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?

12 - Marking Your Balls...

Paul in work (not Lucky) showed me the Titleist advert about marking your balls (no sniggering at the back). Basically the video is of a load of professionals showing us mere mortals how they mark their Titleist balls to identify them when playing in competitions. “Out on tour it’s not how you mark your golf ball; it is how you mark your Titleist. How do you mark your Titleist?”

I guess advert is supposed to highlight that loads of pros use Titleist balls and therefore have to mark them so they don’t get mixed up. There were all manner of cocky bastard showing how they use a Sharpie pen to put a dot or a line on their golfy in a cool manner. How cool can a dot or line look on a ball?

Actually, one ball stood out. Some Aussie bloke draws a little Kangaroo which got me thinking. As some of you may know, one of my nicknames is Roo so I decided I should mark my balls with a Kangaroo too although mine will be much better than his effort (whoever he is).

Using state of the art equipment I started to sketch out some ideas. It wasn’t long before my desk was covered in blue Post-it notes with little, badly drawn Kangaroos on them. After an afternoon of drawing (but not working you’ll notice) I had perfected my design. I showed it to people to see if they could recognise my stylised little roo. The initial feedback wasn’t great. Apparently my early sketches (top) looked like everything from an Egyptian hieroglyphic bird to a fucking satellite dish.

After some analysis I discovered that a couple of little changes could be made to achieve the desired effect. In order to make it easy to draw, initially I used straight lines but it seems that Kangaroos aren’t renound for their straight lines so I threw in a few curves and the difference was instant (left). Giving the little fella a pouch helped too. Finally I had a design that people could recognise as a Kangaroo (right).

The next step is to draw it on a ball but as my Calloway Warbird’s already have ‘Roo’ scrawled all over them I think I’ll need to practice on those shitty Dunlop balls I bought to twat away. Oh, and I need to buy a blue Sharpie…