The Golfing Granny

We have had some stunningly beautiful summer days in the last two months.  We have also had some stinkin' hot ones.  Today, was one of the stunningly beautiful ones.


A perfect day to continue my goal of taking each of my grandchildren golfing this summer.  Today, it was grandson Cam's turn.  Cam is really Grandpa's buddy most of the time.  But Grandma is the one who has the patience to spend some time on the golf course with those just beginning the game.  I don't analyze, criticize, or agonize over every stroke, although I have been known to apologize for errant shots every now and then.


So, when it comes to showing the grandkids the joys (and pain) of this game, Grandma trumps Grandpa every time.  


I discovered a secret a couple of weeks ago when I took Nathan golfing. Kids and moms like to eat lunch, so you don't find a lot of groups on the golf course at noon.  So, you're free to "instruct" a bit if you have a novice with you, and you don't have to fret about holding up the people behind you.  True again today. There were 3 groups in front of us: a fivesome made up of 2 kids and 3 grandparents ... not sure which were slower; a foursome of two moms and two young boys; and a young teenaged couple who didn't appear to utter one word to each other the entire time they strolled around the course .. and I do mean strolled.  At one point, even Cam said, "If she didn't want to play golf, why didn't she just say no."  My feeling is she was accommodating him and didn't want to look too athletic ... I remember that teenage girl belief that boys prefer girly-girls (although her bag of Ping clubs kind of belied her apparent lack of interest in the sport).

Once we got onto the 3rd hole, however, the pace picked up and we were able to move along and really enjoy our day.  Cam drove the cart for the back 6 holes, dubbing this picture I took of him a "definite Profile Picture."  

Cam is a great baseball player and it trickles over into his golf game.  The concept of squaring his feet is pretty foreign ... he swings the club like a baseball bat and goes for the homerun every time, ending up back on his heels at the end of each swing. We spent a bit of time on the right side of every fairway retrieving his shots ... or looking for mine!  We were equally stumped to figure out how a pink sparkly ball can disappear so totally from sight.  Uh ... the pink sparkly ball was mine, not his!  We did find 8 other balls, one of which was bright yellow with a picture of Sponge Bob on it.  This quickly became Cam's most treasured find of the day and he used it the rest of the round, being very grateful to still have it in his possession as we finished #9.


He did hit several good shots, and, once I got him to take a half swing instead of wrapping the "bat club" around his neck, he actually hit the ball pretty well.


He hits his wedge pretty darn well, and repeatedly told me what a good "wedge player" he is.  Fun to see that he's already found that one confidence building club we all seem to have.  We both had great ... accidental ...  shots on Hole # 5. Our balls had landed in the rough with a grove of trees between us and the green.  There were two different "gaps" in the trees, and he decided to go through one of them ... and did .. albeit, not the one he was aiming for.  At that point, I explained the difference between "Theory and Execution" in the game of golf.  


I, on the other hand, was pretty sure I could go OVER the trees ... well, theory and execution ARE two different things!  But I also ended up going through one of the gaps (the one Cam had been aiming for!) and we both found ourselves up near the green.  We couldn't help but grin at each other with pride in our accomplishments!  In our postgame rehash, we both agreed those shots were the highlight of the day.

As with Nathan a few weeks ago, we followed up the round with a beverage and a bite to eat out on the patio.  A surprise visitor joined us ... Grandpa! Between Grandpa's recovery from knee surgery last October and another surgery this past March, he's not been able to golf in a year, so even sitting on the clubhouse patio watching golfers putt out on #18 now holds a certain amount of appeal for him. We had called him as we teed off on #8 and invited him to join us at the end of our round.  He hesitated until I reminded him I wasn't cooking tonight.  However, Cam believed, and I agree, that it was Cam's asking him that turned the tide.


There just isn't anything that compares to a beautiful afternoon on the golf course made even more enjoyable in the company of a grandson!