My partner sliced his drive toward the treeline.
“I hit it right,” he said in disgust.
The next shot landed on the fringe just in front of the green.
“Short,” he commented.
On the green, one of our opponents spun his ball around the perimeter of the hole.
“Lipped out,” he said.
Down the middle with a drive: “Hit it straight”
A chunked shot: “Fat.”
A ball caught on the club’s leading edge: “Thin”
High. Short. Left. Right. Spun it out. In the rough. In the woods.
With each shot came a line of commentary stating the blindingly obvious.
I don’t know why I previously missed the running narrations. My first thought is that it was some collective quirk of the players in my league. It is not. During a recent impromptu round with a randomly assembled foursome,I noticed similar behavior. As though they were Jim Nantz in a booth, players were giving play-by-play on their own shots.
I even caught myself doing it. And I don’t think it is constructive. A running commentary on shots keeps my mind on the last shot, when what I need to do is to forget that shot and move on.
So I’ve made a resolution: From this moment forward, I am not going to comment on the shot I just hit—only what I must do to do to pull off the next.
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In my group there is a NE yankee who does his own color commentary literally in his swing. It is stunning that in the nanoseconds after his club contacts the ball, he will start commenting on how bad the shot is. At some point I need to get him on video, because there are times I also think he may start taking before the ball is hit. He will be cursing a putt as it leaves the face, only to have it go 15 feet into the cup.
As for myself, I won’t do a running commentary, I just give the ball commands from 180 yards away. I don’t wish to stop that, I only wish I could stop using the highly technical 4 letter golf terms. I am so bad about it now, that I have trouble filtering even when I am with my daughter.