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My golfing story.

I had dreams of being a professional baseball player until I was 14 (and I can say with some humility that many people at that point thought I had a good shot).

Unfortunately, at a league tryout when I was 14, a baseball was thrown across the field to me when I was not looking to receive it (my glove was off my hand and at my side) and hit me squarely in the right eye.

To make a long story short, I was in the hospital for 2 weeks and had a major surgery to place a Teflon plate underneath the right eye. As a result, I saw double (two separate images that were not even close together) for nearly 3 years after that.

Now it got progressively better over those 3 years, but it ended my baseball career because seeing 1 baseball coming at you is difficult enough, let alone 2!

So, I took up Golf. I used to joke that because the ball was not moving, I was able to tell which was the real one and which one I should swing at (actually I used to close one eye a lot, because after a few months I refused to wear the patch they gave me).

I became good enough to make the Golf Team in 10th grade, but did not play. In 11th grade I played the "5" position (out of 6) and in 12th grade I played #2.

I could break 80 on occasion, but mostly shot in the lower 80's.

I didn't have any lessons, never studied the fundamentals of the golf swing, and got better solely on athletic ability and the fact that I was smart enough to really work on my putting and chipping (which was the primary reason my scores got better in High School).

Being on the High School team I had the opportunity to practice at a really nice golf course every day after school for 2-4 hours and that really accelerated my abilities (particularly as I mention above my “touch”).

So along comes college, and I begin to play less and less. Then comes marriage and I hang on to playing once a week in my 20's, but I find it more and more frustrating because the one thing that made me good, now escaped me due to lack of practice: the short game.

In my 30's came kids, and with lack of time and frustration when I did play, I stopped playing altogether.

In fact I did not play for about 20 years - I am now 57. About 3 years ago on a whim, I bought a cheap metal driver at Sports Authority.

The set I had collecting dust in the basement had old wooden woods. So, I was curious if after all these years, this humongous looking driver could help even me.

You see, even in high school I was not a good driver of the ball at all. I couldn't hit it very far (and I am 6' 3" and was that height in my senior year) and I couldn't hit consistently any distance or straight.

Whatever swing I had on my own, was good with irons (not the low irons at that), but not with woods. But as I said, I made up for it with my ability around the greens.

So I took that cheap metal driver to the range and for a few weeks kept working with it, and although I got a bit better, the farthest I could hit it was about 210 yards and it still went all over the place.

Now the real consequence to all of this was  I had gotten the golf "bug" again!; I started becoming more and more determined (other people might call it obsessed) to improve.

Now I should mention that I am in good shape for my age. I have worked out on and off for must of my adult life and have stayed  – for the most part –  athletically fit.

But I began to realize that if that I really wanted to improve and be able to play the complete game, I had to go back and relearn and remake my golf swing.

Over these last 3 years I have read many many books on golf – over 30 I would say and that is not counting magazines, online information, and the golf channel - and studied and practiced intensely (at times). I have also really gotten into the history of golf, and as I got more and more into the theory of golf, I became keenly interested in how golf and the conceptual ideas about the golf swing evolved.

My primary interest in this regard was identifying the principles that for the most part did not change, that were in effect “timeless.” And I was also very interest in the what and why of those things that did change. For me, when I am trying to get to the real lets say bottom line of identifying what is really worth knowing, I like to identify a real consensus that begins to appear over time and from diverse groups and individuals. When I can identify this “consensus” then I feel that a particular piece of knowledge is worth knowing and using.

But back to the real world (at least some people believe it is :), my swing now looks completely different. And believe me, it wasn't easy. And I had to sort through a lot of information to find the meaningful common threads.

And I should also say that like any golfer no matter what their level of play, I still have a long way to go, and every day is different than the one before.

But to sum up where I am now, I can now drive a ball over 300 yards. In fact, I can carry the ball 300 yards in the air.

My average swing speed is about 120 miles per hour, which is about 5 miles an hour above the average PGA pro, and I have reached a top swing of 130 miles an hour (in the Tiger and Phil range).

I am still learning to hit them consistently straight, but I now plan to enter this years Remax long drive championship for my age group.

But the bottom line - and this is what I found out - the golf swing is all about identifying and learning to the smallest detail the true agreed upon and timeless fundamentals, practicing them with a developing/developed awareness of your body and what it is experiencing/doing (and not doing), and then beginning to get to the stage where you begin to be able to understand what "feel" is also about and why it is so important.

Then you can begin to incorporate all of this into one coherent and fluid swing that has no separate parts per se, only a beginning and an end that when it all comes together (rarely) is one of the sweetest feelings and moments you can ever experience.