The Setup

As we dive into this tale of me unreasonably wanting to bash my head in because I hate golf now, let me set the scene. First of all, we’ve all been here. Don’t act like you can’t relate as you read this. If you take your golf at all seriously and this doesn’t resonate with you, you’re a damn liar. Anyway, I SUCK at golf right now. So bad…

My recent calendar has allowed me to get a good run of golf in. Hell yeah, that’s always a plus, but this time, there have been dire consequences. To fully understand this tale, we have to go back in time. I’m playing 18 holes with my nephew, J-Riv, and my co-host/colleague/friend, Kris McEwen. Around the 4th or 5th hole, I hear a creaking sound coming from my beloved Cobra Speedzone/VA Nemesys driver setup. I allow myself to think “maybe it was an anomaly?” I hit driver on the next tee, and of course, same thing happens. Fortunately, I had an extra shaft for review purposes in the bag, but this was just the start of my problems.

I took the shaft apart to find it was likely just some loose epoxy inside the shaft. No big deal really. However, as mentioned in the review, the Nemesys is awesome, but takes some swingweighting to get dialed in. Instead of dealing with as much tungsten powder and whatnot on a rebuild, I decide to order heavier sole weights for my Speedzone. Unfortunately, Cobra was listing shipping for components at 2 weeks… I think “no big deal, I’ll just use a different shaft in the meantime.”

The Beginning of the End

So now that I’ve decided my usual driver rig that I love so much is out of commission and I’ll dial it in when the new heavy weights get here (who the hell would just use some lead tape?!), I needed something else to hit. I decided the best plan of action was to use the same head with a shaft I had previously seen some success with for the next couple of weeks.

The referenced “next couple of weeks” included a decent amount of golf which should have more than enabled me to get into a groove and play some pretty good golf. Especially considering I’ve been playing fairly decent on the season as a whole. Plenty of bad rounds, but enough decent rounds to hang around and keep the handicap much lower than it should be. (Shoutout, Kish National.) Unfortunately, my driver woes were just the beginning.

Yep, I Formally Suck at Golf

Unfortunately, I have still yet to get comfortable and can’t figure out how to hit my driver to save my life. There have been some great drives, some ok drives, and a HUGE portion of spectacularly bad drives. Let me be clear, I don’t blame the gear, but rather my dumb brain not being able to adjust. At the end of the day, I’m struggling to keep the damn thing in play and I’m hitting a lot of second shots, if they even stay in play, under and through trees.

This mental strain started working its way well beyond the tee box. Coming into this hell hole I’m in, my irons and short game have been fairly reliable. I’ve made some neat discoveries making my iron game better than it’s been in a long time. But when every tee shot is putting you in bad shape, your brain goes to mush and you start to feel like you can’t do anything right. And then you actually can’t. At least, that’s where I’m at right now and my game is proving it to the point where people who know me have been like “uh, what’s going on? This is bad.” Yes, I know…

What Will the Future Bring?

At the time of writing this, I have one round in the near future scheduled. Before you ask, new sole weights for my driver won’t be here before then so I don’t know exactly how I need to build this thing back up. If you’re not a golf nerd and don’t know what I mean, just take my word for it. I’m still looking forward to the upcoming round because of the company and debauchery (shoutout, Bobby Dazzler), but from a golf perspective, absolutely not. It’s like my brain got infected by being able to play enough to let this disaster take hold.

At this point, I just want to take some time off and not play for a bit. See if this trash will die out and go back to normal once I have my usual driver setup back in play. I’ll leave you with this thought. I told one friend, “I’m hate playing golf the sport, but I still really enjoy the pastime of playing golf.” The sport of golf and playing it well SUCKS right now and I’m really terrible at it. The activity of hanging out with friends and just hitting golf balls in the air is still great. I can’t take that away from the game. But, man, not banging my head against a wall for four+ hours because I can’t even get off a tee sounds GREAT.

Happy to take some time off from playing for my own sanity.