At Home on the Range

If golf has taught me anything — besides how to string together expletives in ways that would make Eminem blush — it’s that you can’t trust anything which occurs on the range. The range contains a bizarre magnetic field that causes every ball to fly as straight and true as if it were a bead on a string. This same benevolent presence somehow vanishes on every first tee, replaced by random electrical impulses that send your ball on trajectories you never imagined — except in nightmares — as though some warped overlord were amusing himself by flicking the magnetisation on and off (which would make sense, in fact. After all, if God has a sense of humour, wouldn’t a golf course be the ideal place to abuse it?)

The range is an alternate universe, a glorious sub-reality in which slices, shanks and blocks are wiped from the realm of possibility and we all become Tiger Woods, or at least Phil Mickelson. On the range, pulses are relaxed, blood pressure is low, anxiety is non-existent. On the range, one’s greatest pressure concerns whether his sunblock has an adequate SPF.

Today, I vow not to fall for it. I’ve had enough false epiphanies over the years — those A-HA! moments when I inadvertently fix the one thing that’s been hindering my game all this time — to know they’re about as trustworthy as Pinocchio.

So this morning, sharing a pail of balls with my mate Frank (or Shank, as we call him) — the two others in our usual four, Glen and Stephen, sharing a pail as well — I choose instead to savour the warm air, the blue sky, the scent of freshly cut grass. Relishing the easy banter passing between us, I flip my 8-iron out of the bag and roll a striped black ball onto the practice mat.

After a handful of shots, an interesting thing happens. As I strike the ball and watch it fly in the actual direction I intended, a sense of something, a certain awareness, rises in me. I changed something just now. My elbow, yes — I kept my back elbow in a fraction of a second longer. An accident, maybe (okay, definitely), but an intriguing one.

Then again, I consider, maybe it was no accident. Perhaps my instincts just knew to make this adjustment. This is a curious thought, since any adjustment I’ve ever made on a golf course has actually served to worsen my game, but at the moment I can’t be bothered with logic.

I roll another ball onto the mat and, amazingly, create the same result. Two good shots in a row. I’m as scared and exhilarated as a scientist who realises his new discovery could just as easily save the world or destroy it.

Keeping my back elbow tucked in works for the 7-iron, too, and the 6, and then, miracle of miracles, the lob wedge. It works with the 3-iron and the 4. Shank, noticing my intense focus — and probably alarmed by the extent to which I’m murmuring to myself — directs his conversation toward Glen and Stephen.

I pull out the driver, knowing this breakthrough will never transfer to my woods. But it does — half a dozen lovely practice drives later, I don’t know what to believe, other than the certainty that, at long last, I’ve found the thing, the secret, the magical tweak that has eluded me all these years. It was so simple! How could I not have figured this out sooner?

We finish our pails and head for the first tee. I can barely contain a mad grin as visions of low 90s and high 80s dance in my head. I feel almost sorry for the others; no matter how well they play today, they have no idea what’s about to hit them. This tiny modification is sure to lower my score by...I become giddy just thinking about it. Five strokes? Ten?

Standing in a diamond configuration, we twirl a tee in the air to see who hits first. It lands pointing slightly closer to me than to Glen. Normally, this would get my nerves hopping. Standard first-tee butterflies are bad enough; when I have to hit first, they transform into pterodactyls. But not today.

I step up and address the ball. The ball doesn’t appear concerned. Over my shoulder I hear the usual predictions: “Left, into the woods.” “No, pop up.” “I’ll say off the heel. Just past the ladies’ tees.”

As I issue my brain the reminder — what was it? Something about my elbow — my muscles seem to stiffen as one, as though succumbing to rigor mortis while I’m still alive. I step back and perform a few extra neck stretches. “Not comfortable yet, mates.” “Who’s ever comfortable?” says Shank.

I step back up and, without over-thinking it, decide simply to rip at the ball. Unfortunately, I forget that not over-thinking is the same as not thinking. My dismal pop-up — satisfying one of their predictions, the bastards — doesn’t quite make the front edge of the fairway. This feels something like approaching a girl you’d like to seduce and tripping on your shoelace. I remind myself to remind myself about the back elbow on the next shot.

But a moment before that next shot — a 3-wood; damn my desire to use a 3-wood against all good sense — Glen asks me how the family is. I report on them and proceed to send my ball slicing into the woods as though it saw something terrifying in mid-flight.

Cursing Glen for caring about my family, I remind myself to take a moment before the next shot and remember the riddle I solved on the range. Before that shot, Stephen asks us whether we think he needs a new hairstyle; I skull my 9-iron, accidentally getting it near the green anyway. When we’re all finally on, and I stand over my putt, Shank remembers to tell us that he bumped into my old high school flame Marianne a few days earlier. With my ball now resembling a genetically blessed seventeen-year-old girl, I might as well record a four-putt.

(The others aren’t throwing me off my game intentionally. These exchanges simply represent the recreational golfer’s paradox: Though any given round is enjoyed mostly for its camaraderie, one requires absolute concentration just to avoid a disastrous score. In other words, what separates the professional golfer from the weekend duffer? The pro is actually thinking about golf most of the time he’s playing it.)

At the fifth, a par-three over a lake that seems to swell every time I glance upward, I finally remember to concentrate on my back elbow. Unfortunately, the other 29 parts of my swing give way in unison, providing the lake another morsel in an endless meal. Taking an extra club, I grab a new ball from my bag, get set again...and whistle this one over the green.

Hell with the back elbow, I decide. This time, just swing away and go for broke. What was I doing thinking I’d found the secret? Time for analysis to take a back seat and natural athleticism and coordination to shine through.

Athleticism and coordination, recognising there’s little they can contribute to golf, decide not to participate. By the time we reach the turn, my earlier vision of a score in the 90s is replaced by a new one: me impaling myself on a sand wedge. So goes the rest of the round. My back elbow, for all the good it’s doing, might as well be a spaghetti noodle. Instead, I try to remember past adjustments that seemed worthwhile: keeping my head down; keeping the club face square; not opening my hips too early; not opening my hips too late; not thinking of fish and chips at the top of my backswing. The other three are having their own problems, making my round somewhat more tolerable. Shank, as usual, is carving up the course like an archaeologist. Glen, the worst course-reader in the history of golf, keeps hitting short or long on his approaches, as though he’s aiming for a different flag than the rest of us. And Stephen, who looks about as comfortable swinging a golf club as would a squid, is staying inadvertently faithful to his two-bad-shots-per-one-good pattern. All of this helps my frame of mind.

What’s more, my aggravation need last only a week: We’re scheduled to tee it up again the following Saturday for a friendly round of skins.

On that morning, another stunner, Glen and I share a pre-round pail while Shank and Stephen do the same. This time I abandon any thoughts of a fine-tuning miracle. I merely want to enjoy the sunshine with my mates and perhaps produce a few good clicks along the way.

While exchanging chitchat and smacking some mid-irons, I accidentally notice something about my swing, something that’s making my shots unusually crisp. Investigating this development with the 3-iron, I try a few more, and...A-HA! I’m keeping my hands forward, just slightly. This is simple, yet its ramifications are momentous. So many years and so many rounds, and this seems to have been the secret all along. I apply the technique to my wedges — it works! — then to my woods — works again! The trajectory of every shot is like a perfect rainbow drawn by a sure hand, and the secret I’ve stumbled upon the pot of gold at the end of it.

I look down, concealing a grin, not wanting to reveal my discovery to the others. They’re in trouble today.

Golf Monthly 

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I.J. Schecter
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© I.J. Schecter 2003