This is part of a regular series that will chronicle Cameron Morfit's attempt to erase his handicap. If you have questions or comments for Cameron, send them to golfletters@golf.com.
You can swing a golf club any way you want. As Bob Torrance, teacher to Padraig Harrington, among others, likes to say, it's about the "strike." But one thing you'd better have is a good excuse. As long as you can fault an ill-chosen breakfast, lifeless range balls or your playing partner's obnoxious headcovers, your ineptitude can at least share the blame.
But for the next six months I have no excuse. I have a trainer at the gym, an entire array of new equipment from driver to irons to putter to travel bag, a Golf Magazine Top 100 teacher at the ready, and if all goes to plan, I'll have time. I'll probably get a mental coach, too, the poor guy.
The idea is simple: Give an occasionally brilliant, mostly erratic 38-year-old, 6-handicap every advantage of a pampered Tour pro; wait six months; see if he improves or not. If so, by how many strokes? What exactly were the breakthroughs? If there's little or no improvement, why not? What are the limits of great technology and brilliant teaching?
As journalism subjects go, it's not combat duty. It's more like being asked to set up a catered, poolside bureau at the Playboy mansion, and don't reach for your wallet; put it on the corporate AmEx. I'm suddenly like a hybrid of Tiger Woods and Dennis Kozlowski. It's my job.
For a long time I've protested when others, mostly men, have said I have their dream gig. "If only you knew," I've said, sometimes only to myself. If only they knew about the nightmarish air travel, sterile hotel rooms and cookie-cutter Tour pros. But now I think I'll just shut up.
This is too good.
This is more absurd than my most absurd assignments, from the snowmobile hill-climb competition to the profile of a mass murderer who made and sold paintings on giant saw blades, which, in hindsight, perhaps should have been a red flag.
Last week was so action-packed that I hardly know where to start, so I'll begin with the roof of my local gym catching fire. I was with my new trainer, working out some of the "adhesions" in my calf muscles, when we were ordered to evacuate the building. Faulty electrical wiring had started the blaze, and three or four fire trucks converged in the parking lot.
As an excuse to not exercise this was pretty good, but I doubt this kind of thing happens to the top pros, which is why I'll just have to build a state-of-the-art gym at my house, like Vijay Singh. I'll be expensing it.
The fire was just as well, because I had a plane to catch to Carlsbad, Calif., for an appointment at the Aviara Golf Academy with GOLF Magazine Top 100 teacher Kip Puterbaugh that afternoon.
