The Way Golfers Screw Up: Starting a Round
March 13, 2008 – 6:47 pm | by GolfdirtOriginally Published in HumanGolf.com
By Martin Vousden
The biggest problem with us golfers, I suspect, is that we are eternally hopeful and anyone who plays the game demonstrates time and again that old adage about remarrying: It demonstrates the triumph of optimism over experience.
Despite the fact that the game can make happy men very old, that the best we manage is to ride the crest of a ripple and that our dreams of playing well and taking the money from our opponents usually disappear before the third tee, we nevertheless always think — or hope — that it will be better next time. And that’s part of the problem. A round of golf offers 17 fresh new starts, so no matter what we did on the previous hole, there’s always the possibility of getting it right, starting with the next tee shot.
What we singularly fail to appreciate is that “getting it right” is impossible and the best we should expect or hope for is to get it less wrong than we did last week. Sadly, this would require us to think and analyze our mistakes, and then to practice in order to eradicate or lessen them — and where’s the fun in that?
Nah, let’s just carry on as we are, and celebrate the two days a year when we almost have the game mastered. And in the meantime, here’s a list of the most obvious ways in which we get it wrong.
Starting a round
We should: Arrive at the course with at least a half hour to spare. Hit a few balls on the range or practice ground — no more than a dozen; it’s just to see what game we’ve got that day and to loosen the muscles. Visit the practice putting green for five minutes, check our bag to make sure we’ve got no more than 14 clubs and that everything we might need — waterproofs, spare balls, drinks and so on — are also there.
We do: Arrive late and hop onto the first tee, dropping things as we go, trying to lace up our golf shoes and run at the same time. Oh, and on a bad day we run out of golf balls by the 13th because we didn’t have time to check our supply before the game.
NEXT: During the Game
Martin Vousden is a freelance golf writer, a former editor of Today’s Golfer and launch editor of Golf Buyer and Swing magazines. His book, With Friends Like These; A Selective History of the Ryder Cup, was published in 2006 by Time Warner. He edits the RareBirdie.com website.
