Back to my roots:
Mother Nature outdid herself when she invented the golf course. However for a claim closer reality, if you haven't seen Robin Williams great rift on how the golf course was originally fashioned by a drunken Scotsmen check it out on You Tube.
I've had golf clubs in my hands since I've been six years old. Frankly, I don't use them much better than I did when I first played in the yard with my dad's sheathed-in-steel set. In this group of mismatched clubs, he had a niblick, a brassy, a wooden-shafted putter, an assortment of irons and a driver. His "Woods" were fashioned out of wood. The celebrity who endorsed his incomplete set of irons was Gene Sarazen. My early hero was Ben Hogan, replaced later by the swashbuckling Armold Palmer.
Needless to say, a lot had changed in the world of golf.
More courses.
In Wisconsin, along with the collapse of the family farm came the flood of golf course architects. The evolution of the golf course as a place for rich white men to play became an egalitarian world where if you, as a manager, don't treat every participant as an honored guest, you may lose a lot of business. You have to treat each "guest" as a member of an exclusive country club. Bag drops often manned by an assistant who puts you clubs on an assigned cart or sometimes passes your "wrenches"to a caddy who will carry them for you, clean them in between uses, wash you ball between holes and recommend the club you might want to use in any situation you find yourself facing in your "experience" at (fill in the name of the course).
Then there is the clubhouse with all the features of the country club including lockers, showers, a bar and the ever present Golf Shop.
Not only does the course have to be challenging to play and in excellent condition, (forget that most of the grasses grown on golf courses are not native to the environment it's planted in) it must be suitably landscaped with flowers and water features which may or may not be on the "playing surface".
Ways to improve your game;
Money! Lessons, clubs, balls, gimmick training gear, range fee's and physiologist visits are all recommended and expensive. My best advice is to spend it on the shrink. Like Tony Soprano's doctor, they might not talk you out of playing the game, but they might help you find peace on the course when you fifty bucks down and you've lost your last ball in a swamp.
Why am I going on like this?
Last Friday, I played for the first time in almost two years. I can tell you, it was like returning home after a prolonged absence. And I played on a course I never played before. A famous chief once told Charlie Rose that when you think of the best meal you've ever had, you will not remember the food, but you will remember the people that you were with. And so it's true with golf.
Since I worked at Country Clubs when I was younger and then went into a career in industrial sales, I have played golf at many courses. Many of them were spectacular. My son, Brad treated me to a round at Tom Watson's Troon in Phoenix. My younger son, Sean and I played in Santa Monica and Robertson Ranch in the LA area. In Wisconsin, my favorite was the 36 hole layout at Green Lake.
My game was a slave to time. I'm not a natural athlete. The consistency in the golf swing that is necessary to control height, distance and spin on a golf ball is not natural to me. I could improve my performance with practice. Fortunately, I love going to the range and hitting a bucket of balls. Unfortunately, I often didn't have the time.
Game Day
Most of you know, I have a lot of surgery in the past few years. As far as my golf swing is concerned, the effect of stabilizing my right ankle has resulted in my need for a shoe with about three and one-half inches of lift. So with my man type high heel on my right foot and my new knees on both legs, I trundled out to the range and tried to fashion a golf swing with twenty or so practice balls.
I played better than I thought. I can still putt. Always the best facet of my game. I can't hit for any distance, but for some reason, I chipped and pitched the ball pretty well. Not usually one of my strong points. The course we played is an "Executive" course. It was a series of short par four holes with an occasional par three and a par five finishing hole.
My pals and I admitted our biggest enemy that day was our personal lack of fitness. I was out of gas and grinding, as we say when we are struggling on the golf course, by the sixth hole. But this problem is correctable. All we have to do is keep playing more golf.
From the plush first cut of an amazing little golf course in Hortonville Wisconsin, (the current location of Camp Jeff,) I am Poppa Jeff.
Mother Nature outdid herself when she invented the golf course. However for a claim closer reality, if you haven't seen Robin Williams great rift on how the golf course was originally fashioned by a drunken Scotsmen check it out on You Tube.
I've had golf clubs in my hands since I've been six years old. Frankly, I don't use them much better than I did when I first played in the yard with my dad's sheathed-in-steel set. In this group of mismatched clubs, he had a niblick, a brassy, a wooden-shafted putter, an assortment of irons and a driver. His "Woods" were fashioned out of wood. The celebrity who endorsed his incomplete set of irons was Gene Sarazen. My early hero was Ben Hogan, replaced later by the swashbuckling Armold Palmer.
Needless to say, a lot had changed in the world of golf.
More courses.
In Wisconsin, along with the collapse of the family farm came the flood of golf course architects. The evolution of the golf course as a place for rich white men to play became an egalitarian world where if you, as a manager, don't treat every participant as an honored guest, you may lose a lot of business. You have to treat each "guest" as a member of an exclusive country club. Bag drops often manned by an assistant who puts you clubs on an assigned cart or sometimes passes your "wrenches"to a caddy who will carry them for you, clean them in between uses, wash you ball between holes and recommend the club you might want to use in any situation you find yourself facing in your "experience" at (fill in the name of the course).
Then there is the clubhouse with all the features of the country club including lockers, showers, a bar and the ever present Golf Shop.
Not only does the course have to be challenging to play and in excellent condition, (forget that most of the grasses grown on golf courses are not native to the environment it's planted in) it must be suitably landscaped with flowers and water features which may or may not be on the "playing surface".
Ways to improve your game;
Money! Lessons, clubs, balls, gimmick training gear, range fee's and physiologist visits are all recommended and expensive. My best advice is to spend it on the shrink. Like Tony Soprano's doctor, they might not talk you out of playing the game, but they might help you find peace on the course when you fifty bucks down and you've lost your last ball in a swamp.
Why am I going on like this?
Last Friday, I played for the first time in almost two years. I can tell you, it was like returning home after a prolonged absence. And I played on a course I never played before. A famous chief once told Charlie Rose that when you think of the best meal you've ever had, you will not remember the food, but you will remember the people that you were with. And so it's true with golf.
Since I worked at Country Clubs when I was younger and then went into a career in industrial sales, I have played golf at many courses. Many of them were spectacular. My son, Brad treated me to a round at Tom Watson's Troon in Phoenix. My younger son, Sean and I played in Santa Monica and Robertson Ranch in the LA area. In Wisconsin, my favorite was the 36 hole layout at Green Lake.
My game was a slave to time. I'm not a natural athlete. The consistency in the golf swing that is necessary to control height, distance and spin on a golf ball is not natural to me. I could improve my performance with practice. Fortunately, I love going to the range and hitting a bucket of balls. Unfortunately, I often didn't have the time.
Game Day
Most of you know, I have a lot of surgery in the past few years. As far as my golf swing is concerned, the effect of stabilizing my right ankle has resulted in my need for a shoe with about three and one-half inches of lift. So with my man type high heel on my right foot and my new knees on both legs, I trundled out to the range and tried to fashion a golf swing with twenty or so practice balls.
I played better than I thought. I can still putt. Always the best facet of my game. I can't hit for any distance, but for some reason, I chipped and pitched the ball pretty well. Not usually one of my strong points. The course we played is an "Executive" course. It was a series of short par four holes with an occasional par three and a par five finishing hole.
My pals and I admitted our biggest enemy that day was our personal lack of fitness. I was out of gas and grinding, as we say when we are struggling on the golf course, by the sixth hole. But this problem is correctable. All we have to do is keep playing more golf.
From the plush first cut of an amazing little golf course in Hortonville Wisconsin, (the current location of Camp Jeff,) I am Poppa Jeff.
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