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

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

Taking on the Big Show

When you are starting anything in your seventies, there are so many voices of intimidation. Medical people say your bones are brittle, so don’t risk falling. Younger people all seem stronger, and have more energy and flexibility, and move so much faster. In golf specifically, good golfers hitting 300 yard drives all day can be very intimidating.  If you have been working on your golf strokes, and perhaps playing on short nine-hole courses quite happily, you may not want to subject yourself to an 18 hole course. It is the intimidating Big Show. Beginning golf in your seventies, you may think the Big Show – the four to five miles of an 18 hole course – is beyond you.

Don’t sell yourself short…

Remember that if you pay your money and like to hit the ball toward the hole, you deserve to be on the golf course as much as anyone. Much more than any collection of skills, your attention to the flow of the game and your courtesy toward other players will make you accepted by other golfers. Maybe you never hit a ball more than 70 or 80 yards. You can still play on the same course with “scratch” golfers – who always score in the low 70s. If you work at making good contact on the ball, with cheap but effective methods I’ll describe in further posts, you can begin to feel more comfortable on the large course. And surprisingly, if you work very hard at controlling your time, you can be acceptable by golfers on almost any course.

Try to think of your every move on the course as something that either adds to, or subtracts from, the time the people in the group behind you must wait. You may be fortunate enough to have a tee time with no group directly behind you or ahead of you. However, let us assume the schedule is tight (- some courses recommend only 13-15 minutes per hole). So here are some positive habits you can build, even with your first time on the 18-hole Big Show. The essence, for any player on the course, is to keep the game moving. If players behind you continually see a novice or a senior out on the fairway, fretting about which club to use, or otherwise dawdling about instead of moving to their next shot, your presence will not be popular. Here are some ways NOT to be that fairway obstacle:

  1. Always be ready with your next club. As you are going to your next shot, decide what club you will use so you can pull it from the bag immediately and decisively to be ready for your turn to hit.
  2. When it is your turn, take just enough time to set up quickly, and then calmly concentrate on your shot.
  3. New Golf rules say you only have 3 minutes to look for a ball. Respect that.
  4. Try to adjust your game to whomever you are partnering with. If you hit only 70-80 yards at the longest, offer to hit first so you are ready to start most quickly toward your shorter ball. This is also useful  when you know you won’t hit is as far as the players on the fairway are (and so represent no danger to them).
  5. Continuously move your bag or cart along with you whenever you have hit, so you don’t have to double back for your next club. If you are near the green, take both a short club and your putter.
  6. Before you putt, try to leave your bag (or cart) at the furthest point toward the next tee. Then you will not have to double back for your clubs.

As awkward as I am learning golf in my seventies, these are a few kinds of golf etiquette which are the most important things I have learned about playing with other golfers. I have had times when I was inadvertently paired with experienced players who made incredible shots. Gosh! 200 yard approach shots they dropped right on the green.

Talk about intimidating. And yet I watched as they practiced everything I mentioned above. They do these so naturally it is easy for you to follow and learn. I may just have been lucky, but every time I was miss-paired in this way, they respected the fact this old man was diligent with his game and with their time and they complimented me on me on good shots. From my good fortune, I hope that you will try the Big Show sooner than later. You may even find some Big Hearts out there!


Copyright 2020 — David Hon