Golf Solved

I’ve been golfing for quite a few years and have supported the golf ball retail industry in a prolific way, supported it to the degree that I see Wal Mart selling recycled used golf balls. Recycled, used golf balls! Can you imagine? So many lost golf balls in this world that huge department store chains have product availability to maintain an inventory. And what a windfall for governments! Sales tax on a product that gets sold over and over again. The only way to avoid supporting this incredible industry is to improve your skill level to the point where you improve your score and don’t lose balls. If you do not lose golf balls, your score will improve. There is a direct, statistical correlation between lost golf balls and scores. It sounds easy, but it is not. And the game itself so insidiously creeps into the human psyche that you cannot do the most obvious thing to stop the losses, you cannot stop playing. If you must play, there is only one alternative. You have to improve your game. You have to finish your round of golf with the same ball you started with. That most surely sounds simple, but, not surprisingly, it is not. IT IS NOT!! Now I golf every Thursday at Granite Pointe Golf Club, the local course in Nelson, in the Men’s Night competition. Eighteen holes of golf and 2 or 3 cans of beer (I say 2 or 3 because to say otherwise might suggest that alcohol is a factor in the loss of golf balls, and we cannot allow that thought). I am fortunate in the friends with whom I golf. Decent people, people who care about the game, students of the game, assiduous promoters of the sport, and people who wish to improve. This book salutes their many suggestions and ideas. It is constructive criticism, calmly suggested, ruefully pondered, sometimes dryly proposed and at the heart of it is the simple nugget of truth which, if considered and acted upon, would most definitely have resulted in a better shot. It is also the suggestion of someone who has just seen the error and with that incredible hindsight, which allows all golfers to be experts even of those who toil on the professional circuit, the spoken suggestion is so obviously correct that one can do little but self-berating for not thinking of it before the shot. So, dear reader and golf aficionado, you no doubt have this fine book in your hands because you too wish to benefit from the wisdom of my friends, because you too wish to lose fewer golf balls, and because you too wish to improve your game. We can do all three. And this I can guarantee you, that if you see the mistakes you have been making in these pages and follow the suggested corrections, you will take many strokes off your score. It’s just that simple.