Golf first try...
My back hurts.
And my ego.
Playing golf is really hard and I start to have huge respect from all the old people playing golf. It's not only about hitting the ball (which is difficult enough) but also hitting it in the right way...
At 12:00 I met with Gisela, the person organizing the discount for INRIA members. She was waiting for me with a black Mercedes SLK to drive the two of us 300 meters to the golf course. I swallowed hard and thought whether it was a good idea to actually do this... I am way too young and way to poor to play golf.
At the golf course I relaxed a bit. There were actually young people, "normal" people and people with ordinary, dirty cars with bumps like it is custom in France... :D.
In the first lesson we were we were a nice small group: Two older girls, two boys and the golf teacher. By coincidence the other guy was German, worked for INRIA during his Master Theses and decided to stay to do his PhD here :-P. As he playes golf since March he was pretty good, but doesn't have his clearance, yet, so it will take some time for me to learn it.
At the beginning we tried high short range shots, using a "Sandwich", a very steep club. Goal of the exercise was to hit the ball under the ball and create a short high trajectory to have the ball jump over e.g. a hole filled with sand?!
The trick, according to the golf teacher, is to "glide over the lawn" so that the club is under the ball and shots it high into the air.
In reality you hit the ground too early and make a nasty hole into the lawn. Or you hit the ball with the tip of the club and the ball rolls into the bunker, laughing at you from there ... Or most of the time you don't hit anything at all. :-(
As you don't try to shoot very far, the swing is slower and I managed to hit the ball (or the ground) almost every third try. Maybe 5 balls behaved as avertised and jumped over the bunker. From a hole bucket with small yellow balls... :-}.
As I made quite some holes into the lawn, I now understand, why you need "clearance", before you are allowed to play on the real holes, not to destroy the lawn... :-P.
After collecting our bucket of balls we tried "range shots", i.e. we tried to kick the balls, placed on a tie as far as possible. To protect the poor lawn from the beginners, this area had protection matts made of artificial lawn :-P...
This was a completely different problem. Not only because we used a different club: a "7 iron". It is actually much harder to hit the ball if you want to hit it hard. I managed to hit the ball maybe every 10th swing... My final score was 2 balls from my bucket delivered to 100m... :-}.
So first conclusion: Much to my surprise playing golf is really hard. Not only difficult as in hitting the ball. I started sweating quite quickly.
On the other hand and even more to my surprise it appears to be quite a bit of fun. Everything is pretty quiet, fresh air, a lot of nature, the people are very calm and considerate (not to hit you with balls and warn you if some balls approach you from behind). You are pretty busy trying to hit the ball and if you actually hit it, you feel great :D. So I am looking forward to my next lesson. Maybe I will hit the ball every 5th swing :D.
And my ego.
Playing golf is really hard and I start to have huge respect from all the old people playing golf. It's not only about hitting the ball (which is difficult enough) but also hitting it in the right way...
At 12:00 I met with Gisela, the person organizing the discount for INRIA members. She was waiting for me with a black Mercedes SLK to drive the two of us 300 meters to the golf course. I swallowed hard and thought whether it was a good idea to actually do this... I am way too young and way to poor to play golf.
At the golf course I relaxed a bit. There were actually young people, "normal" people and people with ordinary, dirty cars with bumps like it is custom in France... :D.
In the first lesson we were we were a nice small group: Two older girls, two boys and the golf teacher. By coincidence the other guy was German, worked for INRIA during his Master Theses and decided to stay to do his PhD here :-P. As he playes golf since March he was pretty good, but doesn't have his clearance, yet, so it will take some time for me to learn it.
At the beginning we tried high short range shots, using a "Sandwich", a very steep club. Goal of the exercise was to hit the ball under the ball and create a short high trajectory to have the ball jump over e.g. a hole filled with sand?!
The trick, according to the golf teacher, is to "glide over the lawn" so that the club is under the ball and shots it high into the air.
In reality you hit the ground too early and make a nasty hole into the lawn. Or you hit the ball with the tip of the club and the ball rolls into the bunker, laughing at you from there ... Or most of the time you don't hit anything at all. :-(
As you don't try to shoot very far, the swing is slower and I managed to hit the ball (or the ground) almost every third try. Maybe 5 balls behaved as avertised and jumped over the bunker. From a hole bucket with small yellow balls... :-}.
As I made quite some holes into the lawn, I now understand, why you need "clearance", before you are allowed to play on the real holes, not to destroy the lawn... :-P.
After collecting our bucket of balls we tried "range shots", i.e. we tried to kick the balls, placed on a tie as far as possible. To protect the poor lawn from the beginners, this area had protection matts made of artificial lawn :-P...
This was a completely different problem. Not only because we used a different club: a "7 iron". It is actually much harder to hit the ball if you want to hit it hard. I managed to hit the ball maybe every 10th swing... My final score was 2 balls from my bucket delivered to 100m... :-}.
So first conclusion: Much to my surprise playing golf is really hard. Not only difficult as in hitting the ball. I started sweating quite quickly.
On the other hand and even more to my surprise it appears to be quite a bit of fun. Everything is pretty quiet, fresh air, a lot of nature, the people are very calm and considerate (not to hit you with balls and warn you if some balls approach you from behind). You are pretty busy trying to hit the ball and if you actually hit it, you feel great :D. So I am looking forward to my next lesson. Maybe I will hit the ball every 5th swing :D.
posted by IC at
4:56 AM
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