There are a lot of things to like about the game of golf, but try telling them to an easily frustrated 13-year-old who thinks he can only get better by repetition.
The recent string of holes-in-one at Moose Jaw’s Lynbrook Golf Course 0 they had basically one a day for a stretch last week – has got me thinking about the game and I having a strained past, starting from when I was a small child.
Before we moved to Moose Jaw, my parents got me a child's set of clubs. I'm sure they weren't inexpensive but they were right-handed clubs and I was (and still am) a lefty. It wasn't an unreasonable assumption to make, given that both of my parents are right-handed.
I wasn't trying to be obstinate this time, I legitimately am a left-handed and golf and with a baseball bat. Left-handed clubs must have been tough to find at the time so I didn't end up getting clubs until I was 12 and used Christmas and birthday money to order a set at Consumers Distributing in the Town 'N' Country Mall (located about where Sportchek is now) and gleefully picked them up along with a Wilson bag at the mall.
And there was my meal ticket out of this one horse town. I'd golf better than anyone, without proper instruction, because I'd be more determined that anyone and I'd practice more than anyone could. Spoiler alert – it didn't quite work out. My dogged determination to spend all of my allowance and lawn-mowing money and spare summer afternoons walking back and forth to the Lynbrook from our northwest Moose Jaw home meant that I'd started to fulfill what I thought was my destiny.
The following April, my parents got me a membership at the Lynbrook. I still hadn't broken 120 but it was now only a matter of time. Every dollar I had was still going to buying sleeves of balls and tees. Every couple of days (if it wasn't raining, and I don't remember the summer of 1989 as being anything but bright and sunny), I'd walk there and ask the pro if I could jump on.
“You don't have to keep showing me that,” he'd say before telling me that I could get in between the two teams in front. Or I'd join a duo. Whatever the case, I was never getting any better making the same mistakes every time on the course. Avid reader that I was, I picked up a few tips from golf magazines (although to be honest, finding out Curtis Strange could make $100,000 on any given week was more of a thing for me).
I tried to burn the tips themselves into my head but because I didn't see immediate improvement, it was never going to do much good. Impatience set in and by the end of the summer, I had fallen out of favour with the game.
When we moved to Regina, it wasn't easy to find a course so easy to jump on as the then-sand green Lynbrook was. It became easier to fall out of favour with golf as the years went on.
When I was invited to play in a few charity events with other people I worked with years later, I still had the same clubs as I had as a young teen. I wasn't any better than those days, and although the clubs weren't the greatest help it wasn't their fault.
Now, a few moves and a separation later, the clubs have vanished, a part of my life that no longer hold precedence over anything. Any requests by myself to golf are politely declined. What fun is golfing on rentals, anyway?
Now, with basically a hole-in-one falling at the drop of a Titleist visor at my old course, I wonder how I'd have reacted at that age with such a perfect shot going in. Must have been some unfortunate pin placements in my day. I'm sure that was it.
