It is a well-known law in golf that “Every good shot must be paid for with an equally bad shot.” Over time nothing damages the golfer’s ego more than these endless cycles of elation/ joy/optimism followed by despair/loathing/suicidal depression.
Happily, there is a way out of this wretchedness — the Recovery Shot. This is the only shot in golf that requires no thought, no alignment, no pre-shot routine, no visualization, and, provided you grip the club by the correct end (something my novice golfer and beautiful wife Jilly has written about in her one-page book on putting (she calls the putterhead “the handle”)), no skill, and no talent.
How do I know this? Because yesterday I made a Recovery Shot. On Luck Golf Course’s 165 yard par 3 Number 12, my 7 iron somehow misfired in my hands, hitting the ball high and right, causing it to bounce twice on the cart path into God knows where. Having shot one into the lake on the previous hole, I now felt how disgusted my money-grubbing partners were with me.
My cart partner, Golf Pro Dick Johnson begrudgingly helped me to find the disgusting little yellow ball some 30 yards right of and 10 yards past the green on a 35 degree slope at the start of hole Number 13, a hill used in winter for tobogganing. This was going to be a completely blind shot from an uphill, sidehill lie in the rough. Perhaps Dick could have stayed to give me the line to the pin?, but No-oh!.
He and the other two “teammates” balls had landed near the green and the three of them had their own ridiculous little problems to deal with, leaving me to guess where the hole was. Dick’s parting advice, “You should be able to get it up in the air.” He meant, “Up and over the pine tree, stopping the ball on a dime despite the hard green sloping away from you.”
Well, I hit my sand wedge up and over the tree about as well as I could. I heard no comment from the other players. Climbing over the hill, I saw no sign of my yellow Pinnacle. I asked if anyone saw it. “Nope,” they said. After searching for a minute, I predicted out loud, “Either that ball is down in the valley past the green, or it’s in the hole.”
So I took a peek in the hole as golfers do many times in their lives, hoping for the best, and guess what? The ball had gone into the hole on the fly for a birdie two (and a skin), without damaging the surrounding turf, and had stayed there, without making enough noise to attract attention. This would probably require an accuracy of less than half an inch in every dimension. And not one of us had seen it happen! I nearly went incontinent.
That is why I am prepared to give advice on the Recovery Shot. When you make a bad shot, some people say you should just “take your medicine” and play conservatively. I say, “Nonsense. Chip in from anywhere you wish. Don’t be a wimp. You can do it.”
The good news is the eternal truth, Jimbo’s Axiom: “If the shot is bad enough, it will be followed by a miracle.”
by Jim Sudmeier
Luck, WI
Sept., Friday the 13th, 2013