GOLF BACKWARDS: DAY 1

What follows is an attempt of sorts on a blog.  Blogs seem to be the in thing in today’s technology.  Everybody seems to be doing them, so why not me!

The central theme of this blog will be a documenting of my attempt to learn a correct golf swing which will include all the hopelessness, drama, humor, connflict, frustration, and possibly excitement I will encounter in my efforts to communicate the Intellectual material on the golf swing to my particular learning curve.  Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?  It really means I am going to attempt to self teach myself the golf swing out of a book and not learn from a teaching Pro.

The source of instructional material will be quite varied and may seem kind of weird but I am going to attempt to use them anyway.  They include:  Ben Hogan’s concise and difficult to apply instruction book The Five Lessons The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, James Dodson’s fine biography Ben Hogan An American Life, The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck,M.D., Golf Plain and Simple by Don Trahan, and The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande.  See, I told you they would be weird, and there may be more weirdness as I go along!

You might ask why I chose The Road Less Travelled as it’s certainly not nearly a golf book.  Well?  Heck!  I guess because learning the golf swing correctly would mean taking the road less travelled since so few golfers know how to do it and maybe M. Scott Peck’s book can help me psychologically!

The reasons I choose Ben Hogan’s book for one of my instruction methods is that Ben Hogan was historically the blueprint for the modern golfer and his book, though difficult to process, is probably the bible of golf instruction, at least in my opinion.  His picture appears at the top of this blog, it’s one of the greatest golf pictures ever taken!

I must tell you that I am not a beginner at golf.  Actually I have been playing for over forty years.  I am self-taught, with the exception of one lesson, and play only sporadically due to job restrictions and the fact that living in the state of Maine affords only a miniscule window of golfing weather.  Did you know that the average number of days between frosts in the state of Maine is only 122 days a number which probably equals to my average golf score for eighteen holes!

Truth be known I am what I would call a fee golfer as opposed to a membership golfer.  Thus, as a rule, I play far less then a membership golfer would play usually 10-15 rounds a year unlike membership types that might play 150 rounds per year

Abilitywise (not sure that is a real word) I would say I am around a 30 handicapper which means I shoot about 50 for 9 holes.

So!  I am excited and fearful to begin this journey to find my golf swing.  Unlike the hapless golfer in the book Baggar Vance who lost his swing and later found it, I never lost my swing because I never had one!

 

 

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