Fairway Adventures

It’s been a few months since I’ve swung a golf club (outside my living room), and it will be a few weeks before I’m in Florida seeking out some new courses while at the same time trying not to be devoured by gators.

Normally this hiatus would have me in the kind of funk experienced by all northern-latitude golfers between November and April. But the usual symptoms aren’t affecting me this year, for three reasons:

1) Winter in Toronto this year has been just the kind of winter one hopes for: great heaps of snow since early December with temperatures just south of zero degrees – in other words, cold enough to make you remember why a perfect winter day is better than any other day in any other season, but not so cold that you can’t take the kids tobogganing for fear that they’ll come back with their features permanently set.

2) The NHL season has been nothing short of outstanding thus far, making it much easier to endure the golf interruption. I can’t understand why Americans have never taken to hockey. It demands unquestionably the most complex skill set of any professional team sport, harnessed at higher speeds (unless you count downhill skiing a professional team sport – which you shouldn’t). It is the only sport that combines the balletic grace of basketball with the elemental, and undeniably gripping, violence of football. The athleticism, passion and resilience of its players rival that of any other sport’s competitors. (Don’t believe me? Play a 48-minute basketball game, a 60-minute football game and a 60-minute hockey game, and then tell me which leaves you more wrecked.) The best hockey plays are just as jaw-dropping as the best highlight-reel dunk or Hail Mary pass. (Here’s evidence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQOmJ09Pg58.) Like I said, I just don’t get it. NASCAR has zillions of devotees, but hockey can’t buy a viewer? It’s beyond me.

3) My new golf bag. I’ve been using the same bag for…ever, and last season, during a dawn photo shoot I was doing for Golf Canada in which I somehow agreed to wade waist-deep into a water hazard, the old nylon Wilson got quite muddied, turning its pervious faded-ivory to a tone best described as Gray Extra Dull.

I took that as the sign that I deserved a new golf bag, or at least that I should tip off my wife that it would make a great birthday present. (I’m pretty sure I also deserve new clubs, but I can’t come up with a reason why.) The big day came, the ice cream cake was brought out (that’s one point for the wife), the sports channel was put on (that’s two), and then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted it: something wrapped in the unmistakable form of a golf bag, or maybe a Chinese contortionist pretending to be one. My sons helped me tear off the paper, and though I believe they were disappointed a four-foot-high transformer wasn’t revealed, my eyes lit up at the Datrek Iron Cart Bag before me.

This is a tremendous golf bag, one sure to transform my game. On the label is an animated picture of a musclebound, striated golfer having completed a beautiful follow-through. He looks nothing like me, but that shouldn’t matter. Just check out these features:

• Integrated Putter Sleeve
• 14 Individual Divider System
• New Ball Drop Design
• Insulated Cooler Pocket

I know, it shouldn’t even be legal. And I’m not finished. It’s got all this, too:

• New Dual Slope 14-Way IDS Top Design
• Individual Full Length Dividers
• 11 Convenient Pockets
• Vibrant Tone-on-Tone Colorways
• Integrated Cart Strap Pass Thru

You can’t compete with a bag like this. I’m looking forward to the expressions on my playing partners’ faces when I break it out for that first round of the season a few months from now. Will the gawk-worthy moment happen in the parking lot, me slowly lifting the bag out of the trunk, their faces blanching with envy? Will it happen in the clubhouse, them having arrived first, me casually entering, the bag slung jauntily over my shoulder? On the practice range, me the early arrival, them noticing the bag after a few minutes but unable to say anything, me grinning in smug satisfaction? I’m busting.

There is, of course, the matter of my game, which remains, in a word, superbad. But I just can’t see myself playing poorly with a bag like this. Now, I know what you’re thinking: IJ, the quality of your golf bag has nothing to do with how you play. And I’ll be honest: I just don’t even know how to answer that.

There are, as far as I can tell, several dozen parts to my golf swing. I imagine there should be three or four, all working in sweet accord, synched as finely as the watches in a Hollywood-choreographed heist caper.

My swing unfortunately works in the opposite manner, so that, like the proverbial house of cards, if one part is slightly off, the rest collapse immediately, leaving me with a physical act similar to what someone might look like if attempting to swing a club while undergoing electroshock therapy.

First, there’s the issue of address. One could argue that technically this isn’t part of the actual swing—but to my thinking the experience of the swing begins the moment you stand over the ball. That’s when the latent potential of the swing is activated, along with the fantastic sense of panic that accompanies the act of preparing to hit a golf ball. The ostensible calmness with which the clubhead rests on the ground is in inverse proportion to the dread that begins to melt over the person holding the club. If the recreational golfer standing over the ball were captured in art, the name of the overt portrait might be something like “Serenity and the Ball.” Change that portrait to an EKG printout and the title becomes “Terror at Address.”

Posture, too, counts as part of the swing, insofar as it has a direct influence on the result. A good golf stance is essentially one in which the golfer looks as though he has started to very carefully sit down on a toilet and stopped one third of the way. Knee bend, in other words, is crucial. Hip position is, too. Weight distribution is a third important component, position of hands relative to the groin a fourth. One also mustn’t forget shoulder plane or spine angle, nor should he swing heedless of head tilt or grip pressure. If you disagree that these are all parts of the swing, try ignoring one of them and see how many skins you earn.

Once my swing is, against all psychological resistance, triggered, a number of other elements come into play, all fighting against one another in a chaotic and misguided battle for supremacy. If my swing were a corporation and its components the staff, each of them would be called in by the HR manager to be told they needed to become better team players. Actually, they’d be told they needed to learn how to better leverage potential synergies across multiple touchpoints.

As far as my particular swing is concerned, no factor is more vital than clubface angle. For years the faces of my clubs have arrived at the ball as though they’ve only traveled there by accident, so that by the time they do reach the destination, instead of squaring up to the ball they start to turn away, fearful of something I still can’t understand. Now you may be saying to yourself that the angle of the clubface at impact probably has more to do with the way I swing than any form of metaphysical fear. This is a highly logical assertion, and probably true. But I still don’t get why my clubs are so afraid.

Front-arm stiffness, as any golfer knows, also plays a decisive role in guiding the swing along its proper path. My front elbow exhibits a strong desire to bend at all points in the swing despite my frequently irate objections. So I’m dealing with a phobic clubface and a slack elbow. No wonder I can’t break 100.

Beyond these impediments, there is the hip turn, or more specifically, the need to create resistance against yourself by twisting one half of your body away from the target while keeping the other half completely in the dark. Though this kind of move is best left to cartoon characters, the experts continue to fool a good part of the population into thinking it’s the best way to swing. Thankfully the new stack-and-tilt proponents are endorsing a lazier style that doesn’t involving wrenching multiple vertebrae out of place.

The hip turn can itself be divided into sub-components, since it must work with the rest of the torso on the initial backwards twist but then take the lead on the way back, opening a fraction of a second before the knee, heel, chest and arms get involved—“leading” them through, that is. It’s an enormous responsibility, but one the hips must live with. I can’t imagine the guilt they must feel every time they forget to alert the other parts before opening. (Wait, we forgot to tell the knees! THE KNEES!)

Many of golf’s swing elements make a scrap of sense on their own, but instructors for some reason insist on making us aware of both a swing element and its direct opposite, then insisting we integrate both into our technique. We’re led to believe that we must remember within the space of a few seconds to swing down on the ball and come up through the ball; pronate the wrists while not forgetting to release; grip the club like it’s an egg but swing like you mean it; keep the club low but end with a nice high finish, so that our playing partners will keep their eyes fixed on our elegant pose rather than the fact that our ball has just dented a tree 20 yards off the fairway. I attribute all these paradoxes to the fact that even golf pros don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Not that this stops me from paying them.

A few times per round, of course, something glorious happens: All the parts of my swing somehow fall into alignment, and the ball, after soaring through the sky for what seems like hours, lands in just the right spot, making me smile with as much wonder as pleasure. It’s this instant of harmony that every golfer is perpetually trying to capture—making even golfers like me, who capture it no more than a handful of times among dozens of awful shots, continue to pursue it enthusiastically for the same reason a man will invest months of effort for the prospect of seeing a pair of breasts even once. That moment makes everything that has come before it worthwhile, just as a great drive on eighteen makes the seventeen errant drives preceding it seem suddenly acceptable. Yes, when all the parts of the swing agree to put aside their differences and work in concert, the feeling is sublime. I use the sexual analogy because no man, having seen a pair of breasts, can ever again pretend he hasn’t. Ask any of your playing partners about a great shot you remember them hitting, and watch the light come into their eyes. Watch as they get misty while describing it (and, in all likelihood, acting it out with an imaginary club). Why are they so emotional? Because you never know when one part might get crossed up with another, and it can take an excruciatingly long period to get the whole mess untangled again.