Golf

Denise bought me some golf lessons for my birthday. Since we're surrounded by golfers as neighbours (with only Kaye not a player) so it seemed a good idea to find out what the heck they were all on about.

Also, D knew that I play golf games on the computer, and very much like the Tiger Woods game on the Wii, which has a real bash at making at least the mechanics of the game realistic, with the Motion Plus thingy plugged in. The graphics aren't great on the Wii, but I do like the control method. Yep, very realistic. Too realistic! As a result of which I play Army golf - left, right, left right ... except that it's nearly always left.

The thing is, she's seen me playing it, but couldn't she hear my 'Meldrew-esque' mutterings and cries of anguish as the damned pill goes haring off into the trees and out-of-bounds for the umpteenth time? Every time I play, the character that's supposed to represent the golf professional keeps popping up to say "looks like you're having a bit of a problem. Why don't you switch to the easier [less realistic] control method". It's as bad as that damned paper clip (if ther were emoticons enabled on this blog there'd be the one with the red face here)!! If I'd wanted to play with that setting, I'd have used that setting. I want to try to learn how to use the realistic method. Now leave me alone to get on with my game! Bloody annoying. At least now I've had a lesson I can hold the controller properly and avoid some of the worst hits.

Anyway, my first lesson was on Saturday, which got me started with my grip and my stance and hitting a few balls. It went a lot better than I expected, and I actually managed to hit a few balls down the range in more or less the right direction (give or take a degree or 20), and I even got them going some distance with a couple of the shots. Several people had said to me that I wouldn't even hit the ball on my first lesson, so it was nice to prove them wrong, and to exceed my expectations. I just listened to what Andy the golf professional told me, and benefitted as a the result.

I went up to the driving range for a practise last night (Wednesday), and again I was managing to hit it a lot better than I'd hoped at this stage. I like it when you get that metallic 'tink' sound and you know you've hit the sweet spot (or as near to it as I can get it). Going to the range after work yesterday was great: it's floodlit at night which makes it much easier to follow the ball after you've hit it than against a bright white sky (as it was on Saturday). Out of the 50 balls, only about 6 went along the ground, 1 went flying out of bounds to the right (hope they don't have any greenhouses over there!), and about 5 went in exactly the direction I wanted, even if those didn't all go very far. I would say about 20 of them went up and away for quite a distance.

I'm looking forward to having a go with the big drivers and with the pitching wedges at either end of the range of clubs, but I'm not going to just go to the range and have a go with them, I'll wait till I've had the lessons covering them, so I've got just a bit of a clue as to how to use 'em. For my practise, I stuck with a 6 iron, which was what I'd used during my lesson.

I do have a problem with my follow-through though, which I'll need to find a solution to. Because of my false leg, I can't balance myself with my right toe after I've transferred my weight onto my left through the swing. I can't complete the rotation very easily as a result, at the moment, but I'll work out a way of doing it. I had been using my non-sprung leg on Saturday for my lesson, but I had 'sporty' on last night, and found it a lot better, if not perfect for the job.

The other problem I'm having is that I'm using muscles that I've never used before. My forearms pumped up like Popeye's! As I type this, I have a several lumps of cramped muscle in each arm that I have spent all my waking hours since my practise session trying to massage away. How can you get cramp in the back of your hand?! Crazy. I'll just have to keep practising until those pains go away ... ;-)