'You should get out more'

(March 2008)

'You should get out more'

That was the start of it all, those were my wife's words as yet another night past with me glued to the laptop screen shooting virtual solders in a virtual online world.

Sat on the couch, I was momentarily distracted and got shot by somebody playing the same game on the other side of the world, game over.

I would like to say I jumped up and immediately transformed my life after some revelation of the truth that I was wasting my life away. But that's not how it happened, it did however make me think for a minuet and I replied to my wife;

'Yes your right, maybe I should take up golf'

Unfortunately it took me nearly a year after first thinking it to actually doing anything about it. During the year I came across people that played the game and mentioned a few times that I was thinking of taking it up.

We even went to the local golf club on new years eve with friends and when I mentioned my plan to take up the game I was encouraged with lots of good advice.

The advice ran along the grounds of get some lessons from a pro it will stop you developing bad habits and get you started on the right track.

That seamed like common sense and the golf club seamed friendly enough. Actually that almost surprised me because as a young man I would have perceived it as a place of wealthy stuck up tossers and not gone near the place. In truth I had probably become one of them (well maybe not so much the wealthy bit) and no longer needed to feel antipathy towards middle class white guys of a certain age :D

Anyway after that good experience I decided to wait for the spring weather and figure out how to take some lessons.

A weekend in Mid March of 2008 and my brother phoned a bit out of the blue; 'So you want to go up to the driving range and hit a few balls?'

My brother played golf at a club and had all the equipment, as the weather was set fair, the time was right and in 30 minutes I was stood with a basket of golf balls in a little covered bay on a local driving range.

I teed up a ball at Martin's suggestion and taking an iron had a waft at it. Surprisingly it did not move, which rather put me out at the time. Cue more wafts until it did move, all I remember is lots of swinging and lots of duffs and a few hits which started off leftish and span right to left. My brother was hesitant to give out advise (which I praise him for now) all he did was put a club down for me along the target line and tell me to line up parallel to it.

I loved it. Swish, miss, swish duff, waft hit, swoosh miss... proper beginners golf... It was ace. I got the bug badly in less than an hour.

I was going to become a golfer!