The Driving Range

I have always thought of golf as a sport of riches. In fact, golf is the world’s richest sport. The winner of the FedEx Cup wins a cool ten million dollars. That is the highest individual payout for any sporting event in the world. To reach this point, a golfer must end the regular season ranked within the top 150 players. In 2011, Bob Estes was the lowest seeded player in the tournament. He ended the season earning $594,000. Needless to say, if you make the FedEx Cup, you are the rich getting richer.

There are a lot of costs associated with playing golf. There are the clubs, the balls, and the cost of either becoming a member of a course or just paying to play. And let’s not forget the cost to buy silly checkered, plaid and striped clothes that can only be worn while playing golf. There is one problem; I am cheap. Because I have always associated golf with wealth, I have never associated myself with the sport.

My father-in-law, John, is from a family of golfers. Leigha’s grandparents even live in a gated community that surrounds a golf course. John was actually the first person to get a hole-in-one on that particular course. So apparently, clubs get worn out and handed down to those that have never golfed in life. These are called starter clubs, and I took them graciously. As all things that I plan on doing from my list, I generally have an imagined scenario of doing the task/going to the place. I imagined the driving range to be a place where guys go to blow off a bit of steam after work; an activity that they do when they don’t have enough time to actually play a round of golf. I imagined a row of people lined up with a large net behind them to catch any stray balls while they whacked balls out to flags that told you how far you were hitting it.

Since graduating college, my friend Josh had become a fan of the sport. Josh and I have been friends since middle school. Our interests generally aligned for the last twenty years, but my interest in golf seemed to stop at disc golf, the much cheaper step-child to the sport. As I was loading the clubs into my car, I realized that I didn’t have a bag to carry them around in. I wondered if people really needed them at a driving rage. I met Josh in the parking lot of the golf course. I watched as he popped his trunk and pulled out a bright red bag that held his clubs. There were straps that allowed him to carry the bag with ease and a kickstand for when he put the bag down. He looked at me as I walked up to him, holding nine clubs in my hands. He just shook his head and smirked. He didn’t need to say anything, but he told me enough as he walked just far enough away from me that it wasn’t a guarantee that we were together.

As we walked to the area of the golf course designated for the driving range, I realized that like most things for my blog, it didn’t really look like I had imagined in my head. When we purchased our bucket of balls, we didn’t have a cashier hand us the bucket. He handed us a token to the machine that would actually dispense them. I had a buy one, get one free coupon so I got two small buckets. In reality the two combined didn’t fill up one of the plastic baskets that were strewn about near the machine.

One thing that did match up to my imagination was a row in which people could stand to tee off from. There was a rope that helped indicate the tee off area, and a small green metal device to place your golf bag within. Although I didn’t have a bag, that is where I placed my clubs.

“Do you actually use all of the clubs?” I asked Josh.

He told me that he does, but he doesn’t use the driving range much before actually playing a round of golf. He told me that by the time that you feel comfortable hitting with a club or to a location and your body is warmed up, you lose it by the time that you start playing for real. I looked at the ground where the grass had been killed from standing, walking and the swinging of clubs. I realize that it was compact and hard, not the easiest place to put a tee in. Then I realized that I didn’t own any golf tees.

“Just hit it off the ground,” Josh advised. “You don’t really need tees.” So I dropped a ball to the ground and looked out to the area in front of me. There were different colored flags scattered throughout the well-manicured grass. I didn’t know what, if anything, the colors indicated. I also didn’t know the distance for any of them. I figured that it didn’t really matter. I should try to concentrate on hitting the ball as hard and as far as I could. Then I realized that I didn’t know how to hold the club. The grip of a golf club, unlike that of a baseball bat or tennis racquet, was not intrinsic to me. Josh showed me how you overlap your hands with your thumbs aligning with the shaft of the club. I stiffly held onto the club and stared at the golf ball, thinking to myself about the importance of watching the ball. I had seen enough movies to know that this was important. Unfortunately if you are watching golfing movies, they assume that you already know how to grip the club.

I pulled my arms back and swung as hard as I could. I also remembered that the follow through was an important aspect of the golf swing. As I followed through with my complete miss of the ball, I spun on my pivot foot, pirouetting a full circle. I laughed, but Josh didn’t see the embarrassing miss. Or the second. Or the third. It was somewhere around the tenth consecutive failure that I began to curse. This seemed like a good time to alter my goals. I was no longer trying to hit the ball as far as I could, but trying to hit the ball. I knew that I wouldn’t be at a professional level initially, but this was embarrassing. What made it easier to swallow was the fact that there was nobody else at the range except the two of us.

I found that I was much more comfortable, and successful hitting the ball when I only used one arm. After I started to connect more than miss, I moved back to holding the club with both hands. Just as I started to feel more comfortable with hitting the ball and gaining some distance, I heard the sound of somebody getting some balls from the ball dispenser. I looked up and watched a guy walk down the hill towards us. Not surprisingly, it appeared as if he had not only an entire set of clubs, but also a bag to put them in. I nodded hello to him as he set up on the other side of Josh. Then I looked down at the ball between my feet and took a swing. I connected with the ball, but instead of flying down the fairway, it flew directly in front of me, past Josh and it rolled toward the guy. I didn’t take offense as he picked up his basket, his clubs and moved down the row, behind me, putting some distance between us.

As I got about three-quarters of the way through my balls, I started to hit with some respectable distance. My confidence was growing, and I decided to try putting a little more force in my swing. As I missed the ball for the umpteenth time, I came to the conclusion that golf is a game of grace, and there is no room for brute force in it. Therefore, there might be no place in the game for me.