Here's Floyd, getting a golf lesson from Bob, the single who joined out twosome yesterday morning at the Paradise Valley Golf Course:

                   
Bob is teaching Floyd the Commandments, specifically "Thou shalt not kill".

Floyd was having a rough morning; every time he hit off of the tee, he was making some mistake. Sometimes it was "topping" the ball (hitting it while still on the downswing); sometimes he was hitting it with the club face open, and sending it off to the right. Sometimes he would "hit the big ball first" (i.e. digging up a lot of ground behind the ball - the "big ball" that he was hitting first was the Earth) and sometimes he'd just slobberknock it.

Bob was teaching him several things, one of which was to recite "Thou shalt not kill" at the top of his swing. This was in hopes that reciting that would allow Floyd to remind himself that he wasn't going to try to hit the ball really hard; he needed to swing easy and let the club do the work.

Now, there's a curious phenomenon that happens to me when I'm about to wallop a golf ball; as soon as I get it into my head that this particular shot needs to really go far, I'm doomed. I'm unable to prevent myself from walloping the ball.

I don't know how to describe it; I'll tell myself that I need to just swing it nice and easy; I'll remind myself that swinging it nice and easy always makes the ball go farther than trying to wallop it. I'll chant, hum quietly, meditate, burn incense, relax all of my muscles, go into my backswing slowly and easily - and then try to kill it.

Once this mindset has taken up shop in my head, there's no way to stop it., No matter what I do, as soon as that club is back up there over my head, some sort of little tightness happens, and then WHAM! I'm swinging down on that ball with all the fury of a mad demon.

The only way that I've been able to avoid it is by overclubbing - i.e. selecting a club that will hit the ball FARTHER than I intend to hit it. Then I can relax and swing away - resulting, of course, in my clobbering the ball and having it go straight and true far farther than I intended, usually into a lake or the middle of the desert or a rattlesnake den.

Otherwise, I wind up telling myself "I'm not going to hit this ball that hard; I'm not going to kill it. I'm going to hit it easy; I'm going to swing smoothly through the ball, and I won't be trying to power-drive the clubhead into it; I'm going to let the swing of the club propel the ball down the fairway....okay, easy backswing....yes, this is gonna be just fine....just like those 47 practice swings I took...okay, the clubhead goes back up there over my head, and now OMIGODICANTHELPITIGOTTAHITTHISBALLHARD <!SWACK!> shouldn't have done that...uh oh - what is the ball doing heading in THAT direction? I wonder if I'll be able to find it?"

So, after hearing Bob tell Floyd to repeat to himself "Thou Shalt Not Kill", I tried adding that to my mantra. All that really happened was that I had more words to tell myself before I tensed up, hammered down and clobbered the ball off out into the highway or off into the water or way over there into the nearest stretch of empty, Godforsaken desert. In short, it didn't help.

Maybe instead of trying to control my compulsion to clobber the ball (based on a fear of it not going far enough) I should try to generate a fear of having the ball go too far? Yep - I'll just put my fears into colliision with each other. I'm sure that that will straighten everything out : )

(Great. Now I've got "Cry Little Sister", from the Lost Boys soundtrack, stuck in my head :)