Harder Than It Looks

One of my favorite golf movies (honest, there is more than one out there) is Tin Cup, with Kevin Costner. It's got sports, drinking, golf, and other stuff I like. At one point during the movie, Kevin Costner's character is trying to qualify for the US Open tournament. He has an argument with his caddy and all of his clubs end up broken except his seven iron. He plays about half of his round with just that club and plays well enough to move on to the next qualifying stage.

I went out to play golf last weekend and decided I wanted to see how I could do with just a seven iron. I also took a putter because I thought the greenskeeper might not like me using a seven iron on the greens. A golf bag is a lot lighter without all of those other metal clubs. That was nice.

Anyway, the long shots were fine. I didn't have any problem with them. Unfortunately, I discovered it is much more difficult to hit a short shot with a seven iron than with a pitching wedge. I tried to take a shorter swing, but the loft of the club did me in. The shots always came in too low and rolled off the other side of the green. I'm sure I could have figured something out eventually, but I ran out of holes. The two people I played with thought it was amusing. One of them even tried a couple of short shots with his seven iron after I put three balls in a row into a lake. He couldn't do it either.

The lesson here is that if you are going to play golf with less than a full set of clubs, make sure one of them is a wedge.