Globe and Mail reporter Patrick White signed up for Golf Canada's one-day clinic, which was held at the Weston Golf & Country Club, to learn from the pros.Thomas Skrlj/Supplied
I stepped up to the ball with a rusty Mizuno and that special brand of crippling nervousness associated with high-dive boards and roller coasters.
Some call it butterflies in the stomach; for me, it’s more like ball bearings in the bowels – and it strikes any time I have to hit a golf ball in front of strangers, a condition I’ve battled since playing low-level competitive golf as a teen. This is a real problem given, (a) golf is customarily played with other humans and, (b) I am hopelessly addicted to this ruinous game.
The reason for my janky nerves on this day stood directly behind me: Tristan Mullally, head of talent identification for Golf Canada. As a coach, he’s worked with the likes of U.S. Open winner Graeme McDowell and Brooke Henderson, Canada’s undisputed GOAT. I had signed up for a one-day media golf clinic offered up by Golf Canada and Mullally was taking time away from honing some of the sweetest swings in the game to help me.
He crossed his arms and squinted. “Let’s see you hit a few, Patrick,” he said in a cheery Irish lilt.
In my teens, I dreamed of an opportunity like this. I grew up in a small coastal B.C. town. There were no malls, no theatres, no sports leagues. But there was, and is, a gem of a nine-holer: Pender Harbour Golf Club. For $50 a year, juniors had unlimited access. I joined with a few friends. We lost hundreds of balls out there among the skunk cabbage and spent hundreds of hours talking about Britney Spears, the Vancouver Canucks and pickup trucks. We didn’t care how we played. In a time before smart phones, it was our group chat.
There was a junior championship tournament and I won a couple times. It was a thin field, never more than five entrants and I had big advantage. An old prawn fisherman named George Huey insisted on caddying for me in exchange for a six-pack of Labatt Genuine Draft. He was familiar with my wayward drives and threatened to snap my neck if I used anything longer than a 6-iron, thereby saving me from countless penalty strokes among the skunk cabbage.
With the right guidance, I thought I maybe I could crack a college squad one day, perhaps even claw my way to a spot in what’s now the RBC Canadian Open. Golfers are a delusional lot.
Late one summer, I decided to test my mettle at something called the Champion of Champions at the lofty Marine Drive Golf Club in Vancouver. I dragged my set of $200 Dunlop clubs to the driving range, where everyone seemed to be hitting effortless draws with $2,000 Callaways, and proceeded to shank my first three shots. One of them nearly decapitated Doug Roxburgh, the four-time Canadian Amateur champ and one of the country’s all-time greats.
Too mortified to hit another, I picked up my Dunlops and got myself to the first tee.
And I went out and I shot 101 over 18 holes.
Scotland's Robert MacIntyre.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
For a little perspective, Robert MacIntyre played 72 holes in 264 shots to win last year’s RBC Canadian Open, roughly 140 shots head of my pace.
I never thought about tournament golf again until the Golf Canada clinic, held at Weston Golf & Country Club’s indoor practice facility. The lineup of Team Canada coaches and players lived and breathed tournament golf.
With Mullally watching, I aimed at a target on the far wall of the indoor range and proceeded to skull one along the ground. A launch computer next to me beeped and showed my stats: 11-degree launch angle and 3,000 rpm spin. A decent wedge should have 30 degrees and 9,000 rpm of spin, Mullally said. “Try a few more.”
I hit two more skulls, a shot so named because the ball hits the club so far from the sweet spot that a violent vibration emanates up through the golfer’s hands all the way to their head.
Mullally had seen enough. As I addressed another ball he came over and shoved me. I looked at him in disbelief as I stumbled backward.
“So what happened there?” he said.
“Uh, you pushed me and I fell backward?”
“And why was that?”
I had no answer.
He said I was off balance from the moment I addressed the ball, swaying from heel to toe. I needed to take more of a balanced athletic stance, like I was a waiter holding a tray of drinks.
It would make a nice little story if, right here, I could relay how I channelled my inner waiter, took a mighty swing, launched the perfect 30-degree ball with rpms of an accelerating Ferrari and soaked in the applause of everyone around me.
Everyone was looking all right, only because I sent a dreaded shank nearly 45-degrees right of the target. It was Marine Drive all over again.
I proceeded to the chipping green, where I was less likely to endanger anyone’s life.
Canada's Jennifer Ha.Sergei Belski/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters
Jeff MacDonald, head coach of Canada’s junior girls team, showed me how to hit the low-flying, high-spinning chip shot that’s all the rage among the pros these days. That actually went by without incident.
Then I went to a putting station with Jennifer Ha. We hit some putts but mostly we talked. She played for a time on the LGPA. The pro tour! My dream! I had to know what it was like. “Honestly? Hard,” she said.
If you didn’t make cuts, she said, it was a grind, financially and mentally. Another coach had said college players get coddled, with schedules and food and top instruction. When they turn pro, it’s all about survival. They have to buy a used Chevy Suburban to criss-cross the continent, leading a life of missed cuts, fleabag hotels and fast food.
Some grind it out for the same reason the rest of us hackers return for humiliating round after humiliating round. It’s a game of optimism. I know I’m bad. I’ve always known I’m bad. But some irrepressible sliver believes the next shot might be magic. And it will lead to another magic shot, and another. I can report that this part of the brain doesn’t mature. It remains 15 forever. We don’t need swing coaches, we need shrinks.
And it just so happened that Golf Canada has one of those, too.
Justine Fredette played U.S. college hockey and is now mental skills coach for Team Canada golfers. I told her about some of my struggles. “What can you do for the first-tee jitters?” I asked. “I get on the tee with people watching and it’s all I can do just to lift my club.”
She recommended I try something called the superman pose on the first tee: wide stance, hands on hips. Studies have found that it increases testosterone and reduces cortisol, the stress hormone. She also talked about deep breathing. When Rory McIllroy panics on the course, he consciously closes his mouth, triggering a deep breathing routine through his nose.
More interestingly, she talked about a concept called ideal performance state. Think of where you played your best golf and try to go there mentally.
That was easy. I thought of those carefree twilight rounds at Pender Harbour, when four friends would bash Top Flites until it was too dark to see the hole. We didn’t care about plunking another ball in the skunk cabbage – and we played better for it. No swing thoughts. No stats. Just the feel of a good hit and the faint hope that the next one would be even sweeter.
Do the new tips work? I honestly have no idea. But in golf, as in life, hope springs eternal – and sometimes that’s the whole point.