Golf is a bewildering game. It fills you with feelings of tribulation, jubilation, consternation, and everything in between. For when you are on the course and hit that one great shot, that one shot which gets you hooked forever, you'll never quit the game (though that doesn't mean that the game won't quit you from time to time).
I remember the shot that made me hooked on the drug of golf. I was 10 years old, A young little chap who didn't know the first damned thing about Tiger Woods, the Masters, or why people yelled "fore" all the time. I was with a group of children who were my age and older, and we were in a golf program for juniors. This wasn't a big time junior camp nor was it something that lasted for very long. It was simply a short term program that one man felt would be a good way to start kids on golf. One time, we had just finished an afternoons work on how to swing the golf club, and were getting ready to leave. Curt (the course instructor) suggested that we have a pitching contest. A stick was placed 50-70 yards down a fairway and the 10 of us took our turns hitting one ball each at this stick. I remember that I was last to hit, I walked up to the ball and took a practice swing or two, smacked the ball and it carried straight at the stick, landed a few feet short and rolled out even closer. I had won. I beat all these other kids (some of whom were close to being 18 years old). That was all it took. I felt like I had just won the biggest candy bar ever made. I'm not sure why I felt so good or why it meant so much to me. Maybe it was the idea of beating the big boys of the group who I undoubtably looked up to. All I know is that right then, at that moment, I became hooked on golf. 8 years later I'm still smacking the golf ball around and loving every second of it, which brings me to my main idea. The whole reason as to why I'm writing this blog. It's about a golf lesson I received during that short golf program. I was told that swinging the club easy was the one thing you had to concentrate the hardest on, and that if I did that, golf would be easier. That is what I did, swung the club easy.
Throughout my years of golf I may have changed clubs, bags, and swings, but I've always kept the same mindset of "swing easy". During that time I always wondered why everyone hit the ball so much farther than I. Not just adults, but everyone my age too. I wondered, but never gave it much thought. One thing I always have done is tamper with the swing. Everyone does it, and everyone has good results for awhile, but eventually it wares of and your game goes back to its old ways. A few weeks ago, after playing some of the worst golf I've played in years, I decided that I was going to stop "swinging easy" and actually hit the ball as hard as I could. The results were surprising. I didn't only hit the ball straighter, I hit it farther, much farther. I also hit it more consistently. I continued doing this over the next few rounds and was soon coming in with some of my best rounds ever, and I'm still improving. This leads me to my point. Begin with fundamentals and then learn how to perform it slowly in the mirror, and then slowly in a practice swing, and then apply it to your swing. Gradually swing harder until you are at full speed! Golf is a game which is different for everyone, and you should always be trying new things, because you never know what the key to your golf game is, but one thing I can be almost certain of is that once you truly start to believe in a swing, and really start to embrace it, it will cease to work. For in golf, as in life, nothing is forever, and you just need to keep working on it and hope for the best.
