Let me step out of the serious world and delve upon a few topics of interest. First is Golf. Yes, this was a game, which I always thought was rather stupid. And finally I tried the stupid thing. The week before last, I decided to sign up for the golf club in my office. The feeling behind doing that was 'Let me at least try and see what it is '. And 'While I am in US, let me try and explore something which is easily available here and not available back home'. I remember in the city of Bombay, where I come from, I have just seen one golf course in Chembur, when I used to go to VESIT (my wife's college) during my courtship days.
With all that background, I did sign up for the golf club and when I did that, I got to know that this club has just 4 members : The SVP of my office, a senior director, a technical writer and now me. The first 3 are experienced players. In fact, I later got to know that the senior director is a champ. I know the writer at a person level and decided to talk to him and see if he could teach me some basics. To my delight, he offered to take me to a driving range that was close by from my office. Unfortunately, the weather did not hold for the next 3 days and the plan finally materialized on a Thursday. We stepped out of office at 5 pm on day with me continuously trying to keep up with him, who was in a 2 door BMW.
We reached the driving range and parked our cars. The first thing he told me that he is an average player. Now, as if I really cared about that. What mattered to me was that this guy knows the game. I hardly cared how well he knew it as long as he knew the basics and he could pass it on to me. And most of the gentlemen would make that statement before they teach anyone else. At least I would do that had I been in his shoes :-) . We picked up 2 baskets of golf balls and headed toward the striking area.
The tutoring started with his showing me the various kinds of clubs. Broadly, there are two types - wooden and iron. Now, this will be a memory test – wooden ones range from 1 to 7 and irons range from 2 to 9. In both the types, the ones with least number are the most effective in terms of how high or long the they send the ball. And plus wooden ones hit the ball longer and iron ones hit the ball higher. So an iron-2 will hit the ball much higher than what an iron-5 would. And a wooden 1 will hit the ball much longer than what a wooden 4 would.
Next thing was taking position. How much to spread the legs and how to hold the club. Overall, a right handed guy should use his left hand more and the right hand must just follow through with the swing. Shoulders should be kept straight and this was difficult to achieve. With all this, my first 10 shots were the worst. I was within 30 yards. And my last 10 shots were the best. I was beyond 90 yards.
During my first 10 shots, one of these things happened - my legs went up, I lost my balance, I did not make contact with the ball, my club hit the ground and I hurt my hands. But my friend was very patient and he kept correcting me at every stage. After the initial hiccups, I did make contact, but either the ball went too right or way too left. Now, when the ball travels too right its called a ‘slice’. I don’t recollect what is said when the ball travels left. But I will try to recollect that, hopefully by my next post.
Practice made me much better and I was making decent contact 7 out of 10 times towards the end. My friend said I did great considering that I was playing for the first time. I was happy. The next day, he sent me an email with all the key terms of Golf. I am still to go through it.
At the end of the day, I thought to myself, 'It wasn't stupid after all. Not only because I played it but also because there is so much more to it than just hitting the ball with that club'. The other thing I liked about the game was the green patch of land in front of us. Its peaceful to see the green and its really quiet out there. And I liked that. So that was a nice "golfful" day.
P.S – When I started writing the post, I was going to talk about one more interesting topic. But the first topic ate up so much real estate that I will keep the second topic for my next post
No comments:
Post a Comment