I’ve done what I set out to do—beat the best round from my youth. What else is there to prove?
The smart move is to put away the sticks while I’m feeling warm and fuzzy about the game. Definitely.
Day 412
What a hopeless bonehead I am—straight from the dentist’s chair to the first tee, pain-on-pain. Only three days after playing so well, I’ve developed a scalding shank.
On the 10th fairway, I spook a bald eagle that’s been wolfing down the remains of a carp. I misguidedly greet this sighting as some sort of mystic omen—an eagle on the wing portending an eagle on this tricky par-5?
When I slice my next shot into the lake, it becomes clear that the true omen was the dead carp. I close with two doubles and a triple on my way to a 90.
Should’ve quit when I had the chance. Definitely.
Day 413
Lupica advises me to play the perilous closing holes at Quail Valley over and over until they are my friends. Perhaps then I’ll stop gagging down the home stretch.
When I start describing my new world-class shank, he cuts me off and exclaims, “Don’t ever use that word!”
“What?”
“That word that begins with ‘s.’ Don’t even say it!”
He seems painfully intimate with the affliction.
Day 416
Talk about toxic mojo.
I hook a fairway wood over a hill and nearly take out the only other players on the course, who are teeing off on a parallel hole. Rushing to apologize, I see that the foursome includes my friend Joe Simmens, the very person who’d talked me into giving golf another try. Today he’s having second thoughts.
This is only Joe’s second visit to Quail Valley, so the odds of meeting him here—much less nearly beaning him—were remote. It’s good that I didn’t put him in the hospital, since he is also the general contractor on our new house.
The encounter leaves me so flustered that I hit an even wilder tee shot off the next tee. Finally I locate my Titleist 1—or what I presume is my Titleist 1—in nappy turf behind a row of trees. I chip out anemically, and when reapproaching the ball I notice, to my dismay, that it’s not mine. I am fairly sure of this because the name “Alan” is imprinted on the side.
Manfully I absorb a two-stroke penalty for striking the wrong ball (USGA Rule 15-3), and record a 7 on the hole. Being in nearly pristine condition, “Alan” becomes my new water ball, performing gallantly until falling victim to another snap-hook on the 11th.
Later, when I tell Leibo how I nearly smoked my builder with a blind 3-wood, he says, “In other words, no one is safe. You’re basically the Typhoid Mary of the golf course.”
Day 419
A wake-up call at 4 a.m. from my throbbing hip. Once the sun is up, I ride out to Quail Valley with Bill Becker.
Today’s numbers are 43–46, including five three-putts. The high point of the round is hitting a 6-iron a yard from the pin on the despised No. 8. The low point is blowing the birdie putt.
Day 436
On the first hole I park my drive in the right rough. There I find my stance impeded by a formidable deposit of raccoon shit. I’m certain of its provenance because, unlike the average golfer, I have raised raccoons and cleaned up after them.
What’s the official ruling here—do I get a free drop from animal droppings? Perhaps it depends on the species of critter—no relief from rabbit pellets; two club-lengths from a bear pile. I’m guessing that the issue seldom arises at Augusta.
After a short deliberation, I briskly disperse the coon doo with my 7-iron. I finish the nine at 46, with a self-imposed asterisk.
As soon as I get home, I whip out the USGA Rules of Golf and check the index for “Scat, mammal.”
Nothing. Ditto for “feces,” “crap,” “guano” and “poop.”
However, under the term “loose impediments” are listed stones, leaves, twigs, branches, worms, insects and…dung!
Because Rule 23-1 plainly states that “any loose impediment may be removed without penalty,” chipping the raccoon shit was totally proper and legal. The fact that I’m so pleased to have complied with this regulation is alarming.
Camp Ernie
I probably wouldn’t have quit golf in 1973 if I could have snuck out of town and gotten my swing fixed. That’s what thousands of struggling hackers do now. For about the same price as a hemorrhoidectomy, you can spend several days at a golf school operated by a world-famous instructor.
Golf instructors become world-famous by coaching pros who win major tournaments and are kind enough to mention them by name on network television. That’s what happened to a lucky fellow named David Leadbetter. In 1985 he began working with a promising young English player named Nick Faldo. Two years later, when Faldo won the British Open at Muirfield, he glowingly praised Leadbetter for turning his game around.
Faldo went on to take five more majors, and Leadbetter went on to become a franchise. Over the last two decades he’s done for yuppie golf instruction what Hooters did for chicken wings.
Partnered with the sports superagency IMG, Leadbetter now has twenty-six “academies” located around the world, including South Korea, Austria, Portugal, Japan and Malaysia. Among several stateside Leadbetter camps is one in Bradenton, Florida, that offers live-in quarters for junior golfers who split their days between practice and academics.
From across a fairway, Leadbetter in his banded straw hat might be mistaken for Greg Norman, one of his luminary ex-students. And like Norman, Leadbetter has crafted an empire from a golfing persona; his likeness is stamped on shirts, visors, balls, swing training devices, cocktail coasters, headcovers and, appropriately, money clips.
The high-end demographic of Leadbetter’s clientele is evident from his brand-name associations with Callaway, Rolex, Cadillac, Jos. A. Bank apparel and Sentient, a corporate-jet-leasing firm. He also writes golf books, pens a column for Golf Digest and appears often in a star capacity on the Golf Channel. Among his current pupils are Michelle Wie, Ernie Els, Nick Price, Trevor Immelman and Lee Westwood.
Leadbetter’s flagship operation is located at the ChampionsGate resort in Orlando. I made reservations for a four-hour playing lesson ($875), followed by an all-day session on the range and in the video room ($1,750). Such sums must seem asinine to non-golfers, but hard-core players will gladly raid their 401(k)s for the promise of a healed swing.
A Leadbetter clinic is the hacker’s equivalent of Lourdes. The private attention of the great man himself is in such demand that, according to Golf Digest, he charges $10,000 for an all-day lesson.
Needless to say, I didn’t bother to inquire if Leadbetter was available for a private session (he wasn’t; he was attending a PGA event in Tampa, keeping a tutorial eye on Mr. Immelman, among others).
My instructor was a likable young guy named Steve Wakulsky, who joined the Leadbetter operation in the early 1990s and worked his way up to Worldwide Director of Training and Certification. For five years Wakulsky ran the Leadbetter facility in Bangkok, which he acknowledged was a pretty sweet gig for a single guy. Now married and the father of two small children, he teaches at the Orlando academy, not far from the relentless wholesomeness of Disney World.
Wakulsky introduced himself while I was hitting some balls, trying to warm up. The first cold front of autumn had swept through central Florida, and the temperature on the practice range was 49 degrees, made colder by gusts up to 25 mph—masochistic golfing conditions, unless you’re Scottish.
“It’s really windy,” Wakulsky said. “Wow.”
“Ridiculous,” I agreed.
Wakulsky, who is from Michigan, hurried off to find a heavier jacket. Then, bundled like natty sherpas, we headed for the first tee at the Norman-designed ChampionsGate National Course.
Along the way, I gave a quick history of my wobbly relationship with golf. Wakulsky seemed impressed that I’d returned to the sport after so many years, and urged me not to be too self-critical. It was, I explained, an occupatio
nal hazard for writers.
When he noted that for the whole front nine we’d be playing into the teeth of the wind, I felt relieved. Here was a sterling excuse for hacking; any rotten shot could—and would—be blamed on onerous gusts.
I began by wafting a tee shot 89 degrees skyward with my 22 degree rescue club. The ball seemed to hang forever at the top of its mortar-like trajectory, then noodled to earth only 125 yards down the fairway. “At least you’re in play,” Wakulsky remarked after the wind swept his drive deep into the left rough.
We both scrambled for bogeys on the opening hole, then lowered our shoulders and soldiered onward. Because I hit the ball fairly high, there was no evading the northeasterly blow. My shots were swooping and looping so capriciously that I had to laugh, despite the fact that it was the most expensive partial round of golf that I’d ever played.
Wakulsky offered some helpful suggestions, but his primary mission was to observe my basic swing and the multiple variations thereof. The next day, on the range, is where the painstaking task of retooling would take place.
We played slowly. Wakulsky gave pointers on my setup and club choices, and helped me read the greens—there’s nothing like a stiff wind to demolish an already tremulous putting stroke. On the front nine I managed three pars along with two bogeys, three doubles and a triple.
The finest part of the morning occurred during a comfort break. Wakulsky pointed at an animal creeping out of the palmettos and said, “What is that?”
“A bobcat,” I told him.
“Really?” Wakulsky had never before seen one, although the species was once a dominant predator throughout the South.
This uncommonly bold bobcat was attempting to stalk a flock of sandhill cranes, a stately-looking bird with a red featherless crown. Fortunately for the birds, the tawny cat was as obvious on the velvet-green fairway as the proverbial turd in the punchbowl. The cranes eyeballed her immediately, and began bleating like asthmatic goats. After a few minutes the frustrated feline abandoned the hunt and scampered back into the scrub, where her kittens had been waiting for lunch.
Wakulsky and I resumed our march of pain. Once we made the turn and began playing downwind, it seemed reasonable to expect that our shot shaping would improve. His did, but mine got worse—horribly worse.
After I slaughtered the par-513th with a series of septic shanks, Wakulsky glanced at his watch and said he had another lesson starting soon back at the academy. We played one more hole and headed for the clubhouse.
“I see a few things we can start on right away tomorrow,” he told me. “I think we can do it in a day. It’s not like we’ve got to rebuild your whole swing.”
“That’s good,” I said skeptically.
“You obviously love the game. I can tell,” Wakulsky said.
Translation: Why else would you put yourself through such agony?
“There’s no problem with your distance,” he added. “You should feel good about that.”
“Too bad I can’t hit it straight.”
He said, “You’ve got too much going on with your lower body.”
Well, I thought, there was a time…
Then came those words that make every hacker cringe: “You’ve got a lot of potential. You really do.”
“Thanks,” I replied, through clenched jaw.
Wakulsky meant well, but not a lesson goes by when a struggling player doesn’t hear that he or she has “potential.” It begins to sound like charity.
Back at the hotel, I tried to cheer myself with a copy of Who’s Your Caddy? by Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated. It’s a collection of essays about how Reilly conned his way into caddying for famous golfers and celebrities. He is a very entertaining writer, yet I found myself unamused to learn that Donald Trump, who’s older than I am, can hammer a golf ball 310 yards. I comforted myself with a petty vision of the cocksure billionaire trying to tee off in 25-knot gusts, his famously surreal hair torqued into cotton candy.
I put down the book and looked out the window of my room. The depressing view explained the presence of a mother bobcat on the busy golf course: She had nowhere else to go.
ChampionsGate is hemmed in by highways and housing subdivisions, a typical panorama of unbound Florida sprawl. Where no rooftops are sprouting, there are barren future homesites—miles of bulldozed flatlands upon which not one green twig remains. The last refuge for the bobcats, sandhill cranes, deer and other critters was the golf resort property with its piney woods, raw palmetto scrub and freshwater lakes.
The same story is unfolding all over the place; as rampant development destroys wetlands and wooded habitats, golf courses become sanctuaries for the displaced wildlife. Occasionally nature bites back with a vengeance. Last year, a rabid otter attacked a female golfer on the seventh hole of a country club in Vero Beach. The woman’s companion went after the animal with a long iron, which only fueled its derangement. After chasing both players from the course, the mad otter scampered into an adjoining subdivision and chomped two other persons before being subdued by wildlife officers.
I was still thinking about my peaceful bobcat sighting as I went downstairs for dinner. Among the five conventions at the resort was an assembly of psychologists, but I steered clear of them at the bar. They were talking golf.
The next day was warmer and not so breezy. Wakulsky set up a video camera and recorded me hitting a 5-iron. Then he positioned me in front of another launch monitor where, unfathomably, I started hitting the ball a mile, straight as a laser beam.
Santiago, the fellow operating the machine, clocked my clubhead speed at 105 mph. He said I should switch to steel shafts. That sort of comment is tonic for the ego, but poison for the mind. Wakulsky mildly suggested that I refrain from splurging on new golf clubs until I acquired a repeatable golf swing.
We went to a screening room to review my technique, which was somewhere between unpolished and ugly. As soon as Wakulsky turned on the tape, I cringed.
My friend Leibo is right when he says there’s nothing more uncomfortable than watching video of one’s self hitting a golf ball. “It’s like seeing your mother naked in the shower,” he says. “You have to look away.”
Speaking of Mom, she’s always been a stickler for good posture. I wish I’d listened to her. On the tape my stance looked round-shouldered and tilted oddly to the left; the swing was loopy and hurried. The effect was that of a vertigo patient, threshing wheat.
Using an electronic stylus, Wakulsky began pointing out all the flaws. My right hand was too far on top of the grip, my weight was in my heels, my shoulders were too far open, my right elbow was folding up, my left wrist was too cuppy, my legs were too busy…and, of course, my posture was dreadfully hunched.
“Your whole upper body looks more like a turtle shell,” Wakulsky observed, helpfully drawing a curved line along my profile.
To further illustrate the problem, he froze my setup position on the right side of the screen. On the left side he inserted, in the same pose, none other than Ernie Els.
Using a famous pro as a split-frame model is common in modern golf instruction. It’s probably not intended to leave a student feeling hopeless and emasculated, but the risk is large.
Els has one of the silkiest swings in the world; mine is better grooved to whacking rodents. Watching us side-by-side on video, one would require an agile imagination to figure out that we both were playing the same game.
Nonetheless, I suppose it’s helpful to know that my downswing descends on a 61 degree plane, while Ernie typically uncorks at 58 degrees. That sort of thing can be fixed; the disparities in our age, size and muscle mass cannot.
If the technology had existed three decades ago, I might have been curious to see myself on a wide television, swinging in tandem with Jack or Arnie. But now, being on the proverbial back nine of life, the gap between excellence and what is possible seems insurmountable. It’s like studying a John Holmes video before making love to your wife—who’re you trying to kid?
/> Back on the driving range, Wakulsky placed me between some fruit-colored Styrofoam noodles and set about “tweaking.” Our main mission, he said, was to shorten my backswing and train the wrists to cock sooner, à la Els. That’s not how Tiger Woods takes back a golf club, but I’d be elated to make even a pale version of Ernie’s swing.
Wakulsky armed me with a baton-like device that had round magnets attached to the shaft. The magnets were designed to slide, clicking together smartly on a properly executed backswing and follow-through. Before long, I sounded like a one-man festival of castanets.
Steve seemed authentically encouraged. He reclaimed the baton, dropped a ball in front of me and presented a 6-iron. As I took my stance, a swarm of new swing thoughts buzzed like hornets inside my skull:
Left arm straight.
Right hand under.
Tilt your body to the right.
Chest up.
Tailbone out.
Left hip higher.
Head over the ball.
Break the wrists.
Touch your right shoulder with the club on your follow-through.
Here’s what I know about the middle-aged brain: It doesn’t hold nearly enough information, and what it does hold leaks like a worm-eaten dinghy.
“Your head will explode,” Leibo had warned me before the lesson, and he knew what he was talking about.
Every speck of advice that Wakulsky had given was solid, but if I tried to checklist every point on every golf swing, it would take eight bloody hours to finish a round. Standing over the ball was a paralytic experience; I felt tight, twisted and off-balance. Worse, the shots I was hitting were neither pretty, nor straight.
Yet, watching the new swing in the screening room, my setup and backswing looked a thousand times better. I looked, in fact, like an actual golfer.