First round of golf |
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| Golf Journal | |
| Wednesday, 19 December 2007 | |
 the Magical Hole Well, I was getting excited. I had never played golf before, but I had watched it on TV, and already I was wondering if I could hit a 300+ yard drive or get a hole-in-one. When we arrived, I rented a set of clubs from the clubhouse and we went off to the driving range to "warm up". Wow, I had no idea it could be so hard to hit a little stationary white ball with a big faced club, and I was learning new terms like "shank" and "worm burner" and "hook" and "slice". After hitting most of two large buckets of balls I was fairly "worn out" in addition to being warmed up, so we opted to start with 9 holes instead of committing to 18 at the start. I don't remember much about the rest of round except that I had to hit that golf ball more times than I would have imagined to even get it on the green. This course has elevated greens and for a brand new golfer, techniques such as pitching or lobbing with any degree of control eluded me time and again. I do remember "pitching" the ball from one side of the green to the other and then back again on many of the holes. By the time we were on the last hole, I was pretty sure that average golf, let alone extraordinary golf, was beyond me. There I was, having played all of 8 holes and practiced with two buckets of balls, and I was already discouraged. And then the magic happened. The 9th hole is a 503 yard par 5 dogleg right and by some miracle my 4th shot rolled onto the green within gimme distance of the hole. The discouragement disappeared, and in that marvelous moment I believed I could play golf, maybe even extraordinarily well. That last hole did it; I was hooked. Within a week, I had won an auction on eBay for some used golf clubs and purchased a bag to hold them from The Golf Warehouse. Soon afterwards I started looking around for a place to play often and affordably and even talked my dad into coming "golfing" with me once or twice even though he had never touched a golf club in his life. Looking back, I find it amusing that all it took was one successful hole to reassure me that it was possible for me to play this game. But that's how golf is, 8 rough holes and you think, "I am so clumsy and awkward how the heck am I even able to walk?", and then it happens, one extraordinary hole and all seems possible again.    |
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