They’re Called “Family Size” Buckets for a Reason…
You read the title. This is beginner golf. You’re not here for my swing tips. I can’t teach you how to hit the perfect stinger shot, how to get up and down when you don’t have your A game, or how to execute a bump and run off the fringe. To be honest with you, I don’t even know what those phrases mean.
But I know what it’s like to want to know. I know how frustrating it can be to watch your in-laws, your friends, and occasionally old ladies and small children at the driving range steadily improving their game while you cower over the ball, immobilized by “swing thoughts”.
How do we keep from letting that frustration devour us? How do we turn it into something positive? All I can offer is my own personal history as a cautionary tale.
How it Started
In the first few weeks of my own personal golf odyssey, I allowed that frustration to propel me into the realm of obsession. After spending four hours topping the ball all across God’s Green Earth in front of scratch golfers, I took my hand-me-down clubs to the nearest driving range, hellbent on FIXING EVERYTHING! I swore I’d never lose multiple sleeves of Bridgestone RXSs in one outing AGAIN!
So, like the asshole I am, I proceeded to work my way through TWO FAMILY-SIZE buckets of balls (I have the receipts to prove it. My credit card company warned me about fraudulent double charges). As a total n00b to golf, I don’t know what I expected to accomplish by hacking away without guidance. So I ended up just deploying the same cockamamie swing 180 additional times. Then I pretended to think about putting for two minutes and left feeling worse than I did when I got there.
How it’s going
The next day, I could barely get out of bed. It felt like someone had lodged a hatchet between my shoulder blade and my spine. The pain blossomed up to my neck and down to my lower back. I wondered whether I had also cracked a rib somehow, but the worst part was, I still pretty much sucked at hitting golf balls.
So now, here we are, and I’ve lost a weeks’ worth of meaningful repetitions. Of course I wasn’t going to fix my swing in one day. Of course I wasn’t going to get good at golf in one day. But I might have gotten progressively better over the course of the next few weeks with consistent, focused range sessions. Instead, I’m chewing pain killers and shit-posting myself while trying to balance an ice pack on my… everything.
Lesson Learned
I overdid it. And now I can’t do anything. Don’t be like me. Don’t overdo it. It’ll cost you in the end.