Golf: Unusual Injury and a Feel Good Story.

I have haven’t written about my own game lately, which usually means that I am basically stinking out the joint, and this is no exception this time. I am having my usual putting problems, and short game blues. My ball striking as been ok, particularly my driving, and my iron game has been up and down. There have been two interesting things happen this year, that I think warrants some blogging. First, I had this very unusual injury related to playing golf. I have been playing this game for a long time, since 1958, and I thought I would never do this to myself, by swinging a golf club. On March 17, I was playing, on a fairly pleasant day, in other words no extreme conditions. I took a swing with an iron, and felt this pain on the inside of my forearm. It wasn’t excruciating, but I noticed it all the same. It was only on that shot. It never recurred the rest of the round, and I really never gave it another thought. Then due to the weather, I did not play for 3 days. The next time I played, I started out fine, but I felt the same pain in my forearm around the 3rd hole, like a small knot in the forearm. This time, it did not go away entirely. Then on the 7th hole, I hit a Gap wedge fat, and the forearm became very painful. I could feel a distinct knot on the inside of the forearm. Naturally, I played out the round, but I protected the arm, and although it was painful, I massaged it, which seemed to make it feel better. I left the course right away, went home, put some ice on it and massage it some more. When I woke up the next morning it felt a little better, but when I looked in the mirror, this is what I saw.

Holy shit!!! The only good news, is that it didn’t feel all that bad. I guess you would call that a severe contusion. As you can see, it goes from the top of the wrist to just below the elbow. I did have some elbow pain. When I hurt it with the fat wedge shot, the pain was only isolated in the inner part of my right forearm. I never expected to see anything like that, the next day. Believe it or not I played golf that day, but did protect the arm. When I showed this picture to my daughter, she thought I fell out of the golf cart. I played 3 of the next four days, with a little different swing, because the weather was just too damn gorgeous, not to play. I only had pain when I did not move my wrist for awhile, and it would wake me up at night, because of way I was positioned at times. I never really did anything for it, and it just slowly went away. I have not had any problems since, and it has been 5 weeks, since I did it. I admit, I have made some permanent changes in my swing, which I hope will avoid doing the same thing. I don’t know if this is necessary, but I do not want to go through this again.

Now for a feel good story. On March 30, we had an 11:16 tee time at Scenic Valley, but because of a frost delay we were pushed back to 11:45. The place was packed, because it was developing into a beautiful day. I was there with my buddy Pete, and we were joined with another twosome, which was fine with us. We went down to the putting green, to kill some time, and when we came back, we found out, that the twosome we were supposed to play with, got joined with another twosome, who were ahead of us. We were joined by a single, by the name of Alli, who is 85 years old and had only been playing golf for about 10 years. Both Pete and he played from the senior tees and Alli moved the ball pretty well with a homemade swing. Number 6 is the first par 3 at Scenic, and from the senior tees it is about 140 yards. Yep, you guessed it. Alli took a mighty swing with his driver, and hit a very nice looking shot, that landed about 20 yards short of the green, took some nice hops toward the pin, and went right in the hole for an ace. Naturally, it was his first ace, in his brief 10 year golf career. Alli bought the beers and the course bought the hot dogs, and it was just a grand day. I looked at Pete and said ” Look what we would have missed, if we had gone out with who we were originally paired with”. Golf is one great game.