Desperate golf tragics like me watch and research and like to be entertained by all things golf. Except Sergio Garcia. He just grates me.
So, watching the above video with the guys from Good Good YouTube channel playing with Garrett and Micah from GM Golf YouTube channel in a scramble. Nothing unusual about that I presume other than it’s totally golf-nerd. There are three videos of the boys playing 18 holes. What struck me is how pure that Micah kid hits it. He’s the one with the pony tail/man bun, white shirt, blue shorts who smacks the living piss out of it. I was overcome with a strange feeling.
YouTube is an interesting place. There seems to be a thin line between really useful stuff and totally useless stuff with mortals unable to decipher which is which. A woman popped up on my “reccommended” list – no not like that. Elizabeth Zharoff is a vocal coach and opera singer who has an obvious love and deep seated passion for singing and music. It isn’t what she does, it’s who she is. Blah blah, anyway. I watched the following:
She was quite obviously touched deeply by David Draiman’s voice and Disturbed’s rendition of the Simon & Garfunkel classic. I wandered off into my own brain for a bit and questioned whether anything touched me on that level. Seeing your family/wife/kids do well does a similar thing, but this is more personal.
I mused for a while and drifted back to when I attended the NZ Open in 2000 when Michael Campbell bested Craig Perks; then to when I lived in Phoenix and attended the Phoenix Open; then when I turned pro when I was playing with great ball strikers like Mark Brown. Then I came back to the videos I have been watching and the lessons I still give and discovered the overwhelming joy in a personal sense, the thing that reaches my soul is a beautifully struck golf ball. That may be decidedly sad but I’m not sure you can control it. The sound of the ball being mashed against the clubface and the resultant ball flight is glorious. If you listen to Micah hitting shots in that first video above, it sounds great. He has a hard, low draw and controls it pretty well. But, just the sound is different.
Playing with Mark Brown one day was insane. The sound is just different. Like the ball is compressed more than it should be. I watched Elkington and Price hitting balls in Phoenix – not the longest but the strike was pure. Tiger hits his irons better than anyone. Actually Tiger’s sound like a fucking 9mm Glock!
Mike Austin is one of my favourites. Listen to the ball in this vid:
Or this swing by Monte Scheinblum at 1:41 in
I’m not even sure what the point of all this is but to say that you will have something inside of you that makes you feel like you could fly. As weird as it is for someone to have that feeling from hearing and watching golf shots – it could be just that simple. It has certainly inspired me to become a better ball striker and to (partly) write this blog. It’s part of the reason I’m planning on going to the PGA in April just to watch…
Or, I might just be a regular, garden variety weirdo.
mysportingvoice.com 