Fifteen Yards, Maybe: Golf Memories Growing Up

    God bless my mom. She was an interesting person.  I kind of felt that she was always in a state of anger, but most of the time it was because of the pranks I pulled on her and my Dad's extracurricular activities. Let's just leave it at that. At any rate, there were times in my golfing career that she went out of her way for me, that is until I really got hooked on golf. That's a different story that I may share a different time.
     I practiced a lot when I first started the game. Our living room turned into a makeshift putting green with one of those putting discs being the target. I putted on all the surfaces in the house, whether it be carpet, tile or kitchen floor.  I'm a pretty good putter because of that. The back yard, which was very large, looked like the surface of the moon from all my divots and practicing my short game back there. Lesson were few and far between because the salesman who sold Dad the tuna kind of went back on his word about giving me a lot of lessons. When he did schedule a lesson, I was sure to be there no matter the weather.
     I remember very vividly a lesson I had one cold January evening. It gets cold and damp--I know you North Easterners are saying Oh, poor California boy, playing in the cold--and very foggy in the part of California I live. In fact, we measure how bad the fog is by the number of lines you can see down the middle of the road. A one liner is the worst because you can only see one line on the road in front of you and then the world dissolves into this thick, grey wall. Needless to say, this was not the night to go to the driving range for a golf lesson.  Unfortunately, it was the only night that was open for my teacher and it would be a very long time before we could get together again, so I wasn't going to miss my lesson.  Mom agreed to take me to the range.
     It was a true one liner. In fact, it was hard even to see the traffic signals when they went from red to green. We were not deterred though. It was my lesson day and I was not going to miss.
     We got safely to the driving rage and pulled into the parking lot--I think. There were a couple of cars there and there were people on the range hitting balls into the murky grey wall fifteen yards ahead of them that was the fog bank. I payed for my balls and took my 5 iron and balls out to the range and had my lesson. It was a good one, and we focused on making good contact on the ball. Where the ball went was of no concern.  We couldn't see anyway, but what was important was what my ball flight was when it left the club. Looking back, it was one of my best lessons because the swing was the key and not where or how far the ball went. I will never forget that lesson.
     We made it home safely.
     There is one last thing that I must say today.  We have surpassed 40,000 views mark for this blog. I want to thank you my readers from the bottom of my heart for tuning in and reading. We have a lot planned for our "Golf Is For Everyone" brand, so stay tuned. Again I say a heartfelt THANK YOU!

Fog has gotten better here in The Central Valley of California