The Golfer & his Clubs

The golfers at the Peermade club never had the luxury of a coach or a driving range. Most of us were taught the basics of the game by our Seniors, and we have tried to pass on the love of the game to the youngsters too.

I remember the days when we (meaning the present lot of golfers) first started playing golf. We could easily navigate the course with just a 5/6 iron, a pitching wedge and a putter in our bags - since 3 clubs did not really justify lugging around a huge bag, the clubs were more likely carried in our hands.

I must mention that we were allowed on to the course, straight away, with the bare minimum knowledge of how to even swing the club, and also because there were so few golfers, there was no fear that you were going to kill anybody!!

The caddie most likely went ahead of us, just to spot the ball - the ball seemed to have a mind of its own and very seldom went where we wanted it to go those days!

As we got more experienced, we realised that we needed a lot more clubs in our bags, if we wanted to play a proper round of golf. So a whole lot of new clubs were purchased - at no mean cost I might add, and we were all SET!!

To our horror, we now found that our golf scores were getting no better, and we now had 2 caddies. One to carry the bag - filled with the requisite 14 clubs- and another to go ahead to spot the ball. It still had a mind of its own, and still didn't go where we wanted it to go.

This required some very serious introspection, and you guessed it, at the "19th hole"!! The round was then analysed threadbare as to why, with our brand new Driver, we were still only hitting it as far as we were with the trusty old 5/6 iron. Our grip was checked, our swing was analysed, the follow through dissected, and the final conclusion was that we needed new clubs!!!

The jury is still out though on which new club/s we required - a new 5/6 iron, or a complete new set of clubs!!