Golf (Again) - 4/22/16

In our ongoing attempt to get all of us together for events at the same time, and to add on to our previous outing, we headed out to a beautiful local golf course, Tierra Verde, to meet up with Coach Amy Fox.  Amy is a well known instructor and she was excited for the chance to work with us on this project.


Golf was held in the 1900 Olympic games for both men and women.  It held a men's event and team event in 1904, but was subsequently not played until the IOC voted in 2009 to reinstate it for the Rio games in 2016.


We met on a Friday morning at the clubhouse.  Coach Fox and a couple of her helpers greeted us with a Team USA banner and mini torch, then escorted us out to the driving range complete with Olympics music!

Team USA? With Coach Fox

We first stretched some while Coach Fox learned our assorted histories with the sport.  J had taken lessons when she was younger and still has her own set of clubs.  L2 and R both have very limited experience (if you want to call putt-putt "experience").  We then moved on to proper grip technique and the general motion of a follow-through.  I never realized the grip was an overlapping one, where your dominant hand covers the opposite hand's thumb on the club.  The follow through has your non-dominate hand cocked like you are ready to hit a nail with a hammer and elbow flexed to a 90 degree angle.  Once Coach liked what she saw, she gave us each an iron to practice swing at tees.  She set up three tees, a couple of inches apart from each other and we were to attempt to hit only the middle one.  After that, we actually added a ball.  There were surprisingly few complete misses!  Not surprisingly, a number of sharp slices...  We also tried our hand with some woods - very light for their size.

At the driving range

After we learned how to tee off, we headed over to a practice hole to work on putting.  I will say, there is much more to putting than I thought - including a form I had NOT been using all of these years in putt-putt!  We practiced short putting, with feet putter-head distance apart, medium putting in a slightly wider stance, then long putting with the widest stance.

Putting on the green

Finally, we played the par 3 hole.  We each teed off, then hit a middle shot to get onto the green, then putted.  We all did better than expected - 5 or 6 strokes.  Coach even added to our confidence with teaching us some etiquette and confirming we may actually be of some value on a "scramble" type tournament team.  We were each awarded our own gold medal from Coach!

L2 tees off

J chips it onto the green

R's first putt

We headed back to the clubhouse to wrap up.  We talked about Olympics golf and how disappointing it is that the world's best players aren't choosing to represent their countries at the upcoming Rio games.  The idea of giving amateurs the right to represent their country proudly was one we all agreed with.  It was a great beginner lesson and one that has us all planning to head out to a local par 3 course to see how we'd handle 9 holes...

Golf complete!