The Fitting

Yesterday I went to Golf Galaxy for a free 30-minute Ping fitting. I thought there would be a representative from Ping there, so I was surprised to find that it was just the usual sales guy conducting the fittings. I brought my old Ping G2 clubs to compare to the new Ping Faith clubs. The sales guy directed me to the first hitting bay and asked me to hit balls with my 7-iron. 

“How far do you usually hit with a 7-iron? 130, 140?” he said.

“Uh, isn’t that how far men hit? I’m more like 105, 110,” I said. According to a chart on amateur golf club distances, the women’s average is 90 yards.
“We’ve had some women come in here and hit that far,” he said.
“Well, I’m working on it,” I said.

The sales guy lined up some balls for me, and I started to whack at them. As I practiced, a few more people arrived for their fittings. There they stood, outside the bay, gathered like carnival goers who’d come to see the freak show. I felt so exposed, performing for their amusement like an animal in a cage, a monkey who learned to swing a golf club. “I am not an animal!” I felt like roaring. It didn’t help that my golf teacher Mike was there in the background, pretending not to look, his mere presence making me feel very self-conscious.

I felt the glare of the overhead lights and a dozen pairs of eyes watching me, as my hits registered on the computer monitor mounted high on the wall. I glanced up at the screen to find a bunch of colored dots had all landed around 105-110, just like I said they would.

The sales guy put some impact tape on the face of the club. I hit one in the center and two slightly off-center but still mostly inside the red circle on the tape. He said that means the shaft length of my club is okay for me. Then he put some impact tape on the sole of the club and had me hit balls off of a plastic board. He looked at the markings which all showed a mark toward the toe of the club. He asked if my iron shots tended to go a little to the right.

“I guess so,” I said. Of course, sometimes they go left or straight, I thought to myself.
“I think you need to go to the black dot,” he said.

In the Ping fitting system, clubs have different colored dots to indicate the lie angle of the club. When I got my G2s, I picked the orange dot based on my height and a wrist-to-floor measurement. But according to the impact tape test, that was wrong. I needed a more standard lie angle, not the flatter orange-dot one.

The sales guy then got a Ping 7-iron with a black dot on it and put some impact tape on the sole. I hit a ball off the plastic board. The tape showed a solid mark dead in the center.  

“So does this mean I could buy a standard set of Ping irons off the shelf and play better with them?” I asked.

“Yup,” he said. “You’re one of the lucky ones.”

But he went on to explain that while I would hit straighter, I wouldn’t get more distance with them, according to the computer data. I tried out the Ping Faith driver, too, and even that didn’t generate more distance for me than my old G2. He suggested that rather than buy a new set of Pings, I should get my old ones sent back to the factory where they could adjust the lie angle. This would cost far less than a new set.

But I do want a new set someday. I’m just waiting for Ping to come out with a color combination for women’s clubs that I actually like. The G2’s are blue, which has never been my favorite color. The Faith series is maroon and white. I’m thinking more like green or gold. Or green and gold. At least I know I’m a black dot now, which is good because black matches everything. 

In the meantime, if my shots go to the right, I can blame it on the orange dot.

Spring Flowers

Got these cool new crystal-encrusted ball markers the other day. My golf glove has a snap-on ball marker, but I found out I can replace it with these cute, colorful snap-on flowers made by a company called Bonjoc. They have lots of color combinations, with glitter and without. I bought them for $4.95 each from a retailer called Ready Golf, which sells every kind of ball marker imaginable. They even have ball marker bracelets. Seri gave me the butterfly-shaped ball marker shown below. It's magnetic and affixes to a hat clip and she got it in Korea. Now I want a Hello Kitty one too.

Just a little bling for the putting green that's totally cheerful for spring, whether I make my putts or not!  

18 + 18 = 36

I played 36 holes yesterday. It was Bea’s idea. I’ve never played a back-to-back round. Bea said she used to do it often, during a seven-year stretch when she was “crazy” about golf and played almost every day. That was before she had to stay home with a kid. Now that her daughter’s graduated college and flown the nest, it’s back to golf like crazy. Like me, she’s recovering from a back injury, but last week she said she’s ready for 36.

We had a 10:04am tee time. It’s mostly older, retired people at the golf course in the morning, so we were paired with two men who looked like they had fought in WWI. The kind who wear saggy white undershirts and knee socks with sandals and just don’t give a darn anymore. After Bea and I teed off and they saw our drives roll down the fairway, one of them chortled, “Looks like we got ourselves a couple of ringers!”

The weather was supposed to be sunny with highs in the mid-70s. Instead it was overcast and in the high 60s and stayed that way all day. Plus, the greens were being aerated. For a $3 discount, we were treated to perforated greens sprinkled with sand. One benefit of the dot matrix was that occasionally it provided a putting line:

As for how I played, well, I rode the first round and shot a 98. I walked the second round and shot a 101. But I had more fun during the second 18 holes, when it was just me and Bea playing and we didn’t have to worry about the politeness and protocol of playing with strangers. If only I hadn’t shot that snowman on a par 3 and that bacon and egg on a par 5, I would have scored better too. It also would have helped if the greens weren’t riddled with holes.

The good news is Mike’s pitching and chipping lesson has already started to pay off, as evidenced by some of my 40-50 yard pitches that landed close to the pin:

After 36 holes and 8 hours at the golf course, I was pretty exhausted. The day went by so fast. Almost too fast. Golf is like that. When you're focused on chasing around a little ball, it's easy to lose track of time. And when you're not focused on your own ball, you're looking out for where your playing partners have hit, making sure you're not in their way, tending the flagstick, keeping a fast pace, and performing all the other niceties that make a round of golf civilized fun.

I do remember pausing at one point, when I was waiting for Bea to take a shot, and looking around to just breathe the fresh air and enjoy the scenery, at the center of which was a beckoning green.

 

At the end of the day, I was blissfully happy, but tired to the bone. I’m not sure I’d do it again, but I’d never say never!

The Golf Lesson: 3

I had my third lesson with Mike at Golf Galaxy today. I told him I shot a 94 last week and my drives were around 170-185 these days. He didn’t seem all that surprised, but when I told him I wanted to focus on short game stuff for this lesson, he raised his eyebrows. I suppose I’ve been so focused on getting longer that chipping and pitching seem like an afterthought. But I know my short game needs work.

Mike said, “Okay, let’s start with your sand wedge.”

I went into my bag and got out the club marked U, which is my shortest iron and the one I use to hit out of bunkers.
“That’s not a sand wedge, “ Mike said.
“It’s not?” I said, genuinely shocked.
“Don’t you have a club with an S on it?”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “I use the U club for sand and the W for 75 yards and in. I thought the U was the sand wedge in my set of clubs.”

Mike then reached for an actual sand wedge among his clubs. He showed me how a real sand wedge has a different edge at the bottom. It’s not flat to the ground like my U club.

“That gives it bounce, right?” I said. “ I have heard of that.”

“Right,” Mike said. “You need to get yourself a sand wedge.”

Since I didn’t have a sand wedge, we used my U club for the lesson. I showed him the two techniques I typically used for pitching and chipping. One is like a regular iron stroke, where I vary how far I take the club back to control the distance. In the second technique, I stand facing the target at a 45 degree angle, with my heels together and toes pointing out slightly from each other like a duck. My husband taught me the second method. It seems to work well for him.

Mike showed me another way. He could see that my duck feet were an attempt at an open stance. But he said that wasn’t really an open stance.

“Imagine a door,” he explained. “Closed would be your hips and feet parallel to the target line. Open would be your hips and feet swinging open toward the target like a door.”

He showed me how opening my stance limits how far I can take my arms back. This will give me better control on short shots. For the longer pitch shots, I don’t need to open my stance as much, since I need to take my arms back more to hit farther.

The other main point is to keep all my weight on the left throughout the shot. Also, on shorter shots, arms stay straight, and there is no wrist hinge. On longer shots, I can let my wrists hinge for more power.

Using this new technique, Mike had me practice short, medium, and long pitches. The toughest thing was resisting the urge to shift my weight from right to left. On one of the medium shots, Mike held up a plastic tube about waist high and said, “Okay, now try and hit the ball over the tube.”

I tried, but the ball veered to the right and hit Mike right in the crotch. He put his hand up to block the shot, but not quite fast enough. He flinched, then laughed. I laughed too, in embarrassment.

I don’t know when my next lesson will be since that was the last of a three-lesson deal. It probably won’t be anytime soon, since I have a lot of pitching and chipping to practice. But if I do take another lesson, I’ll have to remind Mike to wear a jock strap next time.

 

Good Thing a Cup Is There

I made a major change to my putting technique recently. This has really helped me hole out in two or one putts more often than three or more.

Before, I held the putter at the end of the grip, which forced me to bend my arms so I could still get my eyes on top of the ball as much as possible.

Now, I choke down on the putter grip, which allows my arms to hang straight down, and I can still get my eyes over the ball. The extra length past my grip allows a nice counter-weighting feel which gives me a sense of more stability as I swing my arms like a pendulum during the putting stroke.

 

I made this change after observing Seri's putting posture. She is one of the best putters I have ever seen in person and has a greens-reading technique which I still don't understand. It involves estimating yardages and doing mental mathematical calculations for each 4 inches of grade change or something. These correspond to the number of inches she takes back the putter on the backswing. It figures she'd have a complex formula for reading greens, since her husband is a nuclear physicist. Then again, hubby and I just played golf with them over the weekend, and Seri's husband seems to be more of a "feel" putter, like me. That is, if I'm not feelin' it, I don't putt well.

Anyway, Seri putts by choking down almost to the metal shaft, with straight arms and eyes over the ball. She also anchors her putter on her belly. Not that she uses a belly putter, but she has a rubber suction cup at the end of her grip that she uses to retrieve balls from the cup. This attachment is a couple inches long, and Seri is petite enough that it effectively turns her regular length putter into a belly putter if she bends over just a bit.

When it comes to belly putting, though, I side with the traditionalists who feel that anchoring the club on the body somehow violates the spirit of fair play. Whether or not a ruling against belly putters ever becomes official, I will probably stay away from them. I mean, the size of my belly varies from week to week, so developing a consistent putting technique based on something that varies with the amount of potato chips I have eaten on any given day seems rather imprudent, dontcha think?

     

Two Words: Ninety Four

I shot a 94 today!!! Woohoo!!! That is a personal best. I didn’t think this would happen today but it did. It was a perfect spring day, a sunny blue-sky day, with highs in the mid 70s and winds in the 5-10 mph range. I had a 12:04pm tee time at the same course I played last week. There were four of us this time – me, Seri, Bea, and a woman I’ll call Debbie Harry because she’s an older blonde with wavy, sun-bleached hair.

I shared a cart with Debbie Harry, and since she’s a native English speaker like me, I felt free to be chatty. I think I was a little too chatty, though. Debbie is a beginner, and when I saw her struggling on the first hole, I felt compelled to let unsolicited advice bubble forth from my mouth, like magma oozing from a volcano.

I told her to keep her feet closer together and let her arms hand straight down. After she took a practice swing, I said she should try and keep her left arm straight. When I heard her audibly sigh, I caught myself, and said “Okay, enough. I won’t say another word.” Suddenly, I realized why my husband always tried to give me advice when I was first learning golf. I think he really was just trying to help. But golf is an agony that must be suffered alone, so I zipped my lips.

Debbie Harry confessed she’d never heard the left arm straight thing and she’d work on that. For the rest of the round, we chitchatted about other things. And I focused on my own game.

On the front nine, my longer drives allowed me to make greens in regulation. I only three-putted twice and scored a 43, an all-time low for me. I told Seri and Bea that maybe I should ride a cart more often because it seems to conserve energy that I can use for playing.

On the back nine, things were going along in a similar fashion, but on the 14^th hole, I suddenly had this feeling that I was missing a club. Although it turned out that I had just returned a club to a different slot in my bag, this wondering about missing clubs prompted Debbie Harry to count her clubs and she realized that she was, in fact, missing a club. Somewhere after the turn, she had forgotten her wedge.

After we teed off on 14, she decided to take the cart and go look for her club. Uncertain which club to use for my second shot, I took my 7-wood, 7-utility, and putter out of my golf bag. I also grabbed my purse, not because I didn’t trust Debbie Harry with it, but because I lived in New York for 10 years and always needing to have my purse within eyeshot is a habit I’m simply unable to quit. (In church, I even take my purse with me to the communion line.)

Even with these important objects in hand, I instantly regretted not bringing along my scorecard too. Because I had shot a record-low 43 on the front half, that scorecard had already become a sentimental treasure to me. Something I would put in a scrapbook (if I had time to scrapbook). I pictured my scorecard clipped precariously to the steering wheel of the cart as Debbie Harry drove away with it. One stiff breeze and that scorecard would be gone with the wind.

Anyway, there I was dragging 3 golf clubs and my Lesportsac handbag along the fairway, hoping that Debbie Harry would find her club pronto and be back in a jif. I took my second shot, which landed in a bunker near the green. Once there, I realized I did not have a sand wedge. Luckily, Bea offered to lend me hers. I noticed that she had a label on her grip, saying “Thumb to the right.” That is so cute, I thought, picturing her typing out little reminders with her P-touch like a Martha Stewart of golf.

After I got out of the sand and landed on the green, I two-putted and scored a bogey on that hole. Debbie Harry finally returned by then, but she still hadn’t found her club. I suggested calling the pro shop since whoever found it would probably send it over to the lost-and-found. She called them, and sure enough, they had her wedge.

And I had my scorecard back in sight. On the 15^th hole, I was feeling the pressure to perform, and an off-center drive resulted in my ball landing in some scraggly dirt patch under some trees. It was a terrible, uneven lie, but I gave it a quick punch. The ball moved a few feet to another scraggly dirt patch, and I pounded it out into the fairway. From there, I took a hard whack with my 7-utility, hoping to make it onto the green. Instead, it missed left and landed in some mulchy groundcover on a hill. It took another two shots to get out of there. Then I three-putted. Total for that hole was 9.

Things were not looking great, but I held it together and shot bogey and par on the next two holes. On the 18^th hole, I teed off and hit a tree. I thought the ball shot through the branches and would be findable among the dried winter leaves littering the fairway. Once I got there, I could not locate my ball. Seri said she thought it went out of bounds, through the chain-link fence. I saw the group behind us was waiting at the tee ground, so I gave up the search and took a drop below the tree my ball had hit. It took me 8 strokes to hole out, including two self-imposed penalty strokes for losing my ball.

Later, I found out that two strokes was an appropriate penalty, since I should have actually gone back and teed off again, according to Rule 27-1 of the Rules of Golf. If I had followed the rule, the penalty would have been one stroke. Since I breached this rule, the penalty is two strokes. I think this will teach me to always hit a provisional ball if I’m ever in doubt about finding my tee shot.

In the end, I shot a hard-won 94. It could have been worse. But it turned out to be a personal best. Definitely one for the scrapbook.

Playing Through

Once upon a time, spring marked the beginning of my golf season. It used to be that, sometime in March, I’d drag out the golf clubs, which had been dormant since November, take them out to the range and hit some balls. My first swings held a prediction, like the groundhog. If I sliced or hooked, it meant I had some work to do. If I hit the ball straight, it meant 8 months of good golfing ahead. Usually I’d hit it straight and say to myself, “Yup, I still got it.”

But, since I played through the winter this past year, there are some things I missed, such as when golf season ended in the fall, that sudden excess of time on my hands, which had enabled me to cross off neglected chores from my to-do list. And this spring, I won’t have a first round of the year where I am grinning ear-to-ear with delight at the novel sensation of fresh air on my face, and I am happy as a puppy to be playing outdoors in the grass.

But if I hadn’t played through, I wouldn’t have made progress with my swing. I wouldn’t have come to the realization that I am tough enough to play when it’s cold enough for snow.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the warm weather and sunshine. But spring means only one thing to me now: Time to break out the bug spray.