Golf - A Special Kind Of Joy (1975)

[Music] Wherever you go, anywhere in the world, you'll see it. The special joy of the golfer. Did you ever wonder what it was and why it's there? Is there a special thrill in swinging a club and hitting a ball and trying to make it go where you want it to? Is there something exhilarating in the air, the sun and the wind? Is there something special golfers get out of the beauty of their courses, the laughter of their friends, the joy of success, and the challenge of failure, the communion of shared pleasure? Well, golf's special kind of joy is all those and more. Especially the joy of knowing that anyone, you too can play. There will be the joy in the first awkward swing. But that won't last long. Almost immediately, you'll look for the joy of doing better and better and better. You'll want to know more about the game itself. The course, for instance, 18 holes, all different, and they're all laid out carefully and kept beautifully just to increase your joy in driving the ball from the tea, along the fairway, past all the hazardous challenges of sand and rough and often water, onto the green, and into the cup. in as few strokes as your skill permits. You'll want to understand your clubs carefully engineered to help you make any kind of shot your playing situation calls for. Understanding your club starts with two basic principles. First, length of the club shaft and loft, which is the angle of the face of the club head. It graduates by precise degrees from nearly vertical on the longer clubs down to a sharply backward angle on the shorter ones. Here's how length and loft will help you. Sometimes you'll want to drive the ball out with lots of distance. Here you'll need one of your longer clubs and a more upright face. Other times you'll need a shorter club with a more lofted face to get the ball up into the air over some obstacle perhaps and then roll only a short distance. How do the clubs do that for you? Well, remember your table tennis stroke. When you want to drive the ball straight back over the net, you hold your paddle square against the ball. square to the direction you want it to go. But when you want it to rise from the paddle for a high shot, you bring the paddle to the ball at an angle. Again, angling the paddle face in the direction you want the ball to go. That's the principle of loft built into the face of your clubs. Now, about the length of your club shaft. In your golf swing, the club head travels in an arc. So with a long club, the arc is wide and long. With a shorter club, the arc is shorter. Usually the tempo of the swing is the same. So a longer club swinging through a longer arc in the same amount of time, obviously the club head is moving faster, hits the ball harder, and drives it farther. Good golfers, especially in tournament play, carry the maximum number of clubs the rules will allow. No more, seldom less. But you may not need all those in the beginning. Here are the basic groups. The wood clubs for the longest distances. Number one with the least loft. [Music] Number three with more loft. Number four with still more loft. And number five the most lofted of the commonly used woods. The long irons. Numbers two and three also used for long distances. The middle irons numbers four, five, and six for medium distances and the short irons numbers 7, 8, and 9 for very short distances and high lofts. In addition, there are two special clubs for special purposes. The pitching wedge for high pitch shots from off the green and the sand wedge for bunker play. And of course, you'll need a putter for those short shots on the green where you don't want loft, nothing but roll. Let's watch the play of one hole and see how these clubs will work for you. Golfers need a game plan for every hole. This one is 395 yd from te to green. But there are challenges here out there about 225 yd. The fairway angles sharply so you can't see the green and it's called a dog leg. woods on either side and sand buckers all down the left side. Potential trouble around the dog leg. It's another 175 yards to the green with more sand buckers waiting. A good cautious golfer will try to place his first shot far enough out in the dog leg that he could see the green. Another shot to get on the green, then two putts. [Music] Let's watch him try it. [Music] He uses his number onewood to reach the middle of the dog leg. [Music] And he made it. Now a long iron should get him on the green. [Music] But he hit behind the ball, losing distance, leaving a short pitch to the green. Now he's lying three, but he putted past the cup. So a short one back and he's into the cup in five. One over par, a bogey. Not bad considering the challenges of the deep woods and all those sand buckers. Every hole on every course you play will have its own personality waiting there saying, "Try me." And as you respond, you'll know that although your clubs are an important part of your golfing equipment, a more important part is what you build for yourself, your swing. the way you personally swing a golf club. A golf swing is a very personal thing as personal as fingerprints. Everyone should build his own slowly and carefully. [Music] It takes time, patience, practice, and directed learning. You'll start by getting your body used to unfamiliar movements with new concepts of personal control. Concepts that will help you understand what experts have discovered in laboratory studies over many years. Scientific details of the swing movement. So you'll understand why you need patience, practice, and directed learning. You'll want to feel control of all these concepts all through your body as your muscles develop the habits of a golf swing. Putting them all together will become an exciting experience because you'll be learning about you as you build a swing especially for you. An individual swing only yours. [Music] And soon, with patience and practice and coaching, you'll have your own swing, especially yours. And that's when the fun really starts. You won't wait until you have a perfect swing, or even perhaps a good one. You'll take whatever swing you have out on the course and enjoy it. And that's the way it should be, because part of golf's fun is this. While it's great fun to compete with other people, it's also fun to compete with yourself. And golf provides this kind of challenge with a unique system called par. Every hole has its own par predetermined by yardage and difficulty. For example, a short hole about 150 yards would be a par three hole. Excellent says the T-shot should reach the green. Then two putts. A longer hole about 325 yds would be rated to par four. In other words, an expert golfer is expected to reach the green in two strokes, then two putts. The really long holes, like about 500 yards, are par five. Three strokes to the green and then two putts to the cup. [Music] But if par is a theoretical standard of excellence, in golf, you can beat those standards occasionally. Say on a par five you have a four one underpar that's called a birdie [Music] or perhaps a three two underpar that's called an eagle and of course there's always the slim chance of a hole in one a shot from the tea right into the cup here it is one of golf's Ultimate thrills. [Music] That's perfection. [Music] Par for the course is the total of all the pars for the 18 holes. But some golfers, often those who have the most fun, will have their own par system based on how well they feel they should be playing. How well their own personal swing is developing. This fellow, for instance, even though this hole is rated par three, his own personal par may be four. She is shooting for the rated par, a three, and she'll make it. but he's shooting for his own par, a bogey four, and he made it. The concept of handicap adds even more fun to the game. The handicap system recognizes that people with different levels of skill and physical ability, whether family or friends, often want to play together without losing the fun of competition. So a skilled player is given a small number of strokes deducted from his score while a less skilled player gets a larger number of strokes deducted from his score. So they can play together or enjoy league or tournament play even with experts and compete on an even basis. [Music] Hey Pop, you shot an 82 and I shot a 97. >> Subtracting the handicaps and guess who has to buy the ice cream. So for all your life, you'll be competing with your own handicap with yourself. You can enjoy the friends you're playing with more because you're all competing against par. And part of golf's special joy is doing it together. Even if doing it together means helping each other look for a lost ball. So you'll keep on practicing, keep on challenging yourself, and you won't have to get out on the course to do it. You can keep your muscles remembering no matter what the weather. You can keep in touch with your clubs every day, indoors, at home, or at school, and still enjoy some of golf's competitive fun, practice, [Music] read, and above all enjoy. For a while, everything seems to go just great. You really start feeling those special joys. But then something goes wrong. You seem to have slipped back from that plateau of skill you reached. Everything feels the same, but the results are different, and you don't know why. But don't try to figure it out all alone. Your instructor can tell you quickly which of your control factors slipped away. And that's not unusual. The best professionals go back to their instructors when they get into this kind of trouble, and you should, too. He can start you moving on up to the next plateau of skill. The special joy is yours again. All the special joys. [Music] Long walks without even thinking of walking with nature all around you. The joy of thrilling achievement. [Music] of admiration from special friends. Because wherever you go, anywhere in the world, you'll find a golf course and people who understand. And you'll have your swing with you, your personal swing, if you start building it now. 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