I’ve been playing recreational golf for more than 10 years. Started in 2004, first time swinging the club and now it’s a dozen years and I’ve gotten my game down to 12 at one point before ballooning up to 24 and now re-settled back at 16.
We had a small, closed tournament recently and amazingly, this is the first time I won. As in win anything at all in golf. Here’s my theory on my game:
My weight had also ballooned up, till a point one of my regular kakis whom I have not met for a long time kept commented how bloated I am when I met him at the tournament. He was a strange fella. He’s the type of golfer who talks a lot and analyzes a lot but still plays like crap. I mean not total crap, but I’ve never really seen him play well before in my life but the way he talks makes you think he is scoring regularly in the 70s. But he doesn’t. He scores well into the 90s and sometimes even 3 digits. I suppose he is marketing guy. He kept going on about my weight and being so amazed etc, until it was getting slightly awkward as I wanted to just retort to him that while weight can change, unfortunately his face cannot. He has a face like an avocado, as in pockmarked and completely brutal to look at. The sort that only his wife would probably appreciate. In the dark. He’s like Deadpool, without the mask.
But I treasured our friendship a lot over the years and just smiled politely. He’s a really nice guy under all the golf BS, really and I didn’t want my silly sarcasm to spoil anything between us. Besides, I wasn’t offended or anything, but it’s just sort of natural for me to start bantering and has gotten me into all sorts of scraps previously. So I’ve learnt to shut my gap more.
Anyway – why I’m saying this is I think my weight has added some good stuff to my game, while subtracting from my lifespan. I’ve gained around 8 kilos since my second son came out and due to less golf and more food, gotten to a point where I can’t fit into a lot of my pants. However, for some reason, my golf game has improved.
I feel a lot more stable now on my irons and my drive. I don’t know if the weight has anything to do with it, but I am totally clobbering my irons. As in, murdering. I was standing at around 120 meters at one point in the game and overshot the uphill green with my gap wedge. Right now, for anything 140 meters, I am taking out a pitching or at most a half swing 9-iron. 100 meters, I am looking at a sand wedge. Anything in the 180s I am hitting my 5-iron. I regularly take 2 clubs less than my playing partners – and while my score is floating in the high 80s to low 90s level, I am a lot more confident approaching most of the greens with a 9 iron than a 7 iron.
The tourney was in KGSAAS and I havent played there in years. The first nine, I reeled off 4 pars in a row to end the nine, all with makeable birdies which I missed badly, and ended the game with 89. This includes a triple, and 5 greens where I 3-putted. My putting for some reason has become like a retarded platypus.
Now the competition was not PGA Tour standard by any means, in fact, there were no buayas (it was a very friendly competition) – and the winning score was actually 35 on stableford. In fact 5 people tied for 35 but because of my eight pars, my handicap was the lowest and I won. Yea.
It’s still a milestone though.
And I think I’ve got my weight gain to thank for this. So. More Durians!