Part-Time Golfer Full-Time Enthusiast

By Ronald Ray

This book relates the golfing experiences, musings, observations and theories of an average everyday part-time golfer. Even though my golfing exploits were of the part-time or weekend variety my enthusiasm for and love of the game was a full-time endeavor. I have read and studied much upon the subject. As a self taught golfer what I learned and developed was through the school of hard knocks as it were. From my first initial exposure up to and into to my retirement years, I have shared my more memorable experiences which relate to or substantiates golf teaching principles, or exemplifies and illustrates some of life's dictums, aphorisms and sayings. This is not intended as instructional material, its aim is for entertainment only and will hopefully excite memories and experiences perhaps long forgotten within those readers who have tread upon the links of the land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ronald Ray
• Release date: Feb 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370909605

Ronald Ray

Ronald Ray is a mainly self-taught poet and visual artist. His work tends towards the emotional, but he also enjoys the surreal and whimsical side of writing. His work has appeared in several magazines and for the last two years in Taft College’s yearly anthology ‘A Sharp Piece of Awesome’. He has three self-published volumes of poetry through Lulu Press. (‘Clocks and Crows’, ‘’Black Clowns, Stars & Seizures’ and ‘Barking At Random’.) He currently resides in Rockford, IL.

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PART-TIME GOLFER

FULL-TIME ENTHUSIAST

By Ronald Ray

Published by Ronald Ray at Smashwords

Copyright 2018 Ronald Ray

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Preface

Genesis

Learning My Swing

Practice Range Antics

Learning The Game

Good Vibrations

In The Bag

Putting

Doctor Visits

The Pro Tour

Municipal Golf

Home Courses

Playing In The Elements

Rules Of Golf

Playing Protocol

Birdies and Bogeys

The Caddy

Scoring

Teacher

Coming Full Circle

Appendix I, The Scorecard Archive

Appendix II, The Places We Visit, a listing of courses played

Notes & References

* * * *

PREFACE

This book is about the golfing experiences, musings, observations and theories of an ordinary, average part-time player. There is nothing I have seen or experienced that is unusual or extraordinary, after all golf is an ancient game who's written history dates back to 1502 and King James IV of the Scots Royal House[1]. It would be astonishing if a new idea or event concerning the game could occur after a half millennium of history behind it. My goal was to relate my golfing experiences from a part-time golfer's perspective, and the only objective for this book is entertainment. My hope is for some of this to hit home, to flush out memories and impressions the game has implanted upon the brain and filed away. For the golfer I suspect much of this will be very familiar territory indeed.

I did not grow up playing golf, nor did my parents play golf, and so I was not acquainted with golfing culture. My only exposure to golf as a youth was through television, which is very superficial at best. Professional players make it look so easy, we would sit there and watch them play and state, That's easy, I can do that. A very naive, ignorant and pompous statement that only a youngster would voice.

I did not seriously take up the game until age 32. Like everyone else who takes up the game seriously, I dove in full bore, became obsessed and truly had a bad case of golf fever. I was constantly thinking about golf and would play at the slightest provocation. Some of the articles within this book will refer to 'the obsession' which specifically refers to those years when I was obsessed with playing.

My golf obsession ended seven years later when my son started school and began playing organized sports. I still had a passion to play, but it was with much less intensity, and far less frequency. Golf was no longer important, no longer a driving mania. Following our move out of Charlotte, and for that period of four years during my son's high school days I played very little, but I have since taken up the gauntlet again. I have made great strides in my play since my re-dedication, and I am still learning my swing. A golfer's story is always a tale without an ending.

I never was fortunate enough to play full time, that is every day. During the duration of the obsession I may have averaged playing 3 or 4 times a week for stretches, but this was a relatively short period. I would classify myself as a career part-time golfer, and this infers that there is a limit to the available time with which to spend upon the golf, and indeed that was the case. If I were to rank myself as a player against the field, I would say that overall I was a C player, but there were times when I scored pretty well as my archive shows. My scoring has always been worse than it should be, and has always been a sore spot within my psyche.

Non-golfers despise to hear golf talk and especially the shot by shot retelling of a round, and I personally share this feeling. Hearing golf tales can be tedious and boring, but somehow when reading golfing lore, history, stories and tales it is often interesting, fascinating and absorbing-and often relatable. The power of the written word.

This book laid out in chronological sequence, more or less. The events contained within this book are true and the facts are told to the best of my recollection. The names of those other golfers involved have been changed to protect the innocent.

* * * *

GENESIS

During the summer of 1970 I was a rising high school Senior consumed with things like earning spending money, cruising in my 1966 Plymouth, camping, fishing and playing softball. Golf was not among my interests, but I did play golf for the first time during that summer, due in part because the family had recently moved a half mile from Mt. Aire, the local 9 hole golf course.

That 9 hole track was the first golf course I ever played. It was probably the first golf course I had ever seen, and was definitely the first I was up close and personal with. The seventh green (now the 13th) is only a few yards from the road and I was fascinated by the different, darker appearance it had against the fairway. One evening near dusk I stopped the car and walked over to the green to check it out. I bent over and rubbed the surface of that thick, dense and closely mown grass with my open palm. I was in wonder as I had never seen or felt grass like this before, all those lawns I mowed as a youngster did not have any grass like this. I immediately had an understanding of the appeal that golf commands. Standing there on that green in the gloaming was a transcendental moment.

I have always preferred to play late afternoon into the evening, with my ultimate contentment achieved when finishing 18 in the twilight-my own personal Elysian Field. This is I think a direct link to those first moments spent upon that 7th green, the genesis of my golfing journey.

All of my beginner rounds were played with brother Marvin. I have no memory whatever as to where the golf clubs came from, but Marvin states that during 1970 we used our father's set of clubs from 1945. I do remember those clubs and I think they had hickory shafts, but this may not be correct. We abused those clubs and I don't mean solely by hitting golf balls.

Our father was a member of the Eighth Air Force's 305th Bomber Group. Following V-E Day, this Group was transferred to St. Trond, Belgium and from there they engaged in project 'Casey Jones', photo-mapping Europe and Africa.[2] My mother stated that he took up and played golf during his R&R visits to Africa, and that this is when he acquired those clubs. I have often wondered why he did not continue to play upon his return to the States. I wish he had continued to play, and I wish I had kept those golf clubs. Antique clubs generally do not hold much monetary value, but the sentimental attachment would have been strong.

When we first ventured upon that golfing soil taking those vicious hacks and slashes from that no. 1 tee, we had no idea what we were doing. All golfers remember how difficult it was to get the ball airborne with those first few swing attempts. It must have been a truly awful sight, and I do remember the embarrassment of exposing my ineptitude in front of total strangers. It was a very humbling and intimidating experience and when I see beginners to this day I am reminded of these ordeals, and I empathize for them.

The opening hole was a long par 5 that went up Buck Mountain. There was no riding golf cars back then it was walking all the way, and this mountain course has plenty of elevation changes. Hole no.1 was a tough hole to start on for a beginner, for not only was it a long uphill pull; golf ball technology of that time was predominately a long thin rubber band layered over a solid core with a soft balata outer cover. Those balls would cut easily when struck with the leading edge of a blade producing that hideous smile, and once spinning sideways those balls would curve for dozens of yards. Most of our shots on that first hole were sliced and ended up right of the fairway and in the woods. This was not a totally bad thing, for when hitting one in the woods you could go in there and come out with three or four more. This is how we acquired most of the balls with which we played. Those opening hole scores were brutal, tens, twelves and DNFs abounded. I pitied the players waiting on the tee behind us because it would take us a long time to cover the first 250 yards.

The second hole was at the other extreme of the spectrum being a three par of 90 yards. This hole was in the very northwest corner of the property, anything right or long was over the fence and into a pasture. The shot required touch, a trait the beginner does not possess. I’d usually scratch a 4 or 5 out of it and have healthy score of 15 or better by the third tee.

Hole three was a straight, downhill, four par. There was a barbed wire fence paralleling the right side of the fairway all the way from tee to the green. There was not much rough between the fairway and fence, yet another difficult proposition for a beginner who slices, as most are wont to do. There were many sliced shots that sailed over that fence and found the pasture make no mistake about that.

Number four was a short par 4 up the hill back to the club house. The main road paralleled that fairway on the right side of the course, posing yet another hazard for the right handed slicer. This was a tough layout for a beginner.

The property was expanded a couple of decades ago, transformed into an 18 hole course with homes dotting the property. During my high school days there was a small golf course community on the south side of the road where holes 5-9 were, but the first four holes were surrounded by woods and pasture. It was great.

That first hole’s green is now the green for No. 17. The fairway was moved west of the original and the woods are long gone, but I still have a nostalgic feeling for the hole. Although it is listed on the scorecard as a par 5 hole, from the white tees it is really a par 4, a long but not overly difficult par 4. Actually it is more like a par four and a half, but golf doesn’t count in fractions. When one makes a five on that hole it really feels like one has made a bogey.

I have two golfing firsts on this hole, this is where I holed out my first ever bunker shot, and it is the first 5 par I ever eagled. Both of these events having taken place fairly recently causes me to wonder, as I had ample opportunity to accomplish either one of these many times during my previous 25 years of play.

Hole seventeen is also the location of the worst ‘do-over’ I ever witnessed. It was opined to me many years ago that most do-overs, those shots that a golfer hits a second time because the first one was not to their liking, usually end up within a few yards of the original shot. There is much validity in this assertion, for I have observed that this does seem to be the case. This is one reason