My golf game unravels again!

My loyal reader will know that I am utterly obsessed with golf, a game I discovered just over two years ago.

I had played occasionally in my life with zero success but there was rarely a thought that I might actually take it up.

But now I have and what a great and horrible obsession it is.

Great when I walk up to the ball with a fair idea of where I am going to hit it but horrible when I don't.  And at the moment, I don't.

A few weeks ago, I had an attack of the shanks.  I will not bore you with the technical details but it meant that almost every shot I made flew off at right angles.  A lengthy trawl through You Tube convinced me what I was doing wrong.  I went back to the course and lost my shanks.

But next I was hitting the ball to the left.  Not massively, but enough to really irritate me.  Every single drive and chip went slightly, or sometimes more than slightly, to the left.

Our local driving range has an old codgers walk-up session on a Thursday where you get 100 balls and one of the professionals give you tips.  He gave me some, pointing out my grip was all wrong and he re-arranged my fingers and hands and - bingo! - I was hitting the ball long and straight!

Problem solved, I went to my golf club and prepared for a record-breaking round.  And guess what?  I was worse than ever. Not only could I not hit the ball straight, there were times I could not hit the thing at all.  I had no idea what I was doing wrong but it must have been something simple and stupid. But could I correct it?  Could I heck!

I have not played at all this weekend, which represents a world record for me.  I have totally lost my confidence and when you lose your confidence in golf you have nothing.

There is only one thing for it: I am going to see my PGA coach for more lessons.  He was the man who built something out of nothing and the man upon whom I am relying to put it all back together again.

The frustration for me is not knowing why things go wrong.  The harder I tried last week, the worse I got.  The more I tried to relax, the more I tensed up.

I'll report back again this week to see if I am cured but with golf I suspect you have never really cracked it and when you think you have that's where it comes to bite you very painfully right where it hurts.