|
 |
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE | |
My brother the natural
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. Thursday, Oct. 18 FORT WORTH, Texas -- Somebody must have left the sprinklers on overnight because the range at Mira Vista Country Club was sodden this morning. Every time I took a healthy 18-inch divot, a spray of water, sand and Bermuda grass splattered on my face and glasses. My brother, Tom, however, seemed to have found a dry spot. He wasn't spitting out blades and stolons after every shot, and his ball flight didn't resemble a Hoyt Wilhelm knuckleball. In fact, he hit about three wedges, a few middle irons, a couple of drives, and declared himself ready to play. "I've only got so many swings in me," he said with a grin. "I have to save enough for the round." My own warmup took considerably longer because my mouth was stuck agape. Tom, as regular readers of this column know, is a former PGA Tour pro who regained his amateur status about 38 years ago and has spent most of his working life in the golf-equipment industry, playing golf about every ninth weekend. Last year, shortly after he turned 63, doctors found a cancerous tumor the size of a deflated football wrapped around one of his kidneys. Surgeons at a hospital in Houston promptly broke him open and removed the tumor, the kidney and his gall bladder. Cancer-free, Tom returned to his job with Golfsmith, the national retailer, but he had to postpone a golf outing we had planned for September 2000: a first-time, all-Garrity pairing in the Dan Jenkins Partnership, two-man scramble, Goat Hills Reunion, inflated-handicap hijinks at Fort Worth's Z Boaz municipal-golf course. When I invited Tom to be my guest at this year's Partnership, he accepted with alacrity. "I'll even hit a small bucket of balls to get ready," he promised. But yesterday afternoon, when he picked me up at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, Tom confessed that he hadn't hit a shot since his surgery. Furthermore, a recent attack of shingles, a painful nerve disorder, made it difficult for him to let his left arm hang normally against his side. "To be honest," he continued, "I haven't played since 1999. But I'm sure I can still scrape it around in 75 or 76." I was doubtful, but Tom got through his little flurry of warmup shots without dropping any body parts. Thirty minutes later we went out to play in a friendly, four-man scramble that Jenkins offers as a preliminary to the goof at Z Boaz. On our first hole, the par-3 15th, Tom took an abbreviated but rhythmic swing and rifled a gentle draw that checked up 12 feet behind the hole. I turned to Guy Yocum, who is a senior editor at Golf Digest and an accomplished player himself. "I must have been adopted," I told him. "We obviously don't share the same golf gene." The rest of the morning was a revelation. Tom mishit a couple of tee balls and was certainly not the player he was when he teed it up with Arnold Palmer, Gene Littler and the like, but he managed to manufacture a swing out of muscle memory, even if those muscles were not as limber as they once were. The wind blew up strong after a few holes, and Tom was the one member of our team who could drill a knockdown 3-iron under the gale to the middle of a green 190 yards away. It took me back 40 years to our summers in Kansas City, when Tom won every amateur event under the sun and I, the awed kid brother, carried his bag. It was a great day. Our group finished third, Tom and I won back our $50 entry fee, and we enjoyed a great buffet lunch in the Mira Vista clubhouse. Afterward, Tom stood and watched while my golf writer buddy Jaime Diaz and I played target games for 30 minutes on the range. The three of us then drove back downtown to the hotel to rest up for tonight's dinner party at Joe T. Garcia's restaurant. "It felt great to be on a golf course again," Tom said, sitting on the edge of his bed. "But I'm pooped." He stretched out with a groan and plumped the pillow behind his head. Within seconds he was asleep. Tomorrow we play at Z Boaz.
Watch this space for another installment of Mats Only. To send John Garrity advice, share your experiences, or suggest a driving range, click here.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
