Fore!

I used to think that people obsessed with golf were absolute nut-jobs. Little miniature clubs on their key chains, golf-ball shaped paper weights on their mahogany desks, walking around in their pressed khaki pants and bright polo shirts, pretending that riding around in a miniature car is a form of exercise. Not that I was discounting the difficulty of golf, because heaven knows how anyone can hit a little one-and-a-half-inch ball into a five-inch hole that is somewhere in the grass, four hundred yards away.

But my opinion had to change when Jordan decided he wanted to teach me how to golf. It is probably going to be a life-long hobby of his, this “let’s teach Diana about sports!” game because, let’s face it, it will take a lifetime for me to learn all that I have missed by not being involved in the sporting world. He took me into the backyard, handed me his pitching wedge, and said, “hit that dandelion.” I stood in front of it in a stance that I vaguely remembered from summer school PE classes, and swung. Then began the teaching. Bend the knees, left arm straight, don’t bend the wrists, eye on the ball, above the shoulder, turn the torso, loosen up. I swung at a lot of dandelions that afternoon, and actually sent a few of them flying.

A few weeks later we took a trip to the driving range with our friends Mike and Brittany. We stopped at the American Fork DI and I picked out a 9 iron and an awesome wood (actually made of wood!) to make my first set of golf clubs. It was a beautiful, sunny spring day. We each got a bucket of balls and headed down to the course’s little driving range, and began whacking. I was really starting to get the hang of it. After a while, I realized “hey, I’m not that bad at this,” and then I realized “hey, I’m really enjoying this!” There was something invigorating about being out in the warm sun, focusing my energy on making a complex, unnatural movement become a fluid, powerful motion. I liked the feeling of slight strain in my back from crouching over, the pressure of holding the club in my hands. Many of my hits were totally off and would bounce just a few yards down the run, but then there were the hits that were like singing—the club swinging around in a perfect arc to make contact with the ball just right and send it hurtling out into space. In those swings, it was like the moment of contact between club and ball bonded the two together, and through the club I could feel the ball like it was a part of me, like the letting go was the release of air from my lungs. Effortless.

We went to the driving range again today, this time with Jordan’s brother, Jason. I hadn’t practiced in a long time, and the wind was whipping like a rattlesnake, so I didn’t get many good hits. But it was still fun, and I would still like to go again. Then someday, when I can actually hit the ball straight, I will go out onto the real course, and fully discover why the green is always calling those people with the golf-ball paperweights back…