Golf is cruel Golf is merciless Golf will reveal and exploit any hint of a whiff of weakness and tighten the screw in the most unpleasant ways imaginable In other words, I had a shocker yesterday Every now and then, you turn up to the golf course, full of the usual hope that today will be that day when it all comes together and you will play a blinder. A day when every shot seems to land in the perfect spot; where even you're bad shots end up sitting up on remarkable lies that run contrary to every reasonable expectation; days when the hole looks the size of an upturned umbrella and every putt drops with with that so-so-satisfying rattle. Naturally, most days don't even closely resemble this as we make our way round trying to hold it all together to put a decent score in And then there are those days. Those days where everything you do, no matter how hard you try, everything goes wrong. I had one of those days yesterday I knew the moment I hit a couple of balls on the range that I might be in trouble. Normally, I ignore the first half dozen balls because you should. Your body hasn't warmed up, and you are attempting to synchronise a complicated series of frankly un-natural movements directed at connecting a small piece of metal at the end of another flexible bit of metal, with an even smaller ball with the expectation that it will go in the right direction at the right trajectory for the right distance. Consistently. No chance. Forget the first few swings, they are just there to remind your body what the movements are. It's the next few swings that will normally tell you what your day is going to be like That's when I no longer thought I was going to be in trouble, it was when I knew it was going to be difficult. Everything felt wrong. My grip felt wrong. The ball felt out of position. The backswing felt muddled, the downswing was misaligned, and the follow through felt short. The whole set-up and execution felt disjointed and jerky. Snatchy and uncomfortable. Of course, struggling with our swings is something that every golfer (including the elites at some points) feels pretty much every week. Usually though, you can hope to rely on the other parts of your game to rescue you to a certain extent. Maybe you are able to get your wedges working to pitch you out of trouble, or your putter goes on that hot streak you've been praying for over the last few weeks when for the first time in ages, you can't seem to miss a green in regulation. Yesterday, though was one of those rounds where everything went wrong. For the first five holes, I couldn't hit a barn door with a banjo from 2 yards, let alone a fairway. A fairway was something I saw in passing on the way to the rough if I was lucky. Every approach shot was seemingly confused about which actual green it was supposed to be approaching. Every pitch was miss-hit, and every chip was either under or over-powered, whichever would be worse. As for the putting?! Well every putt raced past the hole and every return putt approached the hole with grim determination before getting cold feet at the edge of the abyss and diving out of the way before it was too late, I must have lipped out 4 times in the first 5 holes. Then, miracle of miracles, I played proper golf for 5 holes to remind myself that I could really do it. I should have known, however, that this was golf twisting the knife as it gave me that momentary sense of hope, that sense of confidence, that I might just, just, be able to rescue a "poor" round from a diabolical one. Having driven beautifully for 4 holes, golf relieved me of that hope as I put one out-of-bounds on 11 (my second of the day) despite praying for, and failing to get, a "Dexter". After all, Lady Luck hadn't just wandered off, as far as I was concerned she had lost directions to the course first thing, decided it was a bad lot and thought "bugger it, I'm going home". Normal service for the day had resumed, to the extent that having over-clubbed on the 12th and ending up in, to be fair, a beauty of a lie (although the backswing was restricted by the fence), I decided to try to bump the chip into the hill and let the ball pop up and over the mound in front of the ball and down onto the green. There was no other option, and I knew I needed to give it a bit of welly to try and get through the rough. What I wasn't expecting, what hadn't even crossed my mind, was the possibility that the hooded 7 iron I played would have had any chance of actually clearing said, sodding, mound. Yesterday, of course, it did, even the good lies were working against me, and the ball shot across the green with demented glee at escaping the confines of the fence. And so it continued, typified by the 15th, when my playing partner miscued his tee shot and it landed on the rocks, got the "Dexter Bounce" I had prayed for earlier and bounded back into play. My tee shot also landed on the rocks and boing-ed into the lake Of course it did. I didn't even bother thinking about a Dex. The bizarre thing though, and here is why our game is so brilliant, is that for all the disappointment, the frustration and sheer bloody-mindedness this sport can create, it was still a good day. I spent the afternoon in the glorious sunshine, in good company, having a good laugh at life, the universe, and everything. Ok, the golf was awful, but there is always next week, or the one after, but regardless of how well or not I play, what is always the same is the opportunity to spend time with people going through the same experiences and having a bit of a giggle about it. As far as I am concerned, you simply can't beat that. Stay safe, play well and I look forward to seeing you out there Steve |