Fore! crying out loud
07/18/2001
Codding Home / Sports Channel / Bullz-Eye Home
It's official: I suck.
Well, I suck at golf, anyway. No question about it. I mean, I always had a feeling that I wasn't very good at the game, and I've had plenty of people tell me that I sucked. But the other day I received indisputable confirmation.
It seems Rick Rielly, the head pro at Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles, shot 110-108-103 in the three rounds of the Mauna Kea Pro-Am in Hawaii this year. Yeah, pretty terrible scores, right?
Well, Rielly had a broken wrist, meaning he was playing with just one arm. That's right, off the tee, in the fairway, on the fringe and on the green. All with one arm. His left arm, by the way. And he still nearly broke 100 in his final round.
Now, I'm still waiting for my first sub-100 round -- right now I'm pretty much stuck in the 100-110 range, which is coincidentally where each of Rielly's three rounds fell in the Mauna Kea Pro-Am. See what I'm hinting at? Go ahead, it's okay to laugh.
Yes, even a one-armed golfer would take me to the cleaners.
Now the next time one of my friends says, "I can play better than you with one hand tied behind my back," well, he's probably telling the truth. The painful truth. Rick Rielly, the one-armed wonder, would've embarrassed me on the course.
Pretty pathetic, I know. So is my golf swing. See, I currently own the worst slice known to man. Most of my drives start out well but then, inexplicably, they all suddenly veer off to the right in search of the nearest patch of trees or body of water. Fairway woods and irons? Same thing. Some of my putts trickle off to the right too. Kind of a habit, I suppose.
But the most unnerving thing about my slice complex is, I know what I need to do to correct my swing. Everyone tells me to fix a slice, all I've got to do is (trumpets please):
... bring my top hand over.
That's it. Just bring my stubborn right hand over my left on my swing. Sounds simple, right? Well, you're as much of a fool as I am. It's not simple, not after four or five years of doing everything the wrong way. Throwing a baseball is simple. Making a grilled cheese is simple. Hell, cutting my backyard with a pair of needle-nosed pliers is a cakewalk, at least, when compared with bringing my top hand over on my golf swing. But that's what everyone tells me I've got to do.
My friends say it, my grandfather said it, my uncles have said it, and the desk jockey at the driving range says it all the time: "Bring your top hand over." And I just can't do it. So instead of trying to fix it the right way, I take some shortcuts. I open up my stance so far that my front foot practically doubles as my back foot, sort of in the mold of Baltimore third baseman Tony Batista. That way my drives start out way left, but when the ball makes that sharp cut to the right it winds up in the general vicinity of the fairway I'm actually playing. I also stand behind the ball a little more than most golfers, hopefully giving my top-challenged right hand time to pull over. My uncle, a former golf pro, calls those shortcuts, "band-aides," because they only cover up the problem.
My golf game has more band-aides than a hemophiliac in a sword fight.
"Just bring your top hand over. Just bring it over." Hey, did I finally get that damn top hand over when I just chucked my driver into the woods? No? Better try it again with my seven iron, then. Practice makes perfect.
That's why most of my swings are taken at the driving range. Ah yes, the driving range... . The Hacker's Haven. A Sanctuary for the Slicers. The Fountain of Youth for dying golf games. The driving range.
I hate the driving range.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea behind the driving range. I just don't really like the people at the driving range. Sure, some of them are my brethren, forking over $8.00 for a large wire basket filled with cracked range balls to hopefully cure whatever ails their drowning golf games. They don't bother me.
It's all those other damn people that irritate me.
I was at the range the other day, cursing my right hand and every last one of my clubs, when a family of three walked up beside me -- a man, his wife and their teenage son. The son and the father each had their own clubs and they took the two open slots to my left while the wife sat on the bench behind them to watch. So far, so good.
Then this moron, the dad, picks up his driver, takes a few practice swings and starts launching balls about 200-250 yards away, which in of itself wasn't bad, but little did I know I had a Pseudo-Pro in my presence.
I'm sure you've seen a Pseudo-Pro before: These are the guys who show up with the $1200 clubs, the shoes, the glove, the whole nine iron. But something's just not right with a Pseudo-Pro. Sure, he'll pull out that driver and smack a few gorgeous drives into oblivion, but then he'll duff the next one or send it way off to the left.
And this guy, like all Pseudo-Pros, loved to showboat, saying things like, "wow, that's pretty" or "I really bruised that one" as he held the pose after a particularly nice hit. Yeah, that one was pretty but the one before that looked like you hit it with a yardstick, pal.
Then Tiger Mania swept through our little corner of the range:
"Wow, honey, did you see that? Must've gone about 230."
"Yes, dear, I saw it."
"Gonna have to start calling me Tiger, huh?"
"Yes, dear, someday soon."
Tony the Tiger?
"Whoa man, I really spanked that one! Looks like Tiger's out today!"
Oh geez.
"Nice hit, son. That was about 170, 180, huh? We'll start calling you Tiger soon!"
"Sure dad."
Excuse me, sir? Would you please shut the hell up, or would you rather have your cute puppy dog club-head cover stuffed up your right nostril? I could go with either one -- I'm flexible.
But until I figure out the Mystery of the Top Hand, I've got to deal with those Pseudo-Pros -- I'm afraid to go out to the course and risk ridicule. My father-in-law has invited me to his weekend outings on several occasions, but much like that ugly great-aunt you've got in your attic, I keep my golf game hidden from sight while I'm working out the kinks. And at least at the range there are always a handful of people who have never seen a proper swing, much less duplicated one. They always make me feel good.
Much the same way I'm sure I make other people feel when they watch my swing.
In the Bullz-Eye
Cleveland closer John Rocker. After a few horrendous outings in which the loud-mouthed pitcher gave up six earned runs in 2.2 innings pitched, Indians manager Charlie Manuel has temporarily handed the closer's job back to Bob Wickman, who converted 15 of his 17 opportunities before Rocker's arrival. Everyone in baseball knows Rocker has a better arm than Wickman, but the former Atlanta pitcher just hasn't gotten it done in Cleveland, losing three straight games and blowing two saves in his last five appearances.