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Set adrift yet again
Posted: Monday April 17, 2000 03:24 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer John Garrity was a 42-year-old 8-handicapper when he suddenly lost his swing. Since December 1989 he has been looking for it -- a modern-day Odysseus adrift on the troubled waters of swing theory. As Garrity travels the world reporting on golf, he visits as many driving ranges as he can, avoiding the dreaded "mats only" ranges that prevent him from teeing it up. Tuesday, April 11 SAVANNAH -- No, I did not play Augusta National on the Monday after the Masters. I loaded up my rental car instead, tossed a bag of Krispy Kremes on the passenger seat and drove out of Augusta with my dignity intact. (Krispy Kremes are a close second to Lamar's, my home-town donut.) I pointed the car south because it is now a rite of spring for me to get a lesson from Brian Mogg in Orlando . But first I made a detour into South Carolina, thinking I might play a quick nine at Haig Point or Melrose in Hilton Head, or at Jim and Lilie's in Jackson. Jim and Lilie's Golf Course, if you haven't heard of it -- and you probably haven't -- is on Highway 125, north of the Savannah River nuclear reservation. I made a quick U-turn when I saw the sign at the side of the road. Then I drove through a school parking lot and across a field on a red-dirt road. In the rustic, Appalachian-style clubhouse I found a little snack bar/pro shop and what I took to be a family room (because it had a family in it -- a mom and a couple of tickle-happy teenagers watching TV). The nine-hole greens fee was $9.75, cart included. The course, unfortunately, was neither wretched enough to warrant inclusion in "America's Worst Golf Courses," nor good enough to maintain my interest. When I caught up with a sixsome on the seventh tee, I called it quits. Driving on, I decided to spend the night at a Fairfield Inn in Savannah. It proved to be a good choice, because the Henderson Golf Club is just a half mile from the Inn. Henderson has an excellent range: good turf, nice targets, plenty of room, and lights for night practice. My only complaint is that they dispense the balls in those little green drawstring bags. I HATE those bags. They're harder to carry than buckets, they hold no more than 50 balls, and their resemblance to jewelry pouches leads to inflationary charges. Two bags at Henderson cost me almost $9 -- not actionable, but Palm Springs spoiled me with its $7- and $10-a-day ranges. While I hit balls for a growing gallery of flying insects, a bunch of well-oiled men and women gathered outside the clubhouse and cheered the winners of an afternoon outing. I don't want to make invidious comparisons, but their ceremony was a lot more fun than the green jacket ritual the Masters stages every year. Every time a winner was announced, the same boozy female voice shrieked, "Hooray, Kenny!" or "Hooray, Chuck!" I popped a good, long drive into the setting sun and gave myself a silent, "Hooray, Johnny!" Wednesday, April 12 ORLANDO -- The alert reader will notice that I have not concluded the story of my lesson with Rob Stanger in Rancho Mirage, Calif. That's because a 700-word Web column doesn't afford room for a retelling of the Faust legend as a golf instructional. Here's the dehydrated version: We met at the Westin Mission Hills lesson tee on Saturday afternoon. Rob established a target line for me by stretching a carpenter's string a good 30 feet toward a blue flag in the range valley. He then gave me a well-reasoned primer on club fundamentals, using the string and a couple of checkpoints to establish the proper swing path. He had me hit lazy half shots with my wedges, emphasizing shaft direction and the angle of the club face when the club reached horizontal on the follow-through. Before long, he had me trapping the ball like a pro; the ball flew lower than my usual pitch shots and stopped near the flagstick after a couple of playful hops. "You're on the doorstep," he said. Rob also taught me how to shank. But I didn't discover that until I got home to Kansas City and tried out my new moves on the range at Milburn Country Club. Suddenly I was hitting every fifth shot off the hosel, leaving a Hoganesque cluster of yellow range balls at the edge of the 18th fairway. A quick exchange of e-mails with Rob cleared up that problem, and for a couple of days I struck my pitches with the quiet arrogance of a Tiger Woods, give or take a few yards of pointless precision. Then I got to Georgia. Practicing on the tidy little range at West Lake Country Club in Augusta, I suddenly could not hit my half-swing pitches; they were mostly fat. My driver, on the other hand, was a threat to the houses at the far end of the range. I imagine that the residents, hearing the sound of my drives pounding the roofs like April hail, shook their heads and shuffled to the streetside rooms. Out of curiosity, I waded into one of the practice bunkers and tried a few explosion shots. The balls came out of the sand at various speeds with various trajectories. To put it bluntly, my sand game is totally screwed up. It was Walter Hagen, I think, who said, "Give me a man with big hands, big feet and no brains, and I will make a golfer out of him." Damn it to hell! Hagen died before he could give me a lesson.
Watch this space for another installment of Mats Only. To send John Garrity advice, share your experiences or suggest a driving range, click here.
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