COLUMN: Let yourself go and be free

When I was 11 or 12, I starting taking golf lessons after years of receiving instruction only from my Dad. My swing went to pot after a five-inch growth spurt over the winter and I had to practically relearn the game. One teacher I had told me when the ball lies below your feet on a side hill lie, it will fly to the right when hit; above your feet means flyers to the left.

She then took me onto the golf course, presented me with each lie and asked how I would approach hitting to a green with the flag located away from where the ball was supposed to go (meaning the pin was on the right side of the green when my lie promoted a right to left flight or left side of the green promoting a left to right flight).

I told her I would “refuse the slope” and hit the shot I would attempt from a flat lie: attack the right pin from left and the left pin from the right, aiming at the fat part of the green incase I hit it straight or slightly in the opposite direction so I would have a better chance of at least hitting the green.

She smirked the smirk of “teacher who knows best” and told me to try. I proceeded to do exactly what I had described to each pin four times in a row, two times to each side of the green.

“Hang on a minute,” she said, stepping in and taking the club from me. “You’re not supposed to be able to do that.”

“Well, bloody hell,” I thought. “I just freakin’ did! Lesson concluded.”

She didn’t know how I was able to bend the shots against the slop and neither did I. All I knew was that she told me the shot to hit and I hit it. Instead of breaking down why I shouldn’t have been able to hit the shot, we should have focused on how I was able to and build from there.

I had a similar experience with another teacher who, in an attempt to show me that my alignment was off, told me to aim for the shadow of the flag stick in the middle of the green. I lined up and swung, watching the ball fly through the air before I lost sight of it as it approached the putting surface.

“Where did it go?” I asked.

“Hmmm. You hit it in the shadow,” came the reply. “Well, you’re alignment still isn’t where it needs to be.”

“Bloody hell!” I thought again. “You said ‘Hit it in the shadow’ and I hit it in the freakin’ shadow! What’s so wrong about that!”

Sometimes it is easier to dismiss something rather than ask why and seek out an explanation. We try and compartmentalize things in our minds and become slightly agitated when events present us with something we can’t understand. Instead of asking questions and trying to learn more about it, we sometimes seek to break it down, pull it apart and then recreate it in our own image.

That might work, but think of all the wonderful things that we deprive ourselves of in the process. I look back on my young career as a golfer with a great deal of regret because I was never able to understand the power of focus and trust, keeping things simple and just doing them.

The fundamentals are important to learn, but you have to learn your own and not someone else’s. The process will be difficult and you will become frustrated, but it is completely necessary and ultimately rewarding.

Learn yourself, who you are and then go play and be free.