A Baseball Player’s Day at the Golf Club

The baseball-to-golf transition seems natural, but it's more complex than that. (via Daniel X. O'Neil)

The baseball-to-golf transition seems natural, but it’s more complex than that. (via Daniel X. O’Neil)

It was supposed to be a Sunday spent accompanying our friends and their kids to a Jurassic fossil excavation pit. I know. But, the friends are nice and one of their kids is actually our godchild, so you do those things from time to time. And it was indeed a Sunday spent accompanying our friends and their kids to a Jurassic fossil excavation pit…until the moment a tennis ball came flying from heaven.

It turned out that the pit shares a fence with a golf club where they had some sort of an Open Door Sunday. To show his gratitude, the guy whom we retrieved the ball for invited us over, thus mercifully ending our paleontological endeavors. To be fair, he actually invited the kids over to play kids golf with said tennis balls, but you know how much crime goes on these days. You can’t be careful enough, and should never leave the children unattended.

So, about 30 seconds later, I had filled some sort of score card expressing my interest in joining the club and was assigned an instructor who took me to the driving range. Sunday was saved.

I was given a club and then shown a series of hand grips, slides, finger interlocks, crossovers and whatnots in an elaborate scheme that would put an average NBA handshake to shame. These were (I think) designed to help me understand how to place my hands on the club properly. After two minutes I interrupted the guy, “I know how to grip a bat, mate,” and was finally allowed to take some cuts:

Swinging Strike, 0-1

To start with, I was not given a big-ass club as you see on TV. Actually it wasn’t a club at all, I have no idea why they call them that. It was a tiny thin metal stick. Also, the balls were so small. And they weren’t put on a tee but on some carpet. Which is perhaps not all bad news, because some of my most embarrassing baseball moments did involve balls on the tees. The carpet turned out to be quite helpful, because I could retrace my swing by examining the well engraved mark on it to see what went wrong. So, I adjusted, reared back and let it fly:

Swinging Strike, 0-2

Score one on my consistency – the second mark just deepened the first one, and I’m pretty sure the repetitive skills are what they are looking for in a rookie. By this time I had garnered some additional attention, above the one that might be attributed to the fact that — having chosen our garments to spend the day in a big hole made of stone, mud and dust — we might have been just a tad underdressed for a Sunday in a private golf club.

My instructor saw this as a great occasion to offer some advice. I should concentrate, watch the ball, visualize hitting it without actually swinging. Breathe. So, I did. And he was right, not swinging was the great choice:

Ball, 1-2

I realized the balls were clearly on the outside, so I decided to crowd the plate. Somehow my first two swings prompted the instructor to ask me in that friendly tone usually reserved for suicide prevention hotlines, “So, you’ve never played before?”

I actually did. I played one fraction of one round of golf when I was 17. My girlfriend at the time — who, unbeknownst to me, was also the captain of the high school golf team — took me golfing once. My golf career started and ended when I realized she could not only aim better, but also hit balls further. There is only so much your prototypical South European can stomach. Also, I might have been overly emotional because after a month of dating I had just met her father for the first time. An occasion he celebrated by presenting me with a Bible, so there was that, too.

But, I digress. I inched toward the ball and took another mighty swing:

Foul Ball, 1-2

Now, to each their own, but the golfers didn’t strike me as a particularly intelligent bunch. About 10 yards in front of us, there were wooden boards with some warnings or rules or something of a kind. Given, they were placed some 45 degrees to the left and to the right from where we were hitting, but when I get an outside pitch, I will drive it to the opposite field. I got a really good hang of that little sucker, and propelled it directly to the board, from where it bounced, with seemingly undiminished velocity, back toward a neighboring box — fortunately unoccupied at the moment — from where it took yet another bounce, all on the line, and landed some 30, 40 yards into the field.

By now, I had everybody’s attention.

Other instructors scampered around and took down all the boards. Mine asked me if I might not enjoy swinging with less intent and more control. If the leg kick was really necessary. I calmly explained to him that I saw the three individuals batting before me hit measly 60-yard singles, and that if I were to drive them in then, sorry, I couldn’t risk a ground ball to shortstop. That even a strikeout was preferable to a double play. That if I get another pitch in that general area, that then, oh boy, will the pitcher cry.

As it was probably too late to call security now, I was given another try. And then they just hung one in the middle of the zone for me:

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

Walk-Off Home Run

To my great shame, I have to admit I failed to do the club flip. In my defense, I did finish the swing one-handed and I took my sweet time admiring the shot. However, the long gaze was not pimping what turned out to be my first-ever 600+ ft. drive in any sport, it was just that I couldn’t see where that bloody tiny thing went. In fact, I might have not even realized how far it had gone, if not for a 100-decibel shout from behind me.

Which brings me to my wife and to a piece of advice for you young partner-seekers out there. If you ever find a girl who will accompany your dirty ass into a posh golf club, and then raise her arms, scream “And that baby’s … GONE!!!” from top of her lungs and walk off the field through a murmur of checkered-trousers wearers – hold on to her, because you’ve got yourselves a keeper.


Bojan Koprivica played soccer in the USA and baseball everywhere else. While some use this fact to question his competitiveness, he talks of it using expressions like "international flair".
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Jim S.
8 years ago

You’re from Bulgaria, right? I went there in 1991 and remember a noteworthy town called Koprivshtica, and your name reminds me of that. Also, Bulgarians shake their head in the “no” manner when they mean “yes,” and nod in the “yes” manner when they mean “no.” This was brought home to me when, at a bus station, I asked the driver if he was going to a certain city. He shook his head and I waved him off. Seconds later, I realized his bus was in fact going where I wanted to go. But he had already driven away.

ed
8 years ago

what is she had said “She gone!”

ed
8 years ago
Reply to  ed

if

tz
8 years ago

Great story. I had a similar experience with a drive bouncing back into an unoccupied box with a loud thud.

The reason the box was unoccupied was one of my swings from minutes before, when my club slipped out of my hand on my follow-through and swirled on a bee line directly to my left, about 7-8 feet above the ground. Since I was hitting from the rightmost tee, I ended up by myself for the last half hour at the range. Fun times!