“We tend to stay in our own lane…2”
Instalment 2 of(at least) 3…”more than one way to skin a cat…”
Edition one of this theme (here) tried, perhaps in vain, to describe the “normal” golfer but the main objective was to say that the way most of us play is pretty consistent. We have our own preferred clubs, and attitudes, and styles, and will stick to them not because we know they work - they often don’t - but because it is one variable we can control in a game full of factors beyond our control.
Humans are hard-wired for homeostasis, a system setting that served us well thousands of years ago, and the influence of the amygdala - that part of the brain nudging us towards the familiar and away from the stress of change - is clearly visible in golf, which is in itself a pretty conservative space.
Given that many of us struggle with the game, and fail to improve despite all the hours of work (replace “work” with “money” if more appropriate to you) we put in, we could gloomily look towards Einstein’s famous quote - that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” - but perhaps, despite our tendency to stick with what we know - playing the same clubs round the same courses with the same people - there are other options out there we might try to freshen up our relationship to the game, much like a relationship counsellor might look to introduce some new spice to a struggling couple.
Here are a few suggestions, each of which is fun in its own right, and which can help this “normal” golfer to take themselves and the game a tiny bit less seriously. They also seem to be strangely helpful in terms of technique…
Play foursomes
Hitting every other shot is a fairly rare format of the game in the UK, surviving in a handful of the more traditional clubs, and I gather it is largely unknown in the States and beyond, but when I have seen visitors to these shores forced into this strange and complex custom, they love it. Acolytes of the foursomes game will say it tests the best of friendships, but a good round in this format will bring laughter and enjoyment in spades, and for those obsessed with their own score, it is an interesting diversion into relinquishing control for half the shots, while feeling a different sort of responsibility for the ones you do get to hit, often from different “landing areas” of the course, such as the heavy rough. No apologies are permitted, and the best thing? Given a free course ahead, you should be out there no longer than two and a half hours, creating an abundance of time for an extra drink or two. Splice in lunch between two rounds, and you have a classic day of British golf.
Use a half-set
That’s right. I know you paid over two thousand pounds for the shiny things, and a further few hundred for a variety of distance measuring devices, whose accuracy has diminished any likelihood of you being able to discern what a hundred and eighty yards actually looks like (in fact, during the release from the various lockdowns, it became clear that a golfer in the queue for the bar hatch can’t even tell what two metres looks like). So now I am suggesting you leave half of them in the shed?
And, when you play, you will choose to take either the odds or the evens, and find that every single shot requires the other half-set - the ones you left behind - and you will therefore have to grip down, or punch the odd shot, or run one in. It brings in a creative element that gets left behind in the bland analysis of data the whole time, and it will feel like you are actually shot-making again, rather than robotically swinging the numbers. Plus, they weigh half as much, and are therefore far easier to carry, preferably in a smaller, more comfortable bag. Try it, just once.
Try hickories
This one is not for everyone, I realise. Hickory clubs get scarcer each year, and anyone who has broken one during a shot will know the slight mental nervousness of each subsequent downswing, as if you head out with only a few clubs (never a “set”) as the old hickory golfers did (see half-set above), breaking a “Spoon” on the third tee leaves you with a slight issue for the remaining fifteen holes. But you will adapt, and there is something about hickory play that is both good for your soul - you are connecting directly with the roots of the game, embracing the very tools that previous generations used - but also your game.
Your rhythm cannot be jerky, or overly aggressive, and when you flush one high with a “mashie”, there is no finer sensation, for you feel as if you, and not the latest game-improvement clubhead, is doing the heavy lifting. It is so rewarding! Plus they have truly excellent names, rather than numbers (refer back to the “Professional Weapon” / “Trojan Horse” element of yesterday’s effort).
Dig out your 80’s kit
Obviously, I am dating myself by referring to 80’s kit, so by all means adjust this back to a vintage more meaningful for your own golfing apprenticeship. For me, this was the mid to late 80’s, and with pocket money a scarce resource, items such as the BeCu PING Eye2 “L” wedge were of seemingly approximate value to a Faberge egg in my eyes. In fact, it would take the advent of eBay for me to pick one of those up, many years later, and long after the R&A/USGA outlawed those square grooves.
The fact that the modern ball has had an effect on elite player ball control a thousand times that of the old Eye2’s is a topic for another day, but while I am on the topic of balls, imagine for a moment that the wild, swinging slice you hit off the thirteenth yesterday was not a ProV1 or your chosen, modern equivalent, but the erratic and delicate balata of the early Faldo era.
For that standard of player, the manoeuvrability of the soft cover was integral to their ability to work the ball around the course, relying on soft fades and measured draws, and on a purity of strike that was necessary to have the ball settle on the green. For the rest of us, the balata would exacerbate every bit of cut spin from the face, as if intent on breaching the course’s perimeter when you least needed it. Plus, and I refer back to the nostalgic note about pocket money, they were damned expensive, and had the additional downside of cutting in the event of a thinned shot, and scuffing badly if punched too strongly with an iron.
As previously discussed, my pitching back then was as it is now, essentially a 50:50 split of fats and thins (which would have left the square grooves of that copper PING wedge undisturbed if I’d been able to afford it), so perhaps an element of the problem was the knowledge that half of the shots would compound the public and private misery of the bladed missile launch with the additional irritation of the ball ending up with a mouth-shaped gouge in it. Happy times.
The final pieces of the 80’s jigsaw are the thin, forged blade irons of the times, combined with the amusingly tiny-headed persimmon drivers. The sweet spot of my Mizuno TP5 (pictured above; sky-marks weren’t my fault; 10.5 degree in case you were wondering - the 9.5 degree was surely for lunatics) was approximately the size of a pin-prick, hiding in between some screws. From above, the natural look of the pear-shaped head was, and still is, gorgeous, but the only thing harder to hit consistently well was surely Trevino’s 1 iron.
I realise I am rambling again here, and this two parter about our tendency to “stay in our lane” will now extend to at least three segments, but before I sign off (to fall asleep and dream of wide open fairways and wicked hole locations as usual), I urge you to clear out the loft of your own gear, and head out with it. You will never appreciate the forgiving nature of your modern 460cc driver - despite its ugliness, and persistent disobedience - as much as you will after having played with persimmon.
But one favour before I go. If you have a loft bereft of such vintage sticks, and are considering hitting eBay hard, please check with me first. I don’t want us to unknowingly have a private bidding war…
TO BE CONTINUED…
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