My Golf Story: Part 1
Okay, so I’m not sure if I have even written an initial post about me decided to play golf, so if I haven’t I should probably provide a little context.
A few years ago I had a casual gave off golf with my mates, and I was sh!t.
Reflecting back on that game afterwards there was a few things:
I enjoyed spending time with my mates
It was nice to be outdoors and golf courses are nice places
It really is quite amazing how good some people can hit a golf ball, such a tiny ball, such and odd club, so much grass and yet so straight
I am shit at golf
So with 3 out of 4 things being quite positive to make the whole thing a little more enjoyable the only thing I could really work on was getting better at golf myself, or finding better friends.
So with this in my mind I decided to commit to getting better at golf. The first thing I did was go and play a few rounds, I really didn’t get much better but I did learn a few things and I did start get a little addicted to the process of getting better. So after a few rounds I decided that the next best thing to do would be to get a handicap, because that’s a clear measure of how you are performing, better than just going “yeah I hit some nice shots”. So without too much drama the handicap I ended up with I think was around 28, which well it is what it is really.
Now this is where I kind of lost my way a little, I had a handicap but wasn’t really a member of a club, so I was either paying for each round or was just going to a driving range. I did see a bit of improvement over this time but nothing much, some shots were going further, but other shots were also going further off line so it felt like it netted each other out, but something else happened, Sydney went into another major lockdown (mid 2021) and we were confined to our local areas, it meant that golf pretty much stopped for me until I decided to become a member at my local course around September, with the aim of being able to walk on and play whenever I could.
And so I practiced, just hitting, over and over again, and walking, hole after hole. I didn’t really get much better in fact at times I think I started to get so confused that I may even have gotten worse, which was frustrating. Also to get my handicap down it meant I had to start playing competitive golf, which was a new experience for me, meeting new people and putting yourself out there to be judged on how you play.
Something I struggled with when it came to competitive golf was nerves, I would always become tense when I was hitting and so quite often I would make mistakes, typing this makes me reflect that its probably something specific I need to work on, but man it made me struggle to hit a ball, and so believe it or not my handicap actually went up as I either struggled with nerves or tried too hard under the pressure. This became frustrating, but at the same time something interesting happened that helped, I entered into a match play tournament which forced me to play with people I didn’t know.
I really liked the idea of matchplay and so I decided to do something else that is very unlike me, I got the assistance of a golf coach. Now I’ve preached on about coaching to many people but its the first Tim win my life I think I have legitimately been coached and I loved it, I actually saw improvement and I had some sort of direction to go in, it also helped me to win my first few matches which made me enjoy the game a little more. I eventually got knocked out of the tournament which was somewhat timely because I was going overseas on a holiday which would have clashed.
I’m going to wrap it up there for Part 1, that’s really the “how I got into golf”, Part 2 will be more about the reintroducing myself to golf after a short period of time off and up to now.
Michael