Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

“We thought we’d take you to the driving range so you can practice before we try to play a game.”

My mom is so nice to me. She is obviously worried that I’ll be embarrassed by my horrible golf skills, so she wants to protect me. Little does she know that I have no embarrassment about anything athletic. I just assume I’ll be horrible and if I perform even halfway good, I’m ecstatic.

Mike and I meet Reed and my mom at the the driving range. I pull my new clubs out of the trunk and look for them. I spot Reed with two buckets of balls and we hurry to catch up to him. I show off my golf clubs to Reed. He helped me pick them out over the cellphone, so I’m excited to show them. Compared to my mom’s they look beat up, but I’m happy to have my own toys to play with. I don’t share very well.

“Do we have to pay?” I ask.

“You have to pay for the balls. They’re six dollars a bucket,” Reed replies.

Golfing is a lot less expensive than I expected it to be. I paid $35 for my clubs and now only $6 for a huge bucket of balls.

My mom starts instructing me while Reed pours some balls into the small bin, “When you’re driving, you use the 1 wood, but we’re going to start you out on the 7 iron. You want to hold your club like this.”

She holds her golf club and her thumbs and forefinger form a “V” on the club.

“You should lock your pinky fingers.”

Reed cuts in, “She doesn’t have to lock her fingers. I don’t, see?” Reed holds his club so we can see. He doesn’t lock his pinky fingers because he’s missing his pinky on his right hand. He laughs at his joke.

Reed takes over the instruction, “Now, you are going lift back, swing and hit the ball. Don’t forget to follow through.”

I aim for the 100 sign in the distance. I swing and hit the ball about 50 yards, halfway to the sign. Reed and Mom cheer. Mike takes his turn and hits the ball nearly to the 100 sign. We all cheer for him.

“Well, you’re better than I was the first time,” Mom says.

The four of us keep driving balls. My furthest almost reaches the 100 sign. Mike hit one past the 150 sign. Reed continually hits the 200 sign without a problem. Lots of times, I took a swing and hit nothing.

“You looked up. Your club will go where your eyes go, so you have to keep your eye on the ball,” Reed offers.

I had to keep my eye on the ball when I played tennis, but I didn’t expect it in golf. It’s not like the ball is going to bean me. It just stays on the ground. When I keep my eye on the ball, however, I hit the ball. When I don’t I don’t.

“Let’s move you to the 1 wood,” my mom suggested.

Now, I can’t hit the freakin’ ball. It’s like I had to learn all over again. After several practices with the ball on the tee, I was finally able to do it again.

We hit the yellow balls until they were all gone. That took about thirty minutes.

Then we practiced putting and pitching. We used our own balls for that, so it was absolutely free. I couldn’t believe our luck. All this golfing for only six bucks? I thought golf was for rich people.

After hitting the ball as hard as we could, it was a surprise to try to putt. Our balls went far further than we expected and even further than they would have at a miniature golf course. Somehow the green was smoother and cleaner than astroturf. I have never seen grass like the grass by the hole.

Reed let Mike use his fancy putter that cost more than my entire set of clubs, but it didn’t seem to stop Mike from slamming the ball across the green. Both of us kept overshooting the hole. Putting seems to be our weakest points right now.

We practiced pitching from the rough. That felt better because we needed to give it some power to get it close to the hole.

Mom and Reed made us stop practicing after an hour. “You’re going to be sore tomorrow if you do any more.” I could already feel the ache in my right forearm, so I didn’t argue.

“We’ll go golfing again next Sunday. This time we’ll get a tee time and play a game.”

I could hardly hold in my excitement.