It’s golf… I can appreciate the fact that there is a certain level of skill that must be obtained in order to compete in the game. I understand that these skills aren’t developed overnight, and that, just like anything else, only dedication to practice will get you to where you want to be.
I get that golfing requires things like balance, posture, hand-eye coordination and mental toughness. But it’s golf! At the end of the day, you are using clubs to smack a ball long distances before eventually using different types of clubs to knock it shorter distances into a hole. Again, I know this is an oversimplification, and that it is nowhere near as easy as I just made it sound, but still, how can there be SO MANY books dedicated just to learning how to play?
How can there be magazines, e-newsletters and entire websites that exist solely for the purpose of talking about golf – who’s playing, where they’re playing, how they’re playing, what they’re wearing when they play, etc.? Why would anyone want to keep their television sets tuned into a channel that shows golf 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year? Is there really a need for so many YouTube channels and social media accounts to be covering all things golf all the time?
I have always respected golfers for their ability, but I admit that I have often been mystified by the amount of golf-related media that exists out there. It has always seemed like overkill to me, but all it took was about an hour-long training session recently for things to suddenly come into stark focus.
As I have already explained, part of my plan for this year, and beyond, was to embark on the journey of learning to play golf. Along the way, I wanted to write about my experiences, and share my thoughts on the process. I took my first actual steps to learning the game a few weeks back, when the Corbin High School boys golf coach, Joe Roberts, agreed to meet me at Cinema Social’s golf simulator and give me a few pointers on how to get going.
I didn’t really know what to expect, but what I got was a TON of information crammed into a very brief amount of time.
First of all, not only was this my first time using the simulator suite at Cinema Social, but it was actually my first time using a golf simulator… ever. It was as cool and fun as advertised, and I will definitely be making return trips in the future. I am not yet able to compare it to playing a round of golf in an outdoor setting, but I imagine that the realism was on par (see what I did there?) with what you might experience at an actual course. With so many different options programmed in, a person could easily spend all day in there. Alas, Joe and I were limited to about an hour, but that was all the time it took for me to begin understanding the many complexities of this game.
Joe stressed that, while having an athletic background can be a big contributing factor to how you might approach the game, playing golf is not really about relying on athletic ability. He said that it’s all about technique. Everything begins with 1) how you grip the club, 2) how you align your body, and 3) maintaining proper posture. Simple enough, right? Well, yes and no.
Trust me when I say there is a lot more to gripping a club than simply taking it into your hands and holding on tight. After just a few minutes of Joe showing me how to get a proper grip, I could already understand why so many of the books, magazines, newsletters and YouTube channels that I mentioned above exist. There’s a lot to this stuff, and we weren’t even actually swinging any clubs yet!
When I finally did take a few swings, I am happy to say that I succeeded in making contact with the ball. Honestly, that was my only real goal considering I was coming in as a total newbie, so I walked away pretty happy. We only used a wedge, as Joe advised that it and the putter are the best tools to start learning with. A logical first instinct for new golfers might be to pick up a driver and immediately start trying to whack the ball long distances, but you’re actually going to be spending much more time approaching the green and trying to putt the ball into the hole, so it makes more sense to begin developing those skills first.
And speaking of developing skills, I saw firsthand just how important it is to get into good habits right from the get-go when learning how to play. It is going to be difficult enough to get your grip, alignment and posture right, not to mention all of the intricacies of your actual swing. I can only imagine how hard it must be to have to go back and re-learn these things after doing them improperly for a long time. As I move forward, I certainly want to do all that I can to avoid that particular situation.
With that being said, another important thing that I learned is that there can be many different variations of a “proper” golf swing. I’m sure that I will learn more about that as my journey progresses, but for now I really want to just drill the basic fundamentals into my head so that I can maximize giving myself the best possible foundation to build on in the years to come.
It has been said to me on more than a few occasions that golf is a “lifetime sport,” and I can definitely already see how that is true. I feel like I am off to a pretty decent start, so stay tuned to see where I go from here.
