Having received a set of golf clubs for graduation, along with six golf lessons, and wanting to get an early start on the type of high-society loafing I'll be doing once I'm a card-carrying member of the Bar, I took a break from bar studying this afternoon and went out and for my first golf lesson. Today I learned that the human body was not designed to play golf.
My instructor is an unassuming Filipino man who had no qualms about grabbing various parts of my body and shoving them into their proper, unnatural orientations. Despite his smallness, Asianness, and holistic approach to swinging a golf club, I successfully resisted the urge to call him Mr. Miyagi. But there are still five lessons.
This, according to my instructor, is how you make a golf ball go: You stand with your feet apart, your knees just slightly flexed (which is especially hard for me since my knees hyperextend), and your ass out. Your upper body is as straight and as extended as can be. Your left eye is just behind the ball. Once you've oriented your hands and arms in the proper arrangement of V's and triangles, you shift your weight to your right foot and swing your arms up, keeping your left arm straight and allowing your right elbow to bend until it's almost touching your unbent left elbow. Your left shoulder is tucked rather uncomfortably under your chin, which along with everything below your waist has not moved up to this point. Then, without pushing with your right arm, you pull down with your left arm and hope that the flat metal thing finds the little white pimply thing. Assuming the ball is on its way, you end up with your right foot titled and pivoted until your right knee is against your left leg, which really hurts if you have a sprained ankle that positively refuses to heal.
Engaging in the above-described contortions has a small chance of sending a golf ball into vaguely parabolic motion, but it's guaranteed to make your back hurt for the rest of the day. Maybe that's what the beer is for.
I figure my goal is to learn to play well enough to keep up with and lose to partners and clients. Maybe I can just keep score. And drink. Always the drinking.
Man, My first time playing golf I hurt my back bad. You would think there is no pain at all playing that sport.
Phew, all that body part talk is making me hot. You should do romance novels.
And Matt didn't even relate the flatulence of his instructor! This Bar studying has him behaving completely out of character!
holohan, can't you create a new generation of lawyers, wooing yor clients over foosball or chu chu rocket?
!
How do you know about Chu Chu Rocket?!
It's like you're a different person in written form than the one I come home to every night.
yes, there is a lot less pretending to be a chipmunk here on the internet.
Well, there was the summer excursion to the go-kart track in Redwood City (hidden among Redwood City's numerous roadside rock quarries, the track is impossible to find unless you've been there already).