golf_swing

When I went to Wrigley for the first time a few weeks ago I went with my sister’s boyfriend who is British and has never seen a single inning of baseball before.  It was truly one of the strangest experiences of my life.  I spent almost the entire time at one of the more hallowed grounds of baseball explaining the very basics of the sport to someone without a clue how lucky he was to be sitting where he was.  I went over the minorest of points (the goal is to get more runs than the other) and we even talked intermediate strategy (in a tie game, with the home team batting in the bottom of the ninth, they’re not looking for a big inning–they only want to plate one).  I imagine this must have sounded odd to any and everyone who was seated near us listening in who didn’t know he was British.  How could someone his age not know anything about baseball while sitting in Wrigley, right?

I bring up this analogy because I too am late to the game.  Only this time the game is golf.  As most of you are aware, I live in the PHX area surrounded by millions of acres of golf courses.  I’ve been to the course before and have even gone to the driving range with very little success.  While on vacation this week however I happened to get the opportunity to go golfing with my Aunt (who’s really quite good) and she arranged for me to get some instruction before going out.  Within 30 minutes my swing was changed from my best guess at what a swing should look like into something that actually resembles proper form and, holy christ, what a difference it made.  Now my form, in its elementary state, actually resembles a golf swing instead of a Charles Barkleyesque hack.  There’s a semblance of flow and grace to what I’m trying to do instead of the choppy motion that I attempted on my own.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s spent a good amount of time golfing because the swing is almost counter intuitive.  At least for me, everything about the swing was the opposite of what I initially tried before instruction.

I think the main reason for my failure at figuring out the golf swing has to do with the fact that I’m a baseball player at heart and swinging a golf club is the exact opposite of swinging a baseball bat.  Before I get into the difference, let me say that I’m not placing any value judgments on which is harder to do.  That has already been done (brilliantly I might add) by our own Spencer096.  No, this is only the tale of why I find golf so absurd and why I’m suddenly hooked on the idea of getting back out there to work on my swing.

So like I said, the reason I had trouble with my swing (and still have trouble of course–I’m still new at this) is because, like I said, a golf swing is the exact opposite of a baseball swing and I’ve been swinging a bat about 25 years longer than a golf club.

For starters, the bulk of your power comes from your front arm in golf.  How absurd is that to a baseball player?  At the end of our round I had blisters on my back hand and my Aunt told me that was the reason most of my balls kept going right.  Apparently my back arm is supposed to be dead weight.  Even writing that sounds dumb.  Is that right?  Am I supposed to just use it less?  Or is it supposed to act like a pendulum?  God, golf is dumb.

And I’m sorry but why oh why would someone invent a sport that is almost certainly going to result in someone tearing their front knee open?  Don’t pivot your front foot while putting all of your power on it?  Does that make sense to anyone else?  In baseball you can spin around in a circle like Mickey Mantle after each swing and no one will think you’re doing it wrong.

Which brings us to Mickey Mantle: that sumbitch would have been an awful golfer.  He swung his hardest at every ball which is (again) the exact opposite of golf.  The harder I swung the club the worse I did.  The faggier my swing, the farther and straighter it went.  I swear if I could have worn a pink glove on my pinkie I would have been the greatest golfer ever.

albertpujols_003Speaking of your knees, don’t drop down when you’re swinging a club.  In fact, try to keep your legs close together like a girl at a debutante ball instead of spread like a man.  You see that picture of Albert there to the right?  He’s doing it all wrong.  He would have no power in the masculine game of golf.  He would flounder under his poor form and get laughed out of the country club.

Did I mention the gay ass toe point?  NO?  How is that possible?  At the end of your golf swing, your back foot should be up on it’s tippy toe like a pretty little ballerina.  Extra points for wearing a tutu.

I’ll write a post about all the douchey ettiquette in another post.  But for now let me end by saying that I hate how much fun I had on the course.  Golfing is the kind of puzzle that I enjoy playing and it mixes problem solving with athletic ability which is the best of both worlds.  It really is a fun sport [Ed Note--I realize how banal this sounds to anyone who's spent any time golfing.  Again, I'm late to the party] despite the stupidity of it all.

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