Bits & Pieces

Goff be utterly cryit doune and not usit

By Kim J. Harmon

 

If the United States needed a reason to go to war with Scotland, I have one: golf.

Now I know the rudimentary origins of the game may go as far as third-century B.C. (if you believe the Chinese Golf Association) or the fifth-century Romans, but the accepted wisdom is that the Scottish are the ones who created the game as we know it today and for that reason I hate them.1

It’s not enough that you spend thousands of dollars on equipment that becomes obsolete just about the first time you slice your Precept U-Tri Tour ball into the woods (in fact, golfers spent nearly $5 billion on equipment in 2002 according to a survey conducted by the National Golf Foundation), but you have to spend many thousands more just for the greens fees (in fact, $19.7 billion in 2002).

And on top of that, the sport requires a skill set that is darned near impossible to master of the approximately 26.2 million golfers (those who played at least one regulation round of golf in the previous 12 months) in the United States, only 22 percent regularly score better than 90 and the average score on a regulation, 18-hole tract is 100.

Only six percent of men and one percent of women report that they regularly break 80.

What kind of madness is this?

In March of 1457, the Scottish Parliament passed a prohibition on golf, saying, “goff be utterly cryit doune and not usit.” Which, I suppose, means “you’re an idiot if you pursue this game; you are much better off staying home and mowing the lawn.”

I have spent most of my life (the last 25 years, at least) trying to figure out this darned game. It took me a little while to break double digits on a single hole (my first ever golf hole I recorded a 14 on No. 1 at Western Hills in Waterbury), but once I found the ability to get the ball off the ground on a consistent basis I discovered I had developed a banana slice.

That slice – at times, not so dramatic – stayed with me for years and only about 10 or 12 years ago did it appear to vanish altogether.

I was hitting the ball well off the tee, chipping well, and putting well and I was almost always in the 90s (low to mid). I never broke 90, but I did hit 90 a couple of times at Pine Valley in Southington and once at the Arizona Golf Resort in Mesa, Arizona (my four-foot putt for an 89 snaked to the right) last February.

I was never going to be a great (or even good) golfer, but if I could just sniff the 80s I would be happy.

But then it all went to heck in a handbasket.

I developed a yip … a chip yip. Non-golfers who are reading this may not know what a yip is, but golfers recognize it as the most dreaded word in the game (even more dreaded than bogey or slice or duck-hook).

For me, it started last May at the Stony Hill Driving Range in Bethel (although I absolve the owners and employees of all blame in the matter) as I tried to work through a large bucket of balls. I took out my sand wedge and hit two or three decent shots and then hit one directly into the screen separating my tee box from the one next to me. Another swing, another ball into the screen. Another swing, another ball into the screen.

What the … ?

Again.

Again.

Because I know so little about the mechanics of the game, I figured it had to be the club’s fault.

I put another ball down and concentrated and – yes! – got it off the mat but – no! – it came right off the toe of the club and sailed almost directly right along the row of tee boxes (thankfully, no one was maimed).

Perhaps it was a coincidence, or perhaps not, but after I put the wedge away and took a couple of swings with my driver I ruptured a disc in my back and essentially put my golf game on the shelf for the rest of the year. A year later, I was better and ready to get back to the links and I figured that since I played just once since I blew out my back, I would regain use of my wedge.

Not so.

The anomaly returned in full flower in April and after two rounds of being unable to hit a decent chip I admitted to myself it was now a yip (mechanical or mental, it was now a force unto itself). What was worse, the infection spread to my pitching wedge and to my 9-iron and now any shot under 110 yards is impossible for me.

Why is this game so darned frustrating?

Although WebMD.com indicates the yips could be more physical than mental, I am not convinced. My brother (whose handicap is about an eight, so I figure he knows what he is talking about) says I am decelerating on my swing and using my wrists too much but I have addressed both of those issues and I am still whacking these wildly erratic shots that may start endangering people who stand behind me.

I am at a loss.

After losing 16 strokes due to my chipping yip at Lyman Orchards in Middlefield on May 1, I told myself that two more rounds of this and I was putting my clubs in dry dock for the foreseeable future. And I wondered how many casual golfers like myself have abandoned the game because of a yip.

Not surprisingly, with a little surfing on the net I discovered that there is an entire industry that deals with the yip – which one doctor (Stacey Vornbrock, M.S.) described as a psychoneuromuscular (did Dr Vornbrock make that up?). Fixes can include extensive retraining (and how much will that cost, hmmmm?), psychoanalysis, hypnosis and – get this – acupuncture.

Can’t hit that chip? Let me stick a needle in your face!

I think of all the hours of sleep I have lost and all the money I have spent and it seems so much simpler to just give up the game. (I know my wife would agree … which is why I’m not bringing this problem up to her).

Hmmm, maybe I could take up miniature golf.

I was always good at that.

1 – Of course, I’m kidding