So, it was with a heavy heart, an open mind and the knowledge that I’ve been here many times before that I booked a lesson at the St Andrews Golf Academy.
And on Tuesday at 2pm I was greeted by a lovely, fresh faced young chap called Scott Herald. Fortunately, he did not know my long history and the many neutered attempts to reprieve my shocking golf swing. Indeed, he was unaware of the number of teaching professionals, the many fine and gallous men who have fallen into despair, left the country incognito, given up to drink, and taken up rifle shooting. In fact, one has even given up the ghost altogether.
However, I’m in a new town, a whole new place and different phase of my life. I have bought my annual Links ticket, joined the historic St Andrews Golf Club and am having a last gasp at youth and stardom. Well I’m 55 and an eternal optimist.
Now, I will not bore you about the intricacies of my lesson, nor be overly dramatic about this, but I will actually go as far to say that I’m now a new man. Well at least on the golf course that is. Other things, at 55, are of course well shot.
The basic premise of my revelatory hour with Scott is that he accepted my slightly steep and unorthodox backswing on the basis that I was delivering the club very well on the downswing.
What? I’ve spent forty years getting hung up on something that is not that important? In fact, it’s the only half of the golf swing that I’ve ever really thought about!
Shouldn’t be getting too hung up about what is happening on my backswing? Not to hung up! I’ve been agonizing over it for four decades. I was nicknamed ‘Loopy Loo’ throughout my most impressionable and formative years. It affected my life, my family, my psychological well being, its made me whimsical, excessively thin skinned and shoved me a few notches up the autistic spectrum. Ask my golf shrink.
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