raining. Not only was it raining but it was blowing a gale too which only helped accentuate my cripplingly bad beginners slice. I warmed up with a few bombs from my 3 wood (I’ve all but given up on trying to tame my driver for now). All was good with my new weapon of choice from the tee but it was my iron shots that impressed.

When I go to the driving range I try to simply hit the same shot twice (immense ambition eh?) Consistency is the key to decent golf apparently but for the last year or so the only thing consistent about my shots is their inconsistency. At the weekend I had an epiphany as I successfully managed to hit the same shot over and over again.

I worked out how to set myself up the same way each time to produce a repeatable shot – the casual observer may have thought I knew what I was doing! Time and time again I hit my 5 iron long, straight and true. I could even pick out a spot and hit it. This may not sound like a big deal to those of you who can play golf, but for me it was the equivalent of monkeys using tools for the first time.

Just to check it wasn’t a fluke I tried the same thing with my 7 iron and found I could use that properly too! The frustration, anger and depression I had suffered at the hands of this son-of-a-bitch game melted away with each glorious, straight down the middle shot. I went through about 50 balls with a gormless grin on my face.

With my confidence soaring I moved on to my 52* wedge knowing that I was now an international ball striking legend. Things didn’t go as well as I had hoped as I discovered that I had completely lost any skill I had with wedges with my lovely little MP-R (above) taking a bit of a pounding as I slammed it into the mat with regular and bone juddering regularity. It took a lot of effort to get the ball in the air at all but it eventually came back to me.

I walked to the car happy that I now have something to indicate that all the practice, all the effort all the frustration wasn’t in vain. For the first time in 12 months I could say that I had something approaching a repeatable swing – something to build on and refine. I’m going back to the driving range later to confirm that the Sunday morning session wasn’t just a fluke.

23 - This Is A Low...

As you may have noticed after reading the last few posts on this blog, I’m not the ray of sunshine I usually am. It would be fair to say I’m about as happy as a bulimic with no fingers. The reason is simple; I’m not getting any better at golf despite putting a lot of effort in. I practice three times a week and get to a course every couple of weeks yet I’m still utter rubbish.

If I’m being honest I think I have actually regressed. When I first started I could hit the ball far but without any real accuracy, now, after all those hours of practice, all the tips and all the help, I can’t hit it as far as I could originally and I’m just as inaccurate. A lose/lose situation I’m sure you’ll all agree.

A few weeks ago, although I was what’s know in the trade as ‘shit’ I was enjoying it. Now I’m finding it more and more difficult to motivate myself to bother any more. The driving range used to be a place where I could practice and have a bit of fun, now it is starting to feel like a torture chamber where every screwed up shot hits me like a nail in the knackers administered by a particularly sinister jailer.

The last straw came the other night when even my 5 iron refused to play ball. I went through about 40 balls without hitting one straight (the vast majority not making it past the scrub in front of the bays before the grass starts if I’m being honest). Earlier my ‘fixed’ 3 wood went on the blink as the auld slice returned and then I couldn’t chip the ball into a basket just 50 yards away with a club just designed to chip the ball just 50 yards.

Even Alan’s words of encouragement couldn’t lift me and before you could say “you’ve just wasted an hour of your life and £4 because you couldn’t hit a cows arse with a banjo let alone the ball properly” I had wasted an hour of my life and £4 because I couldn’t hit a cows arse with a banjo let alone the ball properly. It was my worse performance at Aintree by some margin.

I’m meeting Richie at the range tonight and he has promised to give me some tips. I have a sneaky plan for Friday too but if these two sessions don’t go well I might have to face the fact that golf just isn’t for me and jack it in as a bad job. This is a low.

20 - Half An Inch Can Make All The Difference...

I got sick of waiting for a break in the apocalyptic weather so it was off to the driving range…for a change. I met Alan there armed with my trusty, but misfiring 3 wood, my 5 iron (the blue eyed boy of the bag) and my all new 56* wedge. The wedge is a just cheap club I’m using to see if I can use and get any use out of it. If it does nothing for me I might draw my little roo on it and give it away in a blog based competition! Watch this space.

After a couple of practice swings I realised that the wedge felt a lot different to the Callaway clubs I’ve been mistreating over the last four weeks. The club felt heavy and rigid and at first I thought it was just because it was new and therefore hadn’t been broken in but on engaging my brain it was simply because it was a totally different design to the Callaway’s.

The expensive clubs use flexible graphite shafts and have computer designed cavity backs. The wedge is a lump of iron on a metal shaft but you get what you pay for I suppose, although initially I thought a tenner was too much. It wasn’t until I started using it like a wedge did it start to make sense. The quarter swing magic worked again with the ball flying high but close, perfect for those little shots around the green.

After a few more shots I decided to use the latest tip given. My mate Ste said that the best bit of advice he ever got was to use the ‘club putter’ shot around the green. Yeah, I didn’t have a fucking clue what he was on about either. Turns out that you get a high angled club when you want a sneaky chip and run but play it like a putter with stiff, straight arms pushing the ball onto the green. The idea is simple and, after trying it for five minutes, works a treat! I’m desperate to try it on a course.

With the wedge evaluation done I moved on to my beloved 5 iron. As usual she didn’t let me down with shot after shot going a reasonable distance and, more often than not, straight. It is weird but I’m starting to feel good about using certain clubs, before long I’m gonna turn up to play with four clubs in my bag.

Then it was on to the errant child that is the 3 wood. For weeks it has been my saviour on the tee but at Bootle the other day it was about as much use as a condom machine in the Vatican. Time and time again I sliced the shit out of my drives to the point where I was almost teeing of at right angles to the fairway. Time for another piece of advice from Ste.

I was explaining to him how shit I had become and he said he had the same problem. He fixed it by moving his left foot back about half an inch. Now to be honest, I thought this was the biggest load of shit I’d ever heard…right up to the point when it worked like a dream. What the fuck?

Another simple tip that has worked miracles. I line the club up with the ball, get my hands right, sort my feet out but before pulling the trigger I slide my left foot back about half an inch. Apparently this makes me hit the ball square on thus counteracting my hideous newbie slice. At first I thought it was a fluke until I hit about seven or eight straight and long with only two stray shots when I got tired.

I went to the range excited about my new wedge and come home thinking about my 3 wood. Sometimes I don’t get this game. I tell you what else I don’t get; the prices in club shops. How can Aintree Golf Course have the barefaced cheek to try and charge £8 for a fucking Sharpie marker pen? The fella behind the counter even delivered the line with a straight face, like £8 for a crappy pen was perfectly reasonable.

Needless to say I went elsewhere for it. At ASDA they were a pound each or four for £3. I should scrawl a strongly worded letter to them in colourful permanent ink suggesting they are taking the fucking piss.

As we were leaving the range Alan lent me a book called ‘The New Guide To Golf’ which he said would be useful for me as it goes through all the basics and should help me improve from clueless golf clown to unskilled municipal hacker. You have got to have a dream haven’t you?

16 - Guess who’s back, back again? Lucky’s back, tell a friend!!!

Another week, another attempt at playing on a course. As before I was hunched over, polishing my clubs the night before, getting all my clobber ready, marking my balls with a dodgy looking little kangaroo. Things were looking good; I was looking forward to having a good walk ruined.

Got in touch with Alan and Lucky to confirm they were still up for it. Lucky, ever the optimist, said that now he had committed to playing it was a cert that the heavens would open…to be honest I was half expecting to hear an appeal on Radio City from some guy called Noah asking for as much spare timber as he could get his hands on.

As it had been relatively dry over the last few days I was confident that not even Lucky’s powers of negativity could cock this up. “Alright mate, can we book a round at Kirkby for about 3 please?” “No chance lad, the fucking course is waterlogged, we’re closed” came the reply from Sweary McGeary. I then heard the unmistakable sound of skull on wood as Lucky butted the desk in pure despair on the other side of the office.

I fired off a text to Alan updating him, a few minutes later he phoned me back. After a bit of discussion we decided to try another course. The two possibilities were Bootle and Aintree, Alan was going to ring them and see what the odds of us playing today were. An hour later we had a confirmed tee time of 3:06 at Bootle. Lucky was as happy as Josef Fritzel in a cellar.

As I had the afternoon off I had plenty of time to get changed, get my kit and collect the latest crap bought off the internet. In my last rant, I mean post, I moaned about Nike not doing clobber in big enough sizes. They have struck again. I bought a Tiger Woods cap that apparently is ‘one size fits all’ because it is elasticated. Hmmm. I tried it on, it fitted but it squashes my head SO much that I’m certain Nike got the design from a piece in the London Dungeon. I swear if I kept it on for more than 10 minutes my eyes would have popped out.

I arrived at Bootle and got everything ready. Lucky was supposed to meet at the same time but come screaming into the car park 10 minutes before we were due to tee off. I was disappointed. Not as disappointed as I was minutes later when Alan phoned me to say he was still on the M57! All this waiting around was doing nothing for my nerves.

It is a weird thing playing golf when you are shit. Because it is a completely solo sport you are judged on every shot you do so the pressure to get it right can be overbearing. When other people are watching it is 10 times worse which might account for my unerring ability to slice my ball 30 feet into the rough off the first tee. Needless to say I was true to form at Bootle.

Bootle is a golf ball swallower. All in all I think I lost six Callaway Warbirds over the day, the majority on the first nine holes. The first nine fairways are skinnier than Kate Moss on a crash diet with the rough so deep that there was a load of American tourists driving around it on safari. To be honest it was too difficult for me and Lucky as we still haven’t learned to control the direction of our shots enough yet.

There weren’t many highlights for me on the first nine to be honest with the exception of hitting the flag with a little chip. Alan was playing a solid game in difficult conditions (it was blowing a gale and threatening to rain all day). Lucky was smashing some impressive drives but his putting was hilariously bad at times. At one point he hit a putt so hard that he had to chip back onto the green!

I couldn’t hit one drive straight with my 3 wood. It got so bad that I tried using the hybrid that Richie donated to me. This was worse. In the end I resorted to using my 3 iron which again was slicing but it was at least controllable. I really need to get down to the range and do some serious practice with my woods as this part of my game is so poor that it is actually putting me off playing at the minute.

We played the front nine and took a minute to refresh ourselves on the way to the 10th tee with coke and Mars Bars from the little Tuck Shop. It was a welcome injection of fluids and sugar but probably had enough calories to paralyse your average four-year-old. Thankfully, being the athletes that we are, our bodies were honed to take all these chemicals and convert them straight into fat.

We teed off on the 10th and there was a noticeable difference. The fairways on the back nine were wider but the rough was still littered with camera wielding Americans in 4x4’s. We headed down towards the green and then the heavens opened…it was like God was ringing out a giant sponge or summat. I put my waterproof jacket on and found that Dunlop were fucking liars. It is shower proof but certainly not waterproof.

I looked over the fairway and Alan had the same jacket on so was presumably getting as wet as me which is why he got his massive brolley out. There was no sign of Lucky though. Eventually I spotted him in the distance. He was on the opposite fairway having an all in wrestling match with himself and some piece of golfing equipment.

The rain got so bad that I took shelter in some trees and waited for it to dry off. Minutes later Lucky come traipsing onto the green in a full rain suit, hood up looking like a garden gnome. He went on to explain that his new umbrella literally fell to bits when he tried to open it. Only Lucky…

That rain was like a baptism for us. We felt invigorated, less conscious of our mistakes and personally I started to enjoy myself for the first time all day. Now I was relaxed I would surely get my score down? I then hit my customary 9 on a son-of-a-bitch par 3. I hate par 3’s.

After that though we all played pretty well. The lost ball count fell dramatically and there were numerous good shots from all three of us. Alan was playing right down the middle; Lucky was smashing his drives irritatingly long and, with a switch to my 3 iron, I was finally starting to take my second shots from the fairway. Alan was full of tips and advice and was keeping us focused.

Eventually we made it to the 18th tee with the light fading rapidly. As it was the final hole I decided to bring out Big Bertha and smash the piss out of the ball for shits ‘n giggles. Just to take the piss out of me my drive was straight and long. For the first time all day I was level with Alan and Lucky and on the fairway and in with a shout of hitting the green in two. My second shot was a little short of the green and my third ended up in the bunker. After doing an Adolf I eventually sank my putt to finish the round.

When we totted up the scores Alan had a respectable 92 and only one lost ball. I went around in 115 and lost six and Lucky, who was playing on a course for the first time remember, went around in 130 losing too many balls to count. It had taken us close to 5 hours and we were all fucked. At Kirkby I think I walked about 8 miles all in all, with the lost balls and terrible slices I think we were closer to 9 on Bootle.

I spoke to Lucky the next day and he was telling me his legs were so stiff that he was having trouble walking. He also said that he slept like a log and was dreaming about golf. I think it is safe to say that there is another with the bug.

11 - International Ball Chipping Legend…

Another day another trip to the driving range. I seem to spend more time there than at home which probably comes as a relief to my lovely, lovely fiancée. Armed with my 3 wood, 5 iron and 9 iron I was determined to exorcise my golfing demons and hopefully lower my frankly pathetic score.

I met Alan at the range and focused on not wasting a single ball (you all know what it is like, you hit a few then get discouraged and just go through the motions instead of doing it properly…or is that just me? It is just me, isn’t it? Fuxake).

I have a weird little drill that I go through. I hit balls in groups of six for no good reason. I’ll hit six one after another then have a break or change clubs. Thinking about it, I might do it because I can only fit five balls in my pocket at one go – maybe I need bigger kecks? Anyway, I do six at a time.

I started with my 3 wood and hit four straight, one a little wide and the last was all over the shop. Acceptable scoring. I then did six with my 5 iron but was nowhere near as successful. Out of that half dozen I hit two good ones, three shit ones and one toe-curlingly bad one. On to the 9 iron. When I went around Kirkby with Alan I consistently topped my chip shots making them fly low and long – the exact opposite of what I was looking for. I hit six stinkers on the range, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Alan.

Alan then showed me something so magical that it could have been thought up by Walt Disney – the quarter swing chip. You pull the club back to the sort of height of your knee then go through the ball and finish at the sort of the height of your knee. The result – a ball that goes about 20 feet in the air and fly’s about 50 yards! More witchcraft! I had been trying since becoming a golfist to do this shot but simply didn’t have the ability. Now I knew the secret there was no stopping me.

I was in awe of my chipping ability. No seriously. Chipping was by far the worst part of my game at Kirkby so to work out how to do it was a proper ‘eureka’ moment for me. I wasted no time at all chipping half of my balls away down the range. For the first time though, I had a target in the shape of a little blue basket with a net in it about 50 yards away. Alan said that if I got the ball pretty close to the basket it would mean a sinkable putt on a course but I wanted to get it IN the basket. The inevitable challenge started between Rob Skywalker and Alan-Wan Kenobi.

The two of us were chipping like loons trying to get it in but eventually the winner was…Alan. Shocker. Anyway, although I lost the game I was more than happy with my performance. I was getting the ball to within 10 feet almost every time with the odd shot plopping almost bang on. More practice and I could scale the heady heights of being shit (which is a vast improvement on where I am now – fucking useless).

I left the driving range itching to chip which is something I never thought I’d say after my round at Kirkby. Now I’m on the road to becoming an international ball chipping legend I’m definitely getting that Titleist Vokey wedge!

09 - When Richie met Lucky…

My round at Kirkby highlighted some deficiencies in my game that I desperately needed to work on. Basically my driving is shit, my long game is shit and my chipping is shit. Plenty to work on. On the plus side my putting is not that bad according to Alan, I have a nice stroke apparently but what happens in the woods stays in the woods. Ahem.

I got an email from Richie asking if I fancied a sneaky trip to the driving range at Aintree. This could be a perfect time to work on the many, many facets of my game that needed more attention than a three-year-old with ADD. It would also be the first time Richie had met Lucky.

We got in and Lucky was already smacking balls up the range with his latest pissed purchase. On a recent late night, alcohol fuelled shopping trip around eBay he spotted a Nike SUMO driver that was called ‘Lucky 13’ because it has a 13* loft (is that the right term?). The fact it was called ‘Lucky’ was enough for him to spend £140 without thinking about it. After my round he asked me did I learn anything, I told him not to bother with a driver as they are too hard to control. You can imagine his face after this nugget of information!

I introduced Lucky to Richie; we found a couple of bays together and started practicing. It wasn’t long before Richie was looking over with a confused look on his face. He was studying Lucky’s swing and shaking his head. Lucky is right-handed but plays kinda left-handed with his right hand at the top of the shaft on top of his right.

Richie couldn’t help himself and offered some words of advice to Paul. “The first thing any professional will say to you if you ask for help is put your hands the right way around. I’m nowhere near a professional and I’m telling you to put your hands the right way around!” Seconds later Paul had his hands the right way around and was instantly back where he started a week ago.

Having to literally learn how to hit the ball again was tough on Paul but with some patient tuition from Richie he was soon just as shit as me! After an hour or so Paul was hitting the ball vaguely straight and quite long. His injured shoulder was now aching from having to hit the ball properly but he was as happy which was the important thing.

I continued to practice but soon found it irritatingly difficult to control my 5 or 9 iron shots to the point where I considered lashing the clubs down the range in a scene eerily reminiscent of that son-of-a-bitch par 3 at Kirkby the week before. I took a couple of deep breaths and switched to my 3 wood…which now seemed to be possessed by someone who had a stroke and couldn’t swing properly. Fuck it, time to go home.