Learning To Golf - Round 5

[newtogolf]

After Round 4 I spent alot of time at the range, trying to groove my swing on both my irons and woods. I know I'd be playing in a scramble tournament and didn't want to embarrass myself around strangers.

The stars weren't lining up for great results in my first tournament. I was playing in the tournament as part of a out of town business seminar. I didn't want to incur the expense and pain of traveling with my clubs so I arranged to rent, strike one. I went out the night before, and partied harder and later than I planned to, strike 2. We arrived at the course late, it was only about 40* and there wasn't any time for me to warm up with the rented clubs, strike 3.

To make matters worse, I got paired up with two 10 and a 24 handicapper so I was going to be the worst player by far of the foursome. I knew before these guys even told me their handicap was 10 they were probably good golfers since they both had brought their own clubs with them, and their bags were filled with forged irons one with Titleist, the other Mizuno and both their drivers and woods were Titleist.

Fortunately the 10 handicappers were cool guys and the 24 handicapper was a friend so it was alot better than it could have been. First hole was a Par 4, 440 and Mizuno guy hit the ball a ton, his first drive was at least 320 without much roll as the ball plugged due to the heavy rain the night before. The Titlesit guy hit his drive 275, my friend playing the same rented Ping G5's sliced and I topped my drive for a whopping 10 feet. We played the Mizuno guys first ball and after they both hit 9i's within 10 feet of the pin and we had our first birdie and one putted. I would have been more embarrassed with my play had I not been so in awe of how good these guys could play. My friend and I got into our cart and agreed that we weren't going to be using too many of our hits today.

The rest of the holes went pretty much the same way, we had 4 birdies, one bogey and the rest were pars. These guys would have done better if the wind wasn't blowing about 30 mph the entire time, seemed always in our face though I know that's not possible. Since there weren't any rules to who's ball was used, I didn't contribute much. I had one great drive with my 3w which went about 220, and they both decided to go all out hitting their drives easily 320+ but into some nasty rough or woods so we actually used my drive and fairway hit on one hole. My friend actually hit some great drives on par 3's which we used, but otherwise we were playing the other guys shots.

While I was bummed at my play, it was a great experience to play with two golfers that were so much better than me and see how they play. Their approach was polar opposites, Mizuno guy walked up to the ball and swung, no practice swing, no pausing, just would walk up, aim, address the ball and swing. Titleist guy was more methodical, he had a routine that was repeated every hit, from practice swings to aiming, and waggles right before the swing. I can't say I learned alot, other than I don't like the G5's with steel shafts, and I got to experience what it looks like to be on a course with guys that can play.