Golf Fore the Good

If what you’re looking for is a high-tech golf lesson with video, graphics and a lot of up to the minute jargon – this isn’t it. Call your local PGA professional.

My wedge hasn’t been performing well lately.

OK, I admit, it isn’t the wedge that has the problem. As is generally the case, the problem lies not with the wedge, but with the wedgee.

Having had some short game issues during my last few rounds, I made my way to the practice area, determined to sharpen up my pitching skills. I stuck to my regimen for nearly an hour, but was having one of those afternoons where nothing felt right and I made no discernible progress.

There are times that you work on a particular golf shot and everything clicks. The whole purpose of practicing is to ingrain in a golfer the proper way to make a shot. The longer you practice – and things go well – the more confidence you gain. Taking that confidence to the course the next time you play is the key. Confidence, my friend, is what it’s all about.

Then there are those times you spend hour upon hour banging a bucket, or chipping and putting and your technique just goes from bad to worse. Practicing incorrect technique is worse than no practice at all. Thus was the state of my short game routine as I tried, chip after chip, pitch after pitch, to pull it together.

That same afternoon, my friend was on the range - where he always is - a good fifty yards or more from where I diligently labored with my wedge. Methodical and disciplined, he hit ball after ball, like a machine. He was seemingly engrossed in his own routine; a steady, solid and unfaltering commitment to perfection, continually striving for further knowledge and depth to his game. Yet, somehow, I knew he was watching me.

My back straining and my spirit deflated, I eventually relinquished the war with my wedge and sidled into the bar, defeated. A good while later, my friend left the range as well and took a stool beside me.

Kindly, as if he hadn’t known, he asked “so what were you working on today?” When I responded “my pitching,” he had four short words for me, as succinct a phrase as his perfect, practiced, compact swing. “You have noodle arm,” he said.

I’ve always be partial to simple golf lessons. In-depth discussion on swing planes and launch angles and the physics behind the angular velocity and kinetic motion of the golf swing leaves me cold. I prefer to stick to the fundamentals, in a language I understand. Talk to me about set-up and grip; about tempo and balance; my take-way and turn. Boil it down to basics; noodles, I get.

At once, I understood that I had been trying to scoop the ball with my arms, to lift it rather than letting the club do the work. I could feel the swing as my friend demonstrated a weak left arm, folding in upon itself. It was the swing I had been practicing. I could even see it in my mind’s eye; a limp, overdone noodle of an arm, so floppy and loose it was obvious from fifty yards away - and it wasn’t at all appealing.

Often, the best instruction is that which is kept simple. Those are the lessons that stick. I have the imagery and the imagination to turn those four little words into a lasting lesson to which I can easily relate. The next time I have my wedge in my hand, I have a recipe for success.