Friday Night Twilight

It has been a warm winter. Mid-week the temps fell into the 30s but by the weekend it was back in the 50s. I really should be grateful that the weather has been cooperating with my plans to work on my golf swing.

On Friday, I had a twilight 3pm time, so I hit the range half an hour beforehand. About a minute after I set up at a stall, a father and son set up right behind me. The kid was about 6 years old and obviously had no idea how to swing a golf club. The father started in with some incessant instructional chatter, which I tried to tune out but could not, so I picked up my ball bucket and moved to the opposite end of the range.  

In the quiet, I tried to remember the fundamentals of Mike’s drill, focusing on keeping my left arm straight and making a full swing without unhinging my wrist too soon. It felt pretty good, but I was only hitting balls about 150, same as before.

I went to check in with the Friday night twilight crew, which is me and three other golfers who attend a weekly meet-up hosted by a local golf course. They are an affable bunch, and the vibe is focused, yet relaxed. I warned them that I had started taking lessons again, so my swing might be rather unpredictable.

On the first hole, my drive went pretty straight and landed in the fairway about the same distance as usual. The second hole was a 366-yard par 4, and my drive rolled to about 150 yards within the pin. This meant that my ball had traveled about 216 yards from the tee ground, but it was a downhill fairway, so I didn’t get too excited about it.

The next hole was a 339 yard par 4. I drove the ball and thought it looked like it went farther than usual, but I couldn’t tell until I walked up to it and found a distance marker that could help me estimate how far I had landed from the center of the green. My ball had come to rest at about 170 yards away from the pin. This means that I had hit a 169-yard drive. “Could this be happening?” I thought to myself. I did the math twice to make sure it was correct. That’s almost 20 yards farther than my usual drive.

The fourth hole was a par 3, where I shanked several times because I was so excited about my long drive. On hole 5, I hit another long drive that flew about 167 yards. “This is really happening,” I thought to myself. We played three more holes before dark set in. On two of those holes, I hit driver about 155 and 165 yards.

Hole 8 was a par 3, 122 yards over water. This is one of my favorite holes to play on this course, especially in deep twilight when the setting sun casts an orange glow into the blue of the sky, and we’re playing by the light of the moon. It was especially beautiful tonight.

I hit 9-wood and landed in the bunker, but knowing that I might have made some progress with my driver distance, I remained elated.