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English lessons
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. Friday, July 20 LYTHAM, England -- The search for a lost golf swing takes one to all sorts of places -- places sheltered, places exposed, places wet, places dry, places clean, places grimy. And since a lost swing, like a lost sock, is never going to be found, it finally occurs to a profound thinker like me that I should confine the search to places that are agreeable in their own right. A couple of days ago, for instance, I looked for my swing at the Café de Paris, a local brasserie that serves mussels à la escargot. Wednesday night I enlisted the aid of Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Bamberger and English photographer Bob Martin, and looked for it at Tiggi's, an estimable Italian restaurant in St. Annes. Tom Lehman found his swing at Tiggi's in 1996, the year he won the British Open at Royal Lytham and St. Annes, and he was there on Wednesday, as well, sitting at his usual corner table. "The search is going well," I said, spearing a tender morsel of calamari with a fish fork. "I haven't hit a bad shot in days." Martin, a pitiless man with a London accent, said, "Well, if you carry on like this, you won't know when you've found your bloody swing, will you?" It was Martin's cruel riposte that had me up before 10 o'clock this morning for a quick practice session in Warton, on the coast highway below Lytham. It was a pleasant morning, warm, with gauzy clouds inland and blue sky over the Irish Sea. Unfortunately, the Lucky Strike Golf Centre turned out to be a "sensory deprivation range" -- my term for a facility which denies the golfer any one of the essential bits of feedback that make practice possible. Put simply, I couldn't see the ball against the background of clouds. It's quite possible that my drives were sailing uprange with a tight draw, but it's equally likely that they were ballooning off to the right like a banking 747 or rifling left like a ground-to-ground missile. Hitting full shots was pointless, so I poured the rest of the balls on the mat and hit 30- to 50-yard pitch shots until they were all gone. I suppose I could have filed a complaint or asked for a refund, but the Lucky Strike Golf Centre was something of a ghost ship. I got my balls by feeding £2.50 into a big metal cabinet, and the only human presence was a man behind a caged window. I never got a clear look at the fellow; he stayed out of sight, apparently fearful that someone might want to buy a candy bar or ask for change. Sad to say, this is typical of my experience with ranges in the U.K. They tend to be drab, utilitarian facilities where earnest Brits go to punish themselves for real or imagined transgressions. "Didn't like it," I told my colleagues when I saw them later at the media center. But now, as I write this account of a wasted morning, I feel a tingle of excitement. Instead of searching for my lost swing, I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks searching for something almost as elusive: a British driving range with -- dare I say it? -- charm. Surely there is a spot on this big island where a weary traveler can hit golf balls off grass while a string quartet in a gazebo saws away at Brahms and an old lady in an apron waters roses behind the tee line. Am I asking too much? 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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