Day 1: Learning the Basics of Golf - By Asher and Ashwin

 Asher and Ashwin

Mr. Roddy and Mr. Jacobs

J-Term

6 January 2021

Learning the Basics of Golf

    We didn’t play any golf today, however, today is the only day we won’t be going to a golf course. Instead, we learned a lot of things about golf and started the day off by reading a chapter from The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate, a book written by Dan Jenkins who was an American author and golfer from Fort Worth, Texas. The chapter we read was called “You’ll Not Do That Here Laddie,” and it goes through some of the histories of golf. As it is described in the chapter, golf is thought to have been invented by the Romans who called it paganica, or possibly by the Dutch who called it kolven. Nowadays, however, golf is known as a Scottish game. In fact, the rules of golf that most are familiar with today were created by a small group in Scotland named The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. Mr. Roddy briefly went over these rules to familiarize everyone with the game. You will find the original rules of golf here in case you might be interested. 

    After briefly going over the rules of the game, we went over some golf terminology. Learning about golf terminology is extremely important because, without it, you might have some trouble playing the game since there are very specific words used to refer to certain things in the game of golf. To help understand golf terminology which was new to most, two members of the golf team who happened to be participating in this j-term named Clark and Asher went over the definitions of a list of golf terms with the class. They explained what each of them meant, allowing for non-experienced golfers to learn their definitions. For example, some of these golf terms include eagle (two strokes under par), par (the specified amount of strokes it takes to complete a whole), pin location (the position of the pin on the green), strokes (a stroke is when one swings at the ball), fore (a term that is said when a ball is going near someone), and so much more. Once we were finished going over the golf terminology, we then did a crossword and a word search to familiarize ourselves with these words. These were both engaging and fun activities that allowed for everyone to better understand golf terminology.

    Following the completion of the golf terminology activities, we all read the first chapter of the book we are going to be reading this j-term called Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, written by Ben Hogan who was an American professional golfer. This chapter explained how one should properly grip a golf club, which is one of the fundamental things that everyone should be familiar with when learning to play golf. With the help of detailed writing and illustrations in the book, everyone was able to start to learn the proper grip you should have when playing golf.

    The next thing that we did was for everyone to get the golf equipment they would need during the course. Anyone that didn’t have golf clubs of their own got their own set of clubs they would be able to use for the rest of the j-term. This is incredibly convenient as there will be no need to share clubs, which would reduce any wasted time waiting for the right club. Additionally, everyone got six balls, a towel, and golf tees. Once everyone had all of their golf equipment set up and ready to go for tomorrow, we all went outside to practice the grip we read about in the first chapter of Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf.

    Once we worked on our grip, the class split up into two groups to either go on a walk or do some stretches first. We did the stretches because we wanted to practice for when we would stretch before hitting golf balls. In golf, stretching is greatly important due to the explosive movements that occur when swinging a club back and forth. We did arm, leg, back, and more stretches to effectively imitate the stretching process we would do before hitting on the range or the course. Moreover, we went on a walk (besides to enjoy the sunny day) to practice our golf walk. On a golf course, it is necessary that one is not lagging behind or holding anyone up. This causes one to need to walk rather fastly, which can be difficult to get used to. 

    Overall, the first day of “On Par” j-term was a success. Everyone, from the advanced to the beginner golfers, learned new things about the game of golf, which will be helpful throughout the two-week course. We all now want to go play some golf!