Woosie and the Killer Whale

Measuring five foot nothing and armed with forearms that actually were hewn from spending his teenage summers down on the farm, Ian Woosnam sure knew how to hit a golf ball. Using a driver fashioned, incredibly, from a lump of wood, the pint sized taff outdrove virtually everybody on the tour, sometimes hitting it over 250 meters. Wow.

And then along came John Daly and his Wilson Killer Whale. Resembling a thimble now compared with modern clubs, the Killer Whale was huge. And it came with a bright red Firestick shaft. When we heard the price tag (nearly 80 quid!) all the guys on Today's Golfer agreed that Wilson were out of their tiny minds. Nobody would ever pay that for a driver!

The Killer Whale was soon followed by the Big Bertha (299 quid), and then the biggest Big Bertha (499 quid!) each hewn out of a space age material called titanium. You probably know the rest. In 1996 over 70% of all new drivers sold were made by Callaway. A company that didn't exist in 1986. Because they worked. Golfers everywhere soon learnt that the hardest club to hit had just got easy (er) and best of all, the new weapons of mass destruction were long, scary long, reducing par fives to two just good Woosnam like smacks. Happy days...

Now I don't know what happened since to make golf hard again (and I do know that the average club handicap now is the same as it was 20 years ago), but all my stats reveal that despite the best clubs man can buy, I still don't hit many fairways. If I don't include near misses, it can be less than 50%. Ouch.

In my most recent round, I hooked my first tee shot 40 yards right, blocked the next one stone dead and found the trees on 10. Luckily, from there the course opens up...

Thing is, I also missed the cut stuff on 7, 8, 11, 13, 14. Six out of fourteen fairways hit for 38 points! So was it worth striving for distance? Not really. On 6 I couldn't get down in two. On 16 I missed right with a 6 iron. On 18 I missed right with a 4 iron.

So no then. Distance not the key.

Best round ever at St Michael's was the day after buying the hybrid. 45 points off 12 after a blob at the first. When I played off 6 I used a 3 wood. When will I learn?