golf lessons

I started playing golf in high school. Maybe I read somewhere that having a team sport and an individual sport on your college applications was a smart move, so I added golf in the spring to balance out soccer in the winter. Or maybe I just needed an excuse to go out and whack at things. You know hormones and all that.

My high school golf team was anchored by one consistently good player (that was not me) and a few mediocre hackers (that would be me) that were anything but consistent. But my senior year, we made it to the state tournament where my memories consist of playing badly and lots of group singing while driving around in our high school’s van. Look at that girl with the Daisy Dukes on…

There’s a running joke in my family about my golf ability or lack thereof which stems from my high school golf experience. When my brother was helping to clean out my parent’s garage, he found a series of my golf trophies that indicated I had received the Most Improved award several years in a row.

I don’t find this that amusing but my family, especially my brother, thinks this is hilarious.

Later, in college, I had a required sports elective and I took golf (I also took a semester of diving and walking for fitness) because it seemed easy. I had transformed myself from high school, soccer captain, and Most Improved golfer to college, smoker, thinks-she-is-cool girl, and I wasn’t very interested in exerting myself in any sort of athletic way.

We spent a semester chipping which was fine by me, because I’ve always liked the short game the best. And that was the last time I picked up a golf club unless of course you count mini-golf with its colored balls and fast greens and bickering between my own children that makes me want to poke my eyeballs out.

When I met my husband after college, I might have given him the impression that I was a golfer. Or that I was more of a golfer than I actually am. It seemed like a harmless bending of the truth at the time.

But today is the day, fourteen years later that it comes back to bite me in the ass.

Today, I golf with my husband and a few of his colleagues (read boss), and well let’s just say I’m less nervous than I thought I would be which is probably less nervous than I should be which makes me think that this might be the longest day of my life.

To play golf is to know that you can be Tiger Woods one moment and a puddle of stress, frustration and hopelessness the next.

It’s fun!

Which is why I guess it’s so addictive, because you know you can play well you just usually don’t.

I’ve known this day was coming for awhile so I’ve prepared mentally and physically. Yesterday I killed it at the range. Even the old manager guy told me in his groveling smokers hack “Save some for the course,” which means I have undoubtedly jinxed the hell out of any chance I had of playing respectably today.

I am thankful that I’ve been through my own personal exorcism of perfectionism and worrying so much what other people think.

Otherwise, I would be really screwed.

But just to be safe, if you have a moment on this glorious October day, throw up a little prayer to the golf gods for me.

This is mine:

I’m thankful that I found something to wear.

I’m thankful that it’s cool, not hot.

Please give me patience and grace.

Please, please help me not to cry.

Please, please, please, keep my Most Improved title in place.