Golf: The Last Frontier

At age 75, golf has invited me in, though I don’t deserve it.  All my life I have been leery of golf. To me it was a pastime based on failure, and the measurement of failure and the scoring of failure. What, after all, is Par? It’s a goal that most won’t ever reach, and those who do are always sorry when they don’t go under Par. Because golf seemed such a philosophy of despair, wrapped up in a tortured premise of never-quite-good enough, I enthusiastically rejected golf for most of my life. I am glad I did. By age 75, I had missed a lifetime of frustration.

Many of us baby boomers never played golf, and we probably developed attitude blocks against it by the time we reached age 65. It may have seemed to us that golf was the pastime of the idle rich or those aspiring to be idle or rich. Or golf may have seemed the detour of the non-athletic adults around the rigors of competitive sport. Or golf may have seemed like the business vehicle of the rising middle class, clubs for clubs, so to speak, to fill out your networking dance card.

For the most part, golf did not seem to apply to us. It certainly did not apply to me. I took golf in physical education in 1960 and found it a poor substitute for lawn croquet. Instead I played soccer for the University of Washington and then in city leagues for some time thereafter. Then I played community basketball with a bunch of lawyers on Sunday mornings for years. Finally, in need of less debilitating exercise at about age 55, I came to tennis. It was great fun. Tennis can be as athletic as you make it, but it always has more movement, more speed, and more real play than I would ever see in golf. And yet…

On my 75th birthday I decided to learn golf. It began as a market segmentation strategy…but ended up something else.  Players my age were dropping out of tennis with the accumulated maladies of age. They were becoming slow…fast. Most of those still standing could not move across the court to a well-placed ball. So partners were becoming limited, in doubles but especially in singles. I knew that in tennis I would probably be slowed by age 80, and at best a pasteboard image by age 85. And yet I saw older men – and older ladies — knocking around golf courses at age 95.

So that is why I set out to learn this thing I had rejected in my youth, and yawned at in middle age. And now, at age 75, I realize I have but a short time to learn my way into this new sport. Amazingly, I found that in golf whether you are athlete or couch potato, man or woman, lean or chunky — at age 75 all of your gifts must homogenize into one mindful focus on the ball. Contact is all, and when you can constantly make contact, stick-to-ball, you can create your own game. It doesn’t have to look like the golf that instructors are trying to teach people under 50. It can look like whatever works for you. You don’t need to hurt yourself or twist yourself into pretzels. At age 75 the pressure is off and, like a regression to childhood, with golf you can finally have fun.

I believe I am going to like this golf.

In these blog postings about my meandering path into golf, you may not find an excellent guide to golf, but I hope you can agree that golf means there is life remaining after age 75.


Copyright 2019 — David Hon

 

The Wasp and I

It is hard to realize that over 70 generations of yellow jacket wasps have bred and deteriorated since they gathered to sting a young boy playing in the woods outside Seattle. Do they carry a genetic memory of the taste of me? I’d almost forgotten that strained relationship until my fairway shot on the 11th hole last week.

At age seven, I of course ran to my mother; she hugged me and put on calamine lotion. There were about 10 red sting-welts on my legs and back. No courage at that age. I broke and ran, and I am sure outran some of them. Nor is there much courage now. That sort of quick-burst running is out of the question these days. And alas, I have no mother to run to.

When I was about 11 however, I became a wasp warrior. I had used some Christmas money to buy a wide-bladed hunting knife and a stone to sharpen it. In my back yard that morning, I was squinting,  holding the knife up to the sun to see if my sharpening was good enough. If it was, that no sunlight would shine on the thin metal edge.

But there was another test. In that moment, my peripheral hearing caught the buzz of wings just before my peripheral vision caught the yellow blur headed, stinger first, toward my right buttock. I whirled and slashed all at once. As if returning as some medieval samurai, I saw my flashing blade in slow motion, cutting the wasp clean in half. I had defended my body…and my honor.

Now the honor of yellow jacket wasps is ordinarily not to be trifled with…except by 11 year old boys with sharp hunting knives. That day I was near invincible…Again and again they wandered into my yard, seemingly to smell the flowers but actually to attack me. The word gets around, you know. They came alone or in pairs, but not in hordes, thank goodness. Sometimes I would take on a single yellow jacketed knight head on, following with my knife point as he twisted his way along a straight dive toward me, wristing my quick thrusts in a way I’m sure this creature never seen before, until now, when it was too late.

Sometimes I would swat the leader of a flying pair with the wide blade, and then circle to excise the wing of the wing-man midair. I received only two stings (neither of them mortal) and didn’t even mention them to my mother. Not until now have I ever told anyone what a hero I was that day. (That’s what blogs are for!)

So we had a sort of history, this ancestry of wasps and I, when one member of the current generation boldly landed on my ball. I was pushing by roller toward the next shot, and saw the wasp about ten feet away. It was crawling around on my ball, smelling out all the dimples which must have attracted him with my body oils. Perhaps there is a memory of enemies that lasts in smell through generations. I’d like to think so, because I was pulling out my three wood as cautiously as a hunting knife. And yet…What had this wasp done to me lately? Better to shew him away. Better to let him live.

However, the wasp would have none of it. He was now possessing my ball. As if he were the avenging angel from wasp-centuries back, the yellow jacket looked up at me in defiance…and waggled his behind. That may be wasp talk for “up yours.”

Some golfer voices on remote sides of me asked me if I was going to hit or what, and I gestured for their silence. They retreated to golf good manners as the wasp and I stared at each other. I did a practice swing a foot from the ball, and the bold wasp stayed put. Nothing I could do would move him…except…OK, that’s it then.

For the animal-cruelty people, I will say I watched until the insect had crawled around to the top of the ball. This way I could hit the ball with him on top of it. And what a ride he must have had! Wham! Zero to 150 miles per hour in one one hundredth of a second.

Up near the green I approached my white ball.  I was truly hoping he’d not wriggled down between the club and the ball in the last millisecond of his life. But there was no splotch of yellow. In the best of worlds he had flown off, light-headed, to tell his family not to mess with me again, not for a few more generations at least.


Copyright 2020 — David Hon

 

Golf as a Pro-active Sport

In your seventy-some years, you have probably climbed a few mountains, and sailed a few seas. Or not. But at this age, I think it is necessary to define new outlooks on how we battle the world, and how we view ourselves as erstwhile athletes. Whatever wars we had to fight – and whatever their outcomes — are fading in retrospect. We are still alive – and that is the point.

Many sports in our youth were Reactive. Our performance was always in reference to, and in reaction to, competitors who were trying to excel at our expense. In Reactive sports, there are usually winners and losers. If you are boxing, or karate, you are reacting to your opponent while you are trying to score more good blows in the end than they do. Tennis is pretty much the same. Even Shuffleboard. Even Chess. All Reactive. Team sports are for the most part one team reacting to the advancements of the other, winning and losing as a group.

Some other sports are Reactive only to the degree we need comparison. Running and jumping fit this category, as do Archery, and Bowling. Who can stride the fastest time, or leap the highest or furthest, is the comparative winner. However, some athletes move into a zone where the goal is for a personal best, rather than triumph over another — and it may not even be a challenge to win over a clearly inferior opponent.

This is where we are lucky to be old. Less running and jumping of course, and because Golf doesn’t need to be Reactive at all.

Basically, you swing every time to hit the distant hole, or at least get closer to the hole, in spite of what any other player is doing. The concept of par is a Pro-active one. It is a personal goal, like reaching a mountaintop or a distant shore. The next hole is not your opponent’s hole (as a goal mouth in hockey is) and you do not have to defend your hole anymore than they have to defend theirs. That would make Golf into hockey, and it would be a bloody old sport indeed.

No, at our age we merely try to make each shot our best shot. The only time limit is courtesy to other players. A good day is one when we occasionally string several good shots together on the way to a few good holes. It’s the beauty of those good shots that mesmerizes us, fills us with bubbling achievement no matter how the other shots fell for the rest of the day.

Yes, of course we do better or worse. However, Golf is always the launching out, into the air and across the grass, out into the Universe with all our strength…in truth, just to see what happens. We are not Reacting, we are Pro-acting. If we were still boxing, we would just be walking up to the big mouthy guy at the bar with no provocation and bashing him with a haymaker…just to see what happens.

We still need to feel we have some influence on the Universe, and because each stroke is Pro-active, Golf is not just a metaphor for Life… It is Life itself.


Copyright 2022 – David Hon

Hey Whoa, The Golf Club Swings…Me!

I recently sold my sailboat because my balance could not keep up with the swirling seas. It happens in your seventies. Standing by the rail heeled up with one foot on the wheel became scary rather than exhilarating. It was part of the reason I’m taking up golf in my seventies. But alas, even golf is not without concern for balance.

Reminds one of the poet Henry Reed, who wrote the classic poems in his series: Lessons of the War. He was a rather unwilling draftee into WW1, and these are the wanderings of his mind as he goes through training. In “Unarmed Combat”, he tells us that all of his wars were cosmic from the start, but concedes that his drill instructor has a cosmic point. The most important thing is:

“The ever-important question of human balance,                                                               And the ever-important need to be in a strong                                                                 Position at the start.”

To the 25-year-old golfer, or even to many 50-year-olds, this is a silly worry. Most people trip up and down stairs and reach up to change light bulbs and their balance is always as dependable as breathing. However, if a 70-year-old is trying to swing a golf club, to some degree that golf club is swinging back, attempting to modify the elder golfer’s weight distribution – foot-to-foot and heel-to-toe.

You might see something in common by watching your favorite athletes closely. The tennis player drops into “split step” after hitting a return volley, equally ready to change weight in either direction. The shortstop tries to land squared to the hot grounder, ready to move with any awkward bounce. The running back keeps his driving knees a foot or more apart, so he can stay stable as monsters grab out for him with monster arms.

At this point you may wish to insert a snarky muse: “but in golf the ball isn’t moving”. However, the Earth is still moving. When you swing your club, gravity tends to pull you off balance, and that gravitational pull modifies where you strike the ball. Even an inch off can dig up ground or “top” the ball. Two inches off and you may be swinging hard at pure air. Makes the game discouraging if you cannot hit the ball squarely every time.

I recently learned something when I landed in front of a female golf instructor. It became apparent she was used to seeing old men fall on their faces trying to batter the ball long to impress her. She gave me a pattern to use always — before every stroke with every club. It’s a pattern of 6 swings, three in each direction. (Most other players won’t even notice.) It takes about 6 seconds before each stroke, but it lets your 70-year-old body make effective, dependable golf shots.

Stepping slightly back from the ball, you swing the club through the spot where a ball might be, and then you swing the club back in the other direction as if the phantom ball is also being hit from that position. Think of yourself as a switch hitter in baseball, or a hockey player who needs a quick-scoring back shot off the wrong leg.  In your case, you premeditate the degree your swing with the golf club will pull you out of balance, and will cause the inner process of your body to make minor compensations so you won’t tip forward or backward or to either side which might change the relation your club should have with the ground.

It really works. Try it. It works because your body is always ready – in a way like the body the tennis player or shortstop – to adjust your weight shift to catch the ball each time in its sweetest spot. And that makes golf a sweeter spot in your golf life…Less swearing, more sighing.


Copyright 2022 – David Hon

Golf and the Chinese Communes

In our 70s people become a lot more forgiving of our memory deficit.  Except in golf, except when you are keeping score. We hear that Donald Trump forgets his score on his own golf courses.  Now he is, bless his heart, well over 70 years. That is why this report is instructive. Trump may actually forget a few strokes. But though he may be innocently forgetful, a few people might still silently judge him as unethical. Cruel world, real world.

So if you are just learning the game – as opposed to being a player for several decades – you might hope to be forgiven a few memory mistakes because of both your age and experience. Maybe, but probably not. One of linguistic anthropologist Stephen Pinker’s key findings is that all humans are extremely watchful for situations in which they might be being cheated. All humans. New Guineans and Mongolians, camel riders on the Sahara, and Congressional aides…All Humans. A multicultural truth: It is part of our eye-brain DNA. In golf, you must keep your own score assiduously, lest you seem to be cheating. Alas, that runs smack up against our short term memory lapses ( – yours AND Trump’s).

Your own good intentions will NOT be overlooked, only “underblown” by others in your 4some. (People are sometimes kind if they feel you are stupid.) If you are old and inexperienced, you’ll need some special strategy.  Luckily, I may have found that best way to play golf with others may be to underplay your actual score. Plainly: Add more strokes if you are unsure…or even if you are dead sure.

During the early days of World War II, British and Nazi fighter planes engaged in daily dogfights in the skies over Europe. Below the terrified Belgians, or French, or Dutch watched and tried to keep score. Herr Goebbels set the pattern for the Nazis: exaggerate, exaggerate, exaggerate. If 6 British Spitfires were shot down and 6 Messerschmitts also fell to earth, the radio services interpreted it differently. The Nazi radio said 10 Spitfires went down, to only 4 Messerschmitts. Everyone on the ground could count, and took the Nazi radio with a large grain of salt. On the other hand, the BBC would report 8 of their own Spitfires down, and only 5 Messerschmitts. The result of this underplay, thoughout the war, was that people not only listened more to the BBC, but moreover, tended to trust the British in all things because of that habit of understatement. (Some say that when the British “leaked” a false beach for the D-Day invasion , it was believed – even by the Nazis – because of this carefully built reputation).

Of course, one strategy may be not keeping score at all. It can indeed save you heartache, but your curiosity will eventually get you. So when you chose to keep score, the first rule for we memory-challenged oldsters is not to expect forbearance, but to downplay upward. Unless you are betting (or playing on a team). Go ahead and downplay a 5 to a 6 or 4 to a 5 on each hole. This will auto-guard the foils of your elder memory…

So how is anybody going to know when you are playing well? Believe me, not only will they know…but they will tell you. And that’s a good thing.

In the early days of Communism in China, farm workers became part owners of their farms. It is said they all worked their fields together without hard driving supervisors. To keep track of the work done by each, there was a board with a pin inserted at the level of each person’s production (cabbage heads cut, rows planted, and so forth). Everyone put his own pin in to be paid for his own production. And everyone could see where you put yourself. Were there cheaters? Of course, and because all saw one excessive mark in at once, there was vicious social pressure on the offenders. But one other result occurred. If those who were shy or unsure put their markings LOWER than they’d achieved, their coworkers cajoled them not to lower their actual numbers. Apparently, this system turned out results that were amazingly accurate.

Of course we don’t try to cheat…but we DO fumble scores. So this gives you one strategy to combat short term memory in golf, if you are playing as an individual. Underplay every score and you won’t have to apologize. As long as other players scores are not threatened by your clouded scorekeeping, you can remain a totally charming companion as long as you choose to play.  


Copyright 2022 – David Hon

Golf Trekking – Part One

It may be all about the knees. The “exercise” in our full round of golf is of course swinging a club as many as 100 times. However, the total exercise in golf would be walking 4-5 miles over a pleasant combination of grass and woodlands. In some courses, there are rolling hills with elevated holes and tee offs. You have been learning golf, for sure, but along the way you learn about your body.

In the old days, our ancestors who played golf carried their own bags, or had a caddie carry them. Perhaps golf was a way for the idle rich to go out walking and yet appear they actually had something to do. Shooting birds was a little dangerous — as was chasing foxes astride fast horses. But golf was safe. It actually looked as much a sport as shooting birds or riding down terrified little animals.

(CLICK) Some courses are a bit more difficult.

So walking while golfing was safe (, if you kept enough distance from other golfers). And it did not carry the reverse snobbery of merely “exercising.” When people carried their own golf bags about 4 miles, that was really good exercise. When the rich people paid caddies, the walk became more invigorating than exhausting.

In the 20th century, golf became a business aimed at the new rich, who were never idle and even less reluctant to spend what money had come their way. To save time, they began to ride in gas, and then electric, carts. The golf course owners surely did (and still do) love carts that could – on busy days – move about twice the number of golfers around the courses in the same amount of time. Golf carts added income to the course while paying for themselves.

Time and money then rose in place of safe, sporting exercise. Truth be told, many golfers over age 50 found that, with carts, they could continue their golf until they were age 75 or older. For public golf course managers, this meant many more years of customers pumping money into electric cart fees and buckets of driving range balls, as well as the course fees themselves. With apparel and new kinds of clubs, plus expensive balls to lose with slices, this became a truly sustainable industry.

Enter you, the 75 year old novice. Walking. Whoa! Walking? At age 75? The “cash cow” of carts plus the added numbers who could fill the course on prime weekends are threatened by those of us at age 75 who can still walk the course on our retired weekdays. And there are more of us to come.

When you are 75 years old you may think you are too old to plan a total personal revolution for the rest of your life. But it’s exactly the time to consider golf as a time to be walking again. A new form of walking for anyone, but especially we who are over 75, is Golf Trekking.  Much of Golf Trekking will be about the knees. Stay tuned…

(CLICK) You WILL feel young again.

Copyright 2021 – David Hon

Golf Trekking – Part Two

Some golf courses strongly favor, or require, that you to use their electric carts. Many build it into the course fees, but if you have a choice, walking can save you $15-20 (each) in addition to being better exercise by far. Walking the course can be one of the prime challenges of golf if you are over 75.

If you are considering walking the full 18 holes, you will probably have some physical decisions to make. Your body will help you make the initial decisions.

If you are in very good physical condition, and intend to stay that way forever, you may choose to carry your clubs, (as many young golfers do). To do that also takes some artful planning: with a three-pound bag, 8 balls and a maximum of 8 or 9 clubs, you can be carrying less than 15 pounds comfortably slung over both your shoulders. Walking is also easier with that upright posture. But still, carrying clubs is not for everyone.

A good roller cart can cost you anywhere from $50 to $200. It allows you to walk while taking the load of your clubs off your shoulders and back, but it is some extra effort to push or pull, especially on hills – both up and down. And then…One tends to carry all sorts of extra clubs and balls and sandwiches and several extra pounds in a roller bag.

Finally, on the very near horizon, are the electronic “trolleys.” They are a lot like having a caddy, without the good (or bad) advice on each shot. And without the gossip among caddies about how poorly you played today.

The trolley is the newest way to carry clubs, with an electric motor and, at best, a remote that allows to to walk along at some distance from this e-caddy. The best – and most expensive of these trolleys – will actually follow you along, like some homeless dog, across the acres of golf, and approach with the next club just when you need it.

Click to see the near future.

Remote controlled trolleys, however, cost over $1000 now. That is a lot of cart rental. However, they will probably go down a cost curve to less than $400 in the next few years, Just in time for you to tire of pushing your roller up hills.

Whether you chose to ride or walk or push, your knees will tell you they are aging. But you have in your bag the excellent means of lessening the stress on your knees, whether you are carrying the bags the whole course, or just leaving the roller or the cart downhill with two clubs. Approaching the side of a green may still take some effort on your knees, but with the trekking technique you can glide up those steep hills like a fit young mountain climber. Here’s how:

 

Press down with your palm on the club head to relieve your knees…

Pull out your putter and a wedge. That’s probably what you will take up to the green anyway. Use them as the European “trekkers” have used two hiking poles for years, pushing off with your arms in rhythm with your stride. It originally came from cross country skiing, where Laplanders would cover 10 miles to school on icy trails, without breaking a sweat!

The hikers realized they could take at least 25% of the stress off of their legs simply by pushing down on their two sticks as they walked.

That may well be your solution to playing Golf until you are 100.  OR NOT! Stay tuned and I’ll go in to detail in the next Blog, Golf Trekking – Part 3.


Copyright 2021 – David Hon

Golf Trekking – Part Three

Whether you are full-on carrying your bag, escorting an expensive electronic caddy, or simply walking away from your cart – or roller – those tough 50 yards uphill to the green, you can give your worthy old knees a break with golf trekking. Please don’t let those knees down. To paraphrase the thinking of a star tennis player to fit our 75 year old golf situation…first it takes your legs, and then it takes your soul.

David in full carry mode….

If you are carrying your clubs, the trekking sticks are right in your bag. Use two potential clubs for your next shot and you will have your hands on them already as you stride along. (Plus your bag will be two clubs lighter.) With your bag on your back, you will really save about 25% of the effort on each step by pushing off with your arms. And these steps add up. There are likely 20,000 of them if you walk the average course. If you are Golf Trekking, you’ll probably have the energy left to swing well on your last 4 holes!
Of course if you eventually have an electronic caddy following you, you can feel even more spring in your trekking. You can walk the miles over a pleasant golf course as the hiking trekkers do, giving a little push off every few steps and swinging the clubs forward, enjoying the rhythm of golf trekking.

Click to see the motions of trekking. (A bit of imagination! He’s holding a putter club head in one hand, and a wedge in the other.)

On the other hand, less fortunate golfers who are about to give up golf with arthritis in their hips and knees, can make whatever walking they do a bit more bearable with trekking. That little bit, even trekking with one stick while pushing or pulling a roller up hills or down hills, can make the arthritis pain more bearable. If the pain balances out with the fun, you can justify several more years of golf.

(Here’s me taking my roller steeply down as my putter “aids the grade”.)

The value of golf in your later life is not just being competitive at an older age, but it is all about mastering personal challenges. Learning to hit the ball well is certainly part of the reward. Walking the manicured green fields is the hidden pleasure, spending a few hours in the day navigating over distances between holes, finding the balls which don’t go straight OR hitting them straighter the next time.

You may begin to stack up pars, or you may just hit along, eventually guiding the ball to the flag, either way it is a new adventure on each hole. Trekking with your clubs, pushing off and swinging them forward as you stride, can be truly part of joy of getting there.


Copyright 2021 – David Hon

Distance and the Fonder Heart – Part 1 – Gentleness

In your 70s, life becomes replete with a bevy of excuses that you could never get away with before. You get tired quickly enough that a full day’s work is now anathema…and perhaps it always was. Most younger family near you moves too fast… juggling many trips day per and numerous youthful and parental obligations. Because everything costs too much, even if you have the money you end up feeling cheated; the best excuse not to go shopping.

Golf, however, is constant in that it cannot embrace your excuses. The ball goes where the ball goes because of the way you hit it. Simple enough. And when you set out to play golf on real courses, it sometimes seems to have even crueler barriers. One is strength, and another is money. Luckily that is not so with your Short Game.

Hopefully you are now discovering that with practice you can putt better, and from longer distances, on most carpets (but never on stairs). With a little more practice your straight arms can chip the ball close to the hole from just off the green. And with quite a bit more practice, you can even pitch the ball near to the flag from up to 50 yards. All that you can achieve with a good number of hours per week at a friendly patch of grass, perhaps some of it in your own yard or in small expanses of grass as we’ve noted in other posts. In other words, with enough practice you can get a decent Short Game. No excuses.

However, on a full course you often have to cover 300 or more yards between the tee and the hole. How many swings will that take you at – say – 60 yards per stroke? This is why short courses may dominate the golf you play. It’s a happy life, and often the shorter courses cost less in locales where there is a lot of golf activity. However, there are ways that you can begin to hit longer, and to play on full courses if that’s your goal. You have to be a bit obstinate, and here’s why.

Strength to hit the ball hard is half in your body – but also half in your mind. Just swinging a driver or a 3 or 5 wood through its full arc, 20 times a day, will start to give you the feel of the club’s power. Then videos can help with your basic swing and its timing. Some videos will say they are concentrating on the driver and others on irons, but these are miniscule differences. Swinging the club to get distance is swinging the club for distance. Period.

Do this, however: Ignore the snot-talk of video instructors who tell you will be able to outdistance your buddies. First, this smacks resoundingly of other lengthening advertisements aimed at insecure men. And secondly, it assumes men will never be outhit by good women golfers in their 70s. (I’ve had it happen twice in the last month.) Focus on getting your ball to the hole in the fewest strokes, and skip the gloating. Everyone will respect you more.

Money mounts up in the cost of buckets of balls to hit. Clearly a driving range or a full golf course are the only places you can learn to improve your distance hitting the ball. Wrong! The Driving range and the bucket of balls is the first event for which you must prepare. Such is the glory of little rubber balls. These special foam rubber coated balls look – and to a great extent perform – like ordinary balls. The best ones cost about a dollar apiece, but they are worth it, because you can practice hitting long on a shorter field. These balls go about 25% of the distance of real balls if hit squarely, but they also slice or rise like a real ball will. So with them you can not only use a small field like the corner of a park, but you will get the feedback you need for your mighty distance swings. And your first bucket of real balls will be truly momentous.

A side benefit is that the little rubber balls will not kill babies or their mothers, though they drive the dogs crazy. More about getting distance – cheaply – in next Distance post when we look at Online Videos.


Copyright 2021 – David Hon

Distance and the Fonder Heart – Part 2 – Violence

When you are in your 70s you may think you have entered the world of gentleness. You move in dignified steps that get you from here to there. You open and close doors tenderly, wary of catching clothing or hitting someone on the way in or out. You do not run down slopes or vault fences, and you certainly try to find crosswalks every time you cross.

You have outgrown your need for quick, violent moves. You swing a golf club methodically and under control, and the ball travels a ways out in front of you. The ball will always travel that short dignified distance as long as you are the gentle golfer. If you are beginning to play the game, you notice that it takes fewer shots if you can hit the first ones further.

Somewhere in your golfing days, you will envy the distance of many other players. They seem to unleash a swinging violence on the ball, and sending across the sky and bouncing way down the fairway. You fear that that cannot ever be you, because your age makes all you do ever so gentle and dignified.

Deep inside, however, you still have violence. You know what if feels like for your muscles to load up with power and swing a hammer hard enough to crack cement. Or split a log for kindling. Or drive a rodent from the basement. If you have ever broken something on purpose, you know you still have the ability to muster violent power.

Distance is not just method and style. To get more distance means, of course, swinging the club in a consistent enough manner for the ball to fly reasonably straight out in front of you. You may spend a few months swinging the clubs to make them go straight. All the while you probably think that eventually they will also fly further – but they will not.

Many people are happy just being outdoors, and moving through the manicured course on a fine afternoon, with friends who are amiable and muff up about as much as you do. Other people want distance…Only feeling that distance will make their heart beat fonder, and the minor tragedy is they will only find that distance in violence. Life is infinitely fair in that formula: Distance equals energy.

Distance equals violence. Your age is no excuse. The best golf clubs will not buy distance, nor the finest instructors inculcate it, if you have no violence left in your soul. A big part of golf is letting go that violence build up inside you. Don’t try to kid anyone, you still have violence in you.

Distance doesn’t occur merely – or even mostly — from the beautifully rounded swing. That lovely circle so easy for limber young bodies may be just a pleasant image in the sun. The real work happens two feet before and two feet beyond impact. It occurs in less than a quarter second of snap and whoosh when the club heads into the bottom part of its arc. The real work connects with an unmistakable “crack!”. They say swing fast, not hard. But to swing fast you MUST swing hard.

Hard does not mean wild and uncontrolled….but it does mean hard. You will never hit the ball with any distance at any age unless you swing viciously through that bottom arc — where the ball sits — with total violence. You are over 70 years, it is true, and perhaps a you are a sweet old person in most eyes. But learning golf means unleashing your true violence in the bottom part of your swing.

There is still time for you find your inside force. There is still time to transfer your personal violence into the ball that travels further and further away, so far that you even have a sweet moment to relax and marvel at its flight.

At our age, the world little condones any violence in us. But know this: if we play golf, we must learn that violence again — while there is still time.


Copyright 2020 – David Hon

Distance Makes the Fonder Heart, or Not – Part 3

If you are just learning golf in your 70s, it may seem to be a race against biology for you to hit sufficiently long drives before your muscles give out. There are exceptions, but mostly that’s true… if you want to keep score or keep pace with other golfers, that is. However, books that you will read about hitting in the 90’s start out with #1, you must hit your tee driver 200 yards. Some snotty golf courses even have a sign at the first tee saying players who cannot hit a 200-yard drive should use the shorter distance tee boxes (for juniors).

It’s why you need to learn an adequate – but cagey – game of golf before it is too late. I have heard good golfers say the old guys who they play with do fine by just hitting the ball straighter than anyone else. That makes their golf game move along well, since these old guys are not always looking around the edges in the rough for their sliced balls. I’ve also had a groundskeeper say he’s seen that if a golfer can hit 150 yards EVERY fairway shot they can blend right in. Others say it doesn’t matter if your drives are short, it’s how efficiently you can get to the hole from 100 yards out.

What if this all could make a pattern for the golfer in their seventies, one that is not impossible, if you work at it?  It would be called Hope. It would be called theoretically doable. It could make the vistas of your golf open toward the Future. It could be called a pathway for Life. In truth, if you know you can hit every ball straight for only 100 yards — but EVERY time – then you can probably still have a game of Golf. Some days it may even be one some players would envy (whatever they say in blogs like these!). So here’s your formula:

We know your Math Cap is over 70 years old, but please dig it out and put it on, Now. Ok…The average 18-hole golf course probably measures 6000 yards. That means that if you hit EVERY ball straight for at least 100 yards, you use 55 strokes to cover the basic fairway distance, leaving about 25 yards to each of 18 holes – or 450 more yards. The best Golfers play around Par (about 72 strokes – called Scratch Golf for some reason), but an average recreational golfer over 50 may hover around 100 strokes per game. That means you have 45 extra strokes – over your basic 55 – to work with.

Let’s break those extra 45 strokes down further. You’ll need 18 of them for putts, as you usually cannot be so lucky as to hit it straight into the hole from off the green. (We’re  not giving any luck in this formulation.) Now between getting up to the green, and your last shot to hit the ball in the hole, you still have 27 strokes to work with – assuming you’ve made it on or near the green with your 100 yard shots. The average Golf course has 4 holes that are Par 5 and 450 yards long, and 4 holes that are Par 3 and average 150 yards. The average Par 4 is about 340 yards and usually there are 10 of those Par 4 holes.

Now we are coming within range for 70 years old and beyond. IF you can hit any ball – and every ball — on the way to the hole a minimum of 100 yards, then you can build your own respectable round of golf. More math: Theoretically, if you make excellent pitches toward the hole from the 40-60 yards out, the ball can often end up within ten feet of the hole. If you make consistently excellent chips from just off the green, they will end up within 3 feet of the hole. So that Short Game is clearly something you can practice a lot, and requires no great strength. You have 27 strokes to go from as much as 60 yards out to your final putt.

But keep your Math Cap on! If you have practiced a lot of putting, your chances of hitting a putt from 10 feet out are about 30%, and the chances of hitting a put from 3 feet out are about 70%. But get this: your odds are 95% of sinking the final putt if you are within a foot and a half of the hole. This means that your whole game becomes not how many putts you hit from on the green, but by how closely you miss. And so it’s worth practicing putts on every green or strip of carpet you can find.

So Hallelujah! If you can miss every long putt you attempt by less than 18 inches, you’ve got a game!


Copyright 2021 – David Hon

The Merry Band of Bionic Golfers

If you are anywhere near age 75 you probably remember watching the “Six Million Dollar Man”, a series on black and white television. This “Bionic Man” had been a test pilot in a bad airplane crash, and a team of scientists rebuilt him. His powers were augmented to be far better than before: to run faster, lift more, jump higher and last longer than ordinary humans.

There was no warrantee, of course. This Bionic Man was only a test case. Nevertheless, on TV he became useful in foiling bad guys and Russian spies during a few seasons of TV shows. Then (really!) along came the Bionic Women who could run as fast, lift as much, jump as high and – well – last longer than the Bionic Man… What we don’t remember so well was that this Bionic Man and Woman were also engineered for resiliency against hard landings and various pummelings by Nature and humans alike.

In this built-on resiliency, the Bionic Man was also like medieval knights in armor who jousted in tournaments and thrashed at each other with broadswords on the ancient battlefields. Which brings us at last to you. At 75, you may need several aids for resiliency in your golf game. When you saddle up for golf, you are likely to sling on a protective back brace against the stress and violence of swinging a driver for maximum distance. But that may just be a start.

Alas, the ball does not seem to fly as far for you as it does with younger players. Your challenges are different, but nonetheless real. You need the engineers to rebuild you for performance like the Bionic Man, and to protect you from injury like the medieval knights. Much of what you will need is in a well-stocked drug store, but today you can find much more online. (By the way, the price is way below six million, and you don’t need a horse.)

Here are a few items for your bionic build up at 75 years old, starting from the arms. Some kibitzers will tell you not to bend your wrist when you swing, but stop action on any professional and you’ll see that is pure malarkey. When you contact the ball your wrists become the focal point of your whole body. Wrists are one of the main injuries suffered by professional golfers. Wrist brace devices can be just an adhesive wrapping, or become more rigid – and expensive – with splints build into the front and back. What you will not find is a side brace, or even a pocket for it.

  Your Bionic Knight!

My wrist suffered from what is called Ulnar Deviation injury, which created a painful sprain when I missed the ball. If I hit the ball, it felt fine. Now admittedly the pain itself is a superb training aid, but I created just the right resistance by cutting a piece from a cowhide leather belt, and slipping it under the side of a golf brace in addition to the regular (back of the hand) splint. My arthritis doctor said she loves it when patients create ways to alleviate their own pain…

Going one direction from your wrist, you (or a good friend) must lace thumb braces on you like a Victorian corset. Back up the arm in the other direction, you can support “golf elbows” with stretch bands, or foam sleeves, or supports which wrap separately around your forearm and lower bicep. Usually these elbow braces support your lead arm (left if you are right handed). Also, there are massage therapies for Golf Elbow, as I note in another post (“In Arms Way.”)

It strikes me now that this subject of creating the Bionic Self is broader than just one post, because we still have back and hips and knees and ankles. So I guess we will have to continue with at least one more post. Believe it or not, there is good news here. Younger athletes use supports for various occasional injuries but used together these supports can make an entire suit of armor for we 75-year-olds men and women. Just find “The Merry Band of Bionic Golfers – Part 2”, for a variety of back and hip braces, and then finally knees, and ankles. We’ll even investigate battery-run electronic aids to make you truly bionic in your own home.


Copyright 2020 – David Hon

The Merry Band of Bionic Golfers – Part 2

By now, you must be enchanted by this image of endearing, quixotic 75-year-old golfers – bionic knights and knightesses marching forth on golf courses during everyone else’s work day. If you are not yet thus enchanted, see “The Merry Band of Bionic Golfers”. In that previous post, I talked about enhancements and protections, but mostly about strap-on protections for your back and wrists and elbows.

Thrashing about the golf course can be dangerous work when you are 75, clear down to your hips and knees and ankles. In general, the faster you swing your golf club the further the ball will go. However, the bad news is that the faster you swing the wilder you get. If you clobber your own foot with your fast swing, that can be painful indeed, but it is a great training aid. (If it hurts, we humans try to learn another way.) Golf injuries to your back are rarely original at our age: you’ve probably had a weakened back before at some time. Some back braces are just token – others have fiberboard or even inflatable support. And you may have to adjust your swing – see the post: “Saved By Science.”

Injuries to your knees may come from swinging in the wrong posture, or just walking up too many hills. When my knees really started to hurt was when I began to run the short 9 course, described in “Crucible with a 6 Iron.” I immediately Googled knee braces, and found a cornucopia of knee supports. Some were mere wrappings, and others had steel reinforcements. Some knee braces were even hinged, and were very heavy. Reminds one of how their medieval armor allowed dismounted Knights to creak around like future robots and clang on other dismounted knights with broadswords and swing ball-and-chains.

  Light and Industrial Grade Knees

Back to our future, my arthritis doctor, perhaps amused with these new ways old people destroy themselves, gave me some good advice on knee braces. “Start with the least supportive ones, and try to not to use braces that give your knees too much support.” Easy for her to say…the pain is mine. “If you become too dependent on the sturdier braces, you knees will not build up the body’s own support, in muscles and ligaments.” Turns out she didn’t have kids to send to college with knee replacement profits. But it also turns out that in my case – so far – she was right.

Getting into the VERY Bionic, there are actual electronic wave belts and muscle stimulators that can do something to absolve muscle pain. With double A battery power there may be little they can do to hurt you, and stimulation of muscles feels like something is going on there. If you can buy them at the drug store, they are probably harmless enough. Some people even report that it takes away pain. (Quick note: These devices are somewhat medical. They are NOT the vibrators in online pleasure catalogs you may stumble onto by mistake…)

Lastly, there are true Bionic enhancements for the 75-year-old golfer that really make sense and really work wonders. Here is a short list:

  • Arthritic gloves make it easier to grip the club, and being thicker can keep your hands a bit warmer as well.
  • – Large diameter golf grips can also make gripping and swinging your clubs easier. Try them first on the clubs you use most. Or for a few dollars, just build up the diameter of the club with an overwrap. The tackiness of those overwraps also helps you swing with a relaxed grip that is still a firm one.
  • Solidly-built golf shoes, with studs or cleats. can help older people with their balance issues. Balance is necessary for a consistently good swing. Youngsters can get away with wearing sneakers, but not us. (Waterproof shoes are more comfortable in the morning dew, or in late and early season golf in the slop.
  • – Bryson DeChambeau, a recent tour winner, has friendly manufacturers build all of his clubs the same length. Some experts say that with a longer clubs the same length, your body isn’t constantly modifying posture as you try to hit the ball. If you want to try same-length clubs, my much cheaper alternative is an adjustable-head club in “Demons and Shortcuts.”

However you chose to modify yourself and your golf, we 75-year-old Bionics will recognize each other’s armor. Don’t stand too close, but salute each other with respect for Golf’s life-long quest.


Copyright 2020 – David Hon

Demons and Shortcuts

During my 75th year, Golf was waiting patiently for me to get a few things out of my system.

In the 58 years since I had my Physical Education quarter in Golf, I made a few miserable attempts to go out on the course with friends. A few demons emerged that I would have to take care of if I were to start golf at age 75. Since I had been in the high-tech world of Seattle, I thought that (of course) new technologies could take care of all my problems.

One problem in those misadventures was that I continually lost balls off the tee, and spent most of the afternoon flummoxing around the woods and brush which bound the fairways in Seattle. I lost enough balls to dent my next paycheck and held everyone back at almost every shot. They were kind –but it was not fun. Through the semiconductor years and the software development years, I kept swearing I would try golf again if they would develop a signal-emitting ball that I could track with my cell phone via satellite. Actually, for a number of years I felt safe that they would never develop one, since it would also continue emitting signals from far underwater, where a number of my other balls also rested. Who needs a symphony of lost balls sending gargling signals from under the lily pads.

And then someone invented the locatable ball that would beep on your cellphone screen and lead you to itself. It was some British firm (whom Americans inevitably trust) that said they had a start up company and would have the balls for sale in the next spring. However — so I wouldn’t miss out — they would gladly take orders to deliver the first ones them. I gladly put down $36 for six of them, ready to begin golf anew when they were delivered. It has been two years now, and the balls are not here yet. Perhaps they lost my address. I’ve lost their address and the official-looking receipt they sent, so I am hesitant to call it a scam. I would never have started golf again, but a YouTube video showed me how to hit the ball somewhat straighter, and that was better than having a forest locator anyway. (I’m still expecting to see those magic balls in the mail…any day now.)

The other problem I had with golf was dragging 12-14 clubs around, up and down hill and dale. I had yet to learn why they would saddle the novice with all that iron. (I still am not sure why you need that many clubs.) So then I saw the single telescoping club that would fit into a briefcase, and whose head would adjust to every loft, (and even become the putter). I thought that (- wow -) with that freedom, with essentially a single length club, my path into golf would be significantly shorter. There are a few makers of these multiple head clubs, and the Divnick one I got was quite sufficient to learn the game in one stroke, so to speak, just changing the loft to get more distance, or more height, out of the very same club. I do think that adjustable single head and one single club length, accelerated my understanding and made my single stroke a more manageable way to learn.

Not everyone would agree that this was the best way to begin, but I started out in the cold and wet December of my 75th birthday mastering this single club, and making decent progress on the 1500 yard 9 hole “executive” course near my home. I was 75 years old and what they call a “super senior”. That short course costs me $6 even today.  Full of novice gusto,  I even considered running between holes with that one adjustable club, and I understand there is actually an official variation called Speed Golf. But after jogging a couple of holes I realized I was 75 years old, after all, and not half-equipped for this kind of biathlon. (Possibly you won’t be either.)

I don’t regret either of these bizarre avenues for you to get into Golf in your belated years. Later I determined a mix of some traditional methods and many new trade-offs which befitted my age. We’re all different — especially by age 75, and hopefully you will see a path into golf which is not quite so convoluted.


Copyright 2019 — David Hon

 

The Dividends of Grandeur

At age 75, you have probably begun to worry about how you are investing your time. You may not be tracking the investment of time you have left on a spread sheet, but you must have a sense of what is lovely in life, and how you can live out what’s left in the middle of that good life. Friends and family are of course right up there, and if you are very involved with both you are fortunate indeed. There does occur more than a little loneliness in these years, however, and golf can come to the rescue. Aside from the fact that you may develop some golfing friend, golf itself can provide at least two glorious dividends for the time, and some little bit of money, that you put into it. These dividends are yours alone.

In the Candy Store post, I talked about how you can spend money on golf if you really want to, but your beginning – and probably your most significant – steps will be built on Attitude and Desire. I would venture to wager that a good golfer could turn in a decent score using only the 3 wood, 9 iron, and the putter that I suggested would cost $10-15 in a Goodwill store. What money could not buy for that golfer, or anyone else, was Attitude and Desire, and one other investment…Practice Time.

If you are retired, your golden payoff is that you have almost unlimited Practice Time. You have as much Practice Time as touring professionals, and maybe a little more. You will also have some great Senior – and even half price Super Senior discounts in many places, simply because you can occupy a course or a driving range during the working week when few other people are using it. Your low cost clubs and your discounts and your coveted Practice Time can all point you toward Golf’s two great dividends.

  Harbour Pointe – North of Seattle

Dividend #1 – The Gardens of Royalty. Mark Twain, or someone else looking for a laugh, talked of Golf as a “Good walk spoiled.” But there are good walks, and there are GOOD WALKS. Of course the grounds of Versailles or the Czars’ Summer Palace may come to mind. However, anyone walking around a rich country estate (anywhere, US, England, or really anywhere) will find the foliage and the grounds immaculately well kept. The landscaping will take advantage of the broad vistas and the trimmed forests. You will be walking through a natural dreamland that is the best that Nature can present in any area. In a very similar way, golf courses might be considered the jewels in each community. All you have to do to be royalty in the midst of this splendor is to hit a golf ball along. For sure, it becomes your shared country estate.

Dividend #2 – The Grandeur Within. It is one thing to hit a little ball out into the wide green fairways between the trees and ponds and sand – and it is quite another thing to hit it well. At age 75 you have accomplished a few things, but they are fading fast. You may not remember the few remaining people at your high school reunion. You take long flights of stairs with more effort than a few years ago. You have trouble lifting bags into the overhead bin…often people kindly offer to help. All of the things you controlled with your head and your strength…are fading fast.

With golf you are given a rebirth of a human privilege, of improving yourself by yourself. Age seems to take that personal thrill away, but with golf you have new challenges, and time and practice can give you new abilities, new skills, every month. You can get better and for many years, you can get better fast. You have exciting new revelations and new successes as you invest your time, and just a little money, in golf. The rewards are not outside you. They are inside you…and at age 75 they are priceless.


Copyright 2019 — David Hon

Crucible With A 6-Iron

When I awoke New Year’s morning in 2020, I knew I must begin the New Year with something terrifying. 

Since I turned 75, I have backed off some beginnings, things barely begun because failure seems imminent. But this New Year’s I needed a breakthrough, as a sort of mascot standing against things prematurely abandoned. You may remember an earlier post, when I mused about running between holes on the course, but then I quit, remembering that, after all, I was 75 years old.

New Year’s morning it was cold and rainy here in Seattle, and I was 77 years old. It was now or never. Grit your teeth and do your thing for the New Year. I pulled on some golf shoes and rain pants and, armed with only a 6-iron, I resolved to run between every shot on every hole on the long and hilly 9-hole Par 3 near my home.

I had heroic visions of the Winter Olympic Biathlon, where contestants race on cross-country skis between shooting stations, and where – short of breath – they shoot for scores on targets in the snow. Within short seconds they sling their rifles across their back and take off again on the course, pushing and gliding over 12 miles of hills and forest and snow. I have heard in one story that Swedish or Norwegian Army Ski troops developed this training when Nazi (or was it Soviet?) invasions were threatening. Nothing like a flawed metaphoric daydream to get your blood going.

So while the New Year’s Eve drunks snored snug in their beds, I now faced the wet, empty course. I had heard that at one time the golfing legend Lee Trevino had been a pobre in Texas and could only afford a 6-iron. He needed to support his family with whatever he could earn with that 6-iron. I don’t remember if it these were local tournaments or just side bets, but he says he learned the most about golf having to do everything with that one club.

The first tee box was on top of a slope, about 100 yards from the hole, an easy swing with a 6-iron. No one waiting (and no one watching), I swung away. The ball went sailing very high and very straight, arcing up and bending down toward the green. And then I remembered to run…I lept into space from the elevated tee box. With my eyes up to the sky watching that glorious ball, I landed running and almost turned my ankle. I was many yards down slope of wet grass, before the ball hit and stopped on the green, 4 feet from the hole.

Somewhere in those moments I realized I had no putter. As I jogged up to the ball, I reckoned I could tilt the 6-iron and putt with it. Just missed a birdie from 4 feet, but had an easy tap-in for a Par. I conserved my energy by mostly walking between the greens and the next tee box.  On this winter day, the whole course would be about a mile-long slosh over mushy grass that blanketed cold mud underneath.  Every running step sank in a few inches and made a frigid splash. It took straight shots that didn’t get lost. Not only my eyes, but my legs were following the ball in flight. I felt like a kid running after my balls…no…maybe like a dog after a slobbery tennis ball.

By God, I was going to make it through this course in under 30 minutes! I was panting hard and trudging up to the last tee box when I discovered there was someone else on the course, a family of four standing at the last tee box. I would have to stop for them to play that hole. It was a good excuse to stop, and I welcomed it. But the family had looked back before they teed off, and had seen me laboring up the hill to the previous hole. As I staggered up to wait at the tee box, the father said, “Want to play on through?”

I did. Of course I did. They watched as this crazy old man finished his first successful resolution on this cold and drizzly New Year’s morning, and further resolved to start things that were even more terrifying…as soon as he could catch a breath.


Copyright 2020 — David Hon

 

Golf in the Time of Corona

If you are in your 70s in this month of March 2020, you are probably suspected of being infected by the Corona Virus – which brings us, of course, to golf. Daily life for everyone in March is grinding to the halt we elders experience all the time. In many cases they want to forbid us to leave the house. Recreation is generally a no-no.

However, comma, your personal practice does not qualify as “recreation.” Golfing practice is not play; it is introspection, perhaps even meditation. An abandoned football field can be all you need to spend the time they are trying to take from us. Even if you have just a small patch of land to escape to, they cannot shut it down, like they can a real golf course. A lot of park space may be even more empty than on work days. Or a sandy beach can be all you need to perfect shots in your Short Game. (Make a circle in the sand and hit to land within it.) And you don’t have to be in a group. You don’t even need a friend. Your golf club is friend enough.

We have earned that time by ourselves, by mingling a lifetime with the maddening crowds. Now, if we are confined to the house as 70 year olds, we might die safely in our rockers, or see some dear old movies come round again. Those of us with eyesight may rediscover reading. However, it turns out to be a great time to rediscover – and replenish – your golfing skills. There are probably 1000 short, free golf videos that can improve your understanding of parts of your game, and you can even get golf instruction by sending online instructors videos of your swing. There is always living room — or hall way — practice in putting… just find about 10 feet of unobstructed carpet. Many golf instructors say you can improve your overall consistency and club speed by taking 100 swings a day (, in a back yard or alley where you won’t destroy your ceiling).

Or, if you are exceptionally lucky, you may find a golf course open to the public. It may be the ultimate compromise in social isolation. The very threat of flying golf balls automatically keeps everyone at a distance. There are broad, wide open fairways with sweet air circulating freely and filling your lungs and pulsating like the beating heart of God. Only your own golf balls and your own clubs to touch. Vitamin D from the sunshine – even it is a little chilly as it is in Seattle now. But if Seattle can allow its courses to be open, semi-quarantined as we are, then any place can allow golf.

Here’s what our local municipal course is doing: 1. Limiting lines in the golf shop so only one or two players are inside to pay ( – soon that should all be online). 2. Closing the snack shop/restaurant. 3. Closing the driving range because eventually balls touched by one person can carry disease to another. 4. Raising the cups in the holes on every green (photo above), so one doesn’t reach into a much used cup for the ball, or need to remove the flag stick. Because your ball just has to touch the raised cup, at any speed, this should help everyone’s score.

I would suspect that soon they will stop renting germy carts, so everyone will be walking as golf was in its healthy beginnings. As it is, every golfer seems very careful to touch only his or her gear and balls. As far as I can discover from Google, corona virus on shoes and the ground is not an issue since respiratory droplets dissipate in the ground. But that solitary finding was in the China Daily News, so I’ll try to find other scientific opinions.

It may be my last such walk for a while, but yesterday was a glorious day for Golf in the Time of Corona. Minus chunking a few dirt balls and watching a few long slices disappear into thick forests, our outing was as satisfying as the first day of Spring. In fact it was the first day of Spring. So, here’s hoping that that your expansive golfing refuge remains until the scourge passes, when everyone of every age can mingle and joke… and touch… again.


Copyright 2020 — David Hon

 

Golf in the Time of Corona – Part 2

It has been 4 weeks now since our State closed down the golf courses completely, as part of a large shutdown of all non-essential businesses, including restaurants and bars. The reasoning for shutting down all recreation, even when public course operators modified our local golf to keep immense distance between players, and hands off anything touched by anyone else, is a little unclear. One local public health official said shutting down golf was necessary because if the public saw golfers having fun, that public would not think other prohibitions like, say, against arm wrestling in taverns, were actually serious. Golf probably spreads no viruses; nothing at all but joy (and a little disappointment on a few shots). However, now golf has to suffer as well.

Those of us who doubted they could shut down a large golf course pressed our noses against the closed steel gates. Most golfers put their clubs in the garage and turned to TV or procrastinated yard work. .After a burst of activity the state closed off even mountain hiking trails. The officials here in Seattle wanted us to wear masks to go to the stores and doctors’ offices, but still allow us to walk maskless only around the neighborhoods for exercise. That’s when I decided to take my golf to the streets.

If you are in your 70s you can walk with a golf club like a cane and no one knows what roguery you are up to. A couple of balls in a pocket or fanny pack, and you are off on a jaunt through the various small parks in the city. Moving from one to the other, you will most certainly have the opportunity to practice a few shots in most of them. Like any good city park golfer, you must watch closely for baby carriages, or couples sneaking about to smooch behind some shrub. Dogs may seem far away, but nothing attracts them like a ball flying through the air. If they have a lightweight owner, he or she may get dragged for several yards, running after, digging in heels, and maybe sliding on tummies or bottoms behind the romping dog.

For this reason, I would suggest you take only a pitching wedge, and do not hit in any area in which 30-40 yard shot could get away from you. Have a target like a tennis ball that you can toss out that far (but again watch for romping dogs dragging their owners across the grass), and don’t make any swing if you can’t absolutely 100% control. One-quarter swings are best. Work on short distance accuracy in these small parks. Yelling “fore” is not an alternative either. The pedestrian always wins the case against the driver.

A good idea would be to carry a few whiffle balls or sponge rubber balls, which you can buy cheaply online if you’ve never bought any before. Any of these will help you develop a stroke that swoops exactly between the ball and the ground, and lifts the ball up for a short distance from you until some breeze catches it. The best of these “substitute balls“ are foam rubber with a dimple hard shell, and they slice if your usual ball would slice, and fly about one quarter the distance your usual ball would go if you hit it well. It does look like a real golf ball, however, and may well terrify mothers with baby walkers, so be kind.

Just recently they closed off roads into all of the larger city parks, limiting them to walkers, so now without families and their little picnics, I have many more opportunities to hit. Except for one thing. I do not know what action the police or the maintenance people in the parks will take if they see me hitting on a nice expanse of grass. I’m sure their first instinct, if confronted, would be to forbid golf. Actually, I don’t want to be forbidden, so my best bet is to watch out for their vehicles. If they spot me, I start leaning on my club as a cane, covering as much of the head as I can with my hand. It seems to work. After all: who could deny an old man with a cane his walk in the park?


Copyright 2020 — David Hon

 

Golf in the Time of Corona – Part 3

When you are 75 years old, they will first chase you off the golf course…and then chase you off the streets. While walking with my golf club disguised as a cane, I came across several baseball fields. They are ideal for hitting balls up to 80 yards, and some even have fences that protect corona golfers from the intrusion of dogs and kids on bikes and moms with baby carriages. And no one is playing baseball, because even a sandlot game requires 10 players in some proximity. So why did the maintenance crew throw me off the field,  for merely hitting little balls a short distance? I think it was because I looked happy.

H.L. Mencken  observed how with our Puritan streak comes the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. I will add that it seems OK to be working out. However, don’t be caught doing anything that remotely resembles play. (Playing in your 70s is even worse because, after all, statistics say you may die on the spot!)

(You may have seen this coming.) There are basically two kinds of people in the world: those who work out, and those who play. There are those who work out so that they can play better, but they always aim to play. I certainly do. I reveal here that I hate working out just to breathe hard and sweat. I believe I can only play now. Working out for its own sake is often a modern flagellation like those Middle Ages sinners who whipped themselves in penitence to God. Now the sin is being fat, I guess, or worry about getting fat or weak…or old. And in fairness we can remember that the ancient Greeks devised the Olympic Games to keep their soldiers always fit for war.

People also used to walk or run just to get someplace. Catching a bus or a criminal ( or running from a crime, of course). Trekking on trails in the forest. Little of that now, with Uber on our phones and mountain bikes with studded tires. Add to that racers who just like to exceed everyone else…but then that verges on play, does it not?

Then I noticed a little boy, spinning a hula hoop around his waist. This did not look like torture. He didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, either. He was simply defying gravity, for a short vacation. We elders are pretty far from defying gravity by now, but I caught myself wishing he would forget his hula hoop. If he did, then I could hit golf balls at it from 20-30 yards. What fun that would be.

He did forget to take the hoop with him when he ran off to join others, but his mother remembered, and peered at me oddly as she swooped in to rescue her son’s hula hoop (- just in time to vitiate my first shot). Why, I thought, should I not have my own hula hoop? On the way home, I stopped in a nearby “dollar” store. I bought four small hula hoops, each two feet in diameter. I’m going to leave you to imagine what I will do next with these hula hoops. Hula? Hardly. One hint: it will not be working out. It will not be torture. I’m also going to leave you to wonder what people on the street thought when they saw an old man with a cane (or golf club?) carrying 4 small hula hoops in his left hand. Hoops are very hard to hide.


Copyright 2020 — David Hon

 

Fear in the Time of Challenge

 As the Yaki Indian wise man Don Carlos said, the decline of old age is the toughest challenge of all.  I don’t have to tell you that family members are bed-ridden, lifelong friends die off while you still owe them dinner at your place, and events of your early life are a distant muddle but for a few photos. You surely have less bounce in your step – but you still have a step. The challenge of old age is to put any life back in Life, while you are still walking.

So the time is near for you to begin actually playing golf. This could be your way, and perhaps your only way, of fighting back the early withering of your soul. And there are signs already that you may succeed. Hopefully (as I suggested) you have picked up a 3-wood and a 9-iron and a putter – at your local Goodwill store for a total of $15. Hopefully you’ve found an empty field for hitting the 3 and the 9 and a carpet for your putter to get the feel of these clubs. And hopefully you have then with the 3-wood and the 9-iron knocked some balls on a low cost driving range, and the putter on the totally free greens at most public golf  courses.

Life is short and you must now begin golf in earnest. Do not wait for golf to come to you. There are usually pitch-and-putt courses in most towns, and some have holes up to 200 yards. Often their fees for seniors (and super seniors over 75) are extremely reasonable. In more remote locations, you’ll  just have to start on the long course with a nine-hole rate in the off-peak hours midday. However, the longer pitch-and-putt courses (sometimes called “Executive 9s”) are probably your best way to start experiencing real golf.

Do that even before you have tried to master any stroke or any club. Do that if you have a few weeks wait to take inexpensive group lessons. Time may not be on your side. Here is my cantankerous and surely controversial opinion: Even though you may be inept and the experience somewhat frustrating, you need to understand golf in the context of playing golf. Only after you have tried to play will you know what lessons you need the most, what equipment you need the most, and what kind of practice you need to start…now.

We’ll talk about those things in short order. but do not be afraid either of embarrassment or hurting yourself or wasting money or worse, embarking on something so huge you can never complete it…. Many others are as embarrassed as you, you adjust yourself immediately to anything that hurts, you can begin cheaply, and as for something so huge…

To get our attention at our age, it practically has to be huge. I had the good fortune to be at the 2012 Harvard Commencement speech by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the President of Liberia and a Nobel Prize winner as the first female leader of an African nation. She told the soon-to-be-comfortable Harvard grads that they would aspire to goals, but she warned that if they were predictable and safe goals, these would drain their life of passion. She told the soon-to-be-comfortable Harvard grads that their lives would mean little if their goals, right now, were not “absolutely terrifying”, almost impossible to imagine reaching.

Maybe she was not talking to you, or certainly not talking about golf.  Or maybe she was….Without demeaning her message or the potentials of Youth, I think that if you are just starting out on golf then probably it is scary. Scary is probably how a round of golf looks to you. HUGE. Impossible. So this should be of comfort, and be your great luck, in the Time of Challenge. You should welcome this new thing you are afraid of…because by now you are more ready than you know.


Copyright 2019 — David Hon