Blog 8 – Clique Cliquety Clique! (Part 1)

I hate the idea of “clique’s”, the thought of a group of people intent on depriving others of the chance to have social interaction or to play a round of golf with them, in my opinion, is rude, obnoxious and just immature. I really don’t understand why people don’t want to share the enjoyment that golf brings with others, especially with new members to a club, who may feel a little awkward and ‘lost’ when they join a new club. In an ideal world, theses factions wouldn’t exist, the regular weekly swindle would be well advertised around the club, friendly, welcoming and encourage others to join in who may otherwise struggle to find a game elsewhere.

Blog 7: Alcohol, Golf & Brutal Honesty (Part 2)

Shane dropped a load of balls down on the floor, between me and the green was the compacted and dreary looking practice bunker, no one in their right mind would be out there in the wet working on their short game. “Show me what you’ve got, we’re going for the middle pin” said Shane. Duff, duff, thin, ooo a good one, duff, thin, ooo another good one…. you get the idea. I displayed everything that was wrong with my short game within 2 minutes of the lesson starting. It was truly terrible and without a doubt the one part of my game that was really letting me down, it was embarrassing.

Blog 7: Alcohol, Golf & Brutal Honesty (Part 1)

Golfers around the world have a love hate relationship with the game, when the weather is nice, the sun is shining and course is looking lush and green from tee to green, in my opinion, and I’m sure many others, there is no finer place to spend 4 hours of your time. There is a reason “fair weather” golfers stick the clubs in the cupboard during the cold and wet months, for the most part, winter golf is a depressing experience. Despite moaning about it, I continue to play through the cold and wet months, layering up with expensive clothing that keeps me warm & dry, or as best as it can do anyway.

Blog 6: A new platform.

Like the majority of golfers, I require lessons, I believe Rick Shiels has recently had a putting lesson and Mark Crossfield has had a chipping lesson, if those boys need tuition, then so do I. I like to think I have a pretty good understanding of the golf swing but I’m very far from being able to diagnose myself consistently with issues that are causing certain, undesirable, ball flights. I used to suffer with a vicious “power fade”, otherwise known as a slice, a shot that goes right for those who don’t play golf (yet).

Blog 5 – Time Consuming Game

My wife is one of those modern women, who think that the father should be around the house as much as the mother and that the man should pull his weight around the house, Lord help me if I don’t! I like to think I’m actually pretty good at carrying out chores around Casa Del Swanson. I’ve always been house proud, it runs in the family, everything should have its place, if it does then you’ll know where it will be when you next require it. Unfortunately for me, my lovely wife is the complete opposite. Her sister used to moan at her about clothes being left on the floor when they shared a room many moons ago, wifey always said that it was because she had no space in her drawers…. I’ve since found out that was a complete lie and she’s just one of the messiest people you’re ever likely to meet, so I tend to tidy up after her almost as much as the kids. You’re thinking I have balls of steel by saying that but she would admit to it, otherwise I would never say it.

An Awkward Position! (Part 3)

Fast forward 24 hours and I’m alerted by Neil that the club we had played had posted on their Facebook page that they lost by some “Unsportsmanlike tactics”!!! How is playing by the rules “Unsportsmanlike”? Surely that would mean that we cheated, which we certainly did not! What was even more disappointing was to see that a member of our club, who had absolutely nothing to do with the match, had taken it upon himself to comment on the post, apologizing on behalf of our club and offering to pay for a round of golf and lunch for the two guys we had played, one of his friends, another member of our club, then commented offering to make up a four ball and split the cost! For the next week, every post I read on Facebook from him had some comment about playing the game in the correct “spirit”. I felt terrible, I’d played the game by the rules but felt like the bad guy. What was even more upsetting for me was, on the odd occasion I’d played golf with them, I’d really enjoyed myself and felt like I got on really well with both of them and would never shy away from putting my name down on the competition signup sheet alongside them. They’re both well known members at my club and both very interesting and likeable characters, but how can I now go out and spend 4 hours with people who I know, don’t support me and probably have a negative opinion of me? Were they right to do what they did? That’s up to them, but to put it on a public page was upsetting for me and I’m yet to speak to either of them about it, and probably won’t as I really don’t want any confrontation. Whether our opponents will take them up on their offer, I don’t know, and I hope I never find out if I’m honest. The whole situation was blown way out of proportion and far too many people had heard about it and had an opinion on it, although on a more positive note, pretty much everyone else backed us up and had the same notion on it as us, we’d played by the rules. End of.

I was the spearhead for the whole ordeal, and will openly admit that, although Neil always says, “Enter as team, win and lose as a team”, I feel like I bared the brunt of the negative comments, maybe that’s my anxiety rearing its ugly head though. Neil and I have decided that going forward, he deals with all situations that occur, I don’t feel like I approached the problem in a brash or harsh way on the day but if he has another way of dealing with those kinds of issues, then he is more than welcome to take the lead.

I’m sure this blog post will probably divide opinion; in some respects, I really wish I hadn’t bothered “pulling out the rules book” but like I said earlier, what’s the point in playing a game if you aren’t going to play by the rules. It would be great to hear some comments, positive or negative.

Happy golfing!

An Awkward Position! (Part 2)

The par 4, 12th hole is a difficult hole and one that I’m sure has caused many people problems over the years, mainly because of a large hidden lake on the right side of the fairway which is right on driver/3 wood range. The fairway to the left of the lake pinches in making it a slightly smaller area to hit but if you lay up short of the water then you leave yourself a long 2nd shot in to an elevated green. I’d been driving the ball fairly well all day so decided to aim at the left side of the water and give it the beans! If I hit it well enough then it might carry the water, but with my draw shape, if I didn’t hit it quite how I wanted to then it would draw back into the fairway, or that was the plan anyway. I hit it reasonably well but didn’t get the right to left shape on the ball meaning that it was heading straight for the water, I could only hope that I hit it well enough to get over. After my allotted 5 minutes of searching, it was decided between ourselves and our opponents that the ball had in fact landed in the water hazard. Unfortunately, Neil’s ball must have taken an awful bounce off the fairway, which was still recovering from a very wet English winter, and was nowhere to be seen. Again, it was decided that it could only have been in the lake as well. Two watery deaths for our Srixon golf balls.

An Awkward Position! (Part 1)

This is a long one so I’ve broken it up into parts, bear with it though, it should be a good one!

Golf is a difficult game, as I wrote about in blog 3, you have to battle your swing and also the mental side of the game at all times, but what makes this game even more difficult is the sheer amount of rules that you’re expected to play by on a Saturday morning, golf is a game of honesty so you’re expected to police these rules yourself as well. Cheat the game, cheat yourself, play by the rules and you can’t really go wrong but the important thing is to know the rules, even the ones you don’t think you’ll ever need. My question to you is, if you saw someone breaking the rules, and it directly impacted you, would you do anything about it or would you just let it continue? After all, what’s the point in playing the game if you aren’t going to play by the rules? The reason I ask is that very issue presented itself to me recently so I thought it would make a good blog post.

Blog 3 – It’s a mental game! (Part 2)

I don’t tend to be an angry golfer, I might on the odd occasion hit the ground with my club after knocking one into the pond on the 13^th…..again, but I’m very guilty of beating myself up mentally especially when I miss putts which is a cardinal sin for me, I hate missing putts from inside 6 feet. All too often that missed short putt will stay with me for the next couple of holes despite my best efforts to let it go, how Ernie Els dealt with THAT mishap at Augusta took a lot of mental courage in my opinion. I’ll try very hard to not let my anger show on the outside, although sometimes that’s easier said than done, I’ve played with club throwers, club snappers, people who create a tense atmosphere through venting their anger and people who expect perfection despite being a handicap golfer so get angry with shots that, to me, didn’t look that bad! I know it’s not a nice environment to play golf in so I try to not be like those people, but as I said, sometimes it’s easier said than done. After all, we play this game for fun, don’t we? When you get angry on the course, 99% of the time it only gets worse, why this is, I don’t really know, it could be something to do with tense muscles, frustrated mind set not allowing you to concentrate properly, who knows but it’s a pain in the derriere, that’s for sure.