No Lessons, Please, Just Advice

I don’t want to take golf lessons. Okay, I know that’s wrong-headed. But it’s the way it is.

I’m relatively new to the game. I’m having fun just being out there, swinging away as best I can, seeing what happens. And, of course, the good shots come just frequently enough to keep me coming back for more.

And, I know, too, from a being longtime skier, that lessons from a competent pro are the best way to not only improve, but to get more enjoyment from your efforts.

But, still. I don’t want to take lessons.

I don’t want to have to think about technical mumbo-jumbo like swing planes and club face alignment.

I just wanna have fun.

Which is exactly what I was doing when I ventured over to the Fairmont Algonquin Golf Course in New Brunswick’s St. Andrews By-the-Sea, Canada.

I was just hitting some drives at the range with some fellow writers, waiting to play a round, when this guy comes up to me, looks my swing over, and says "You played baseball when you were growing up, didn’t you?"

I stopped. "Yes," I said. "Lots of baseball. Why?"

"You’re lifting your front foot when you swing," he answered in a very pleasant and understated tone. "When you swing in baseball, you step up and forward. When you swing in golf, you need to keep both feet on the ground."

Huh?

I took a swing. By god, he was right. My foot was going up like a baseball swing.

I tried it his way. By god, look at that—high and straight. I took out a seven iron, and did the same. A good trajectory and—you guessed it—straight as an arrow.

Now, maybe thinking about my front foot allowed me to forget about any other things I’d been distracting myself with and swing more naturally. I’ll never know. But, suddenly the ball was flying with much more consistency.

I took to this guy. He goes by the name of Gary Campbell. All of 25 years old, he’s an assistant pro at Algonquin. His manner was slightly reserved, and he never pushed advice at me.

He waited til I asked.

Like, when I found myself in the sand. "What’s the secret to this situation?" I queried.

"Don’t look at the ball," he said. "Find a spot two inches behind it, and hit down on that spot."

More immediate results.

By the time we’d finished, I suddenly understood the basics of short chips from just off the green ("I’m going for an up-and-in," I announced with new-found confidence, "no up-and-down for me!"), and why my short irons always went left ("You’re hitting off your back foot.")

The other day I heard former New York governor Mario Cuomo being interviewed on the radio about his golf game. Mario, too, grew up playing baseball. "It’s hard to develop a golf swing [from a baseball swing] when you start playing golf after age fifty," he joked.