On golf. And teaching 3 days in a row!

My lonely little bag at the driving range on Friday. The earth is so wet that we still have to hit off of mats, but thankfully the practice areas ares open.

It was a great weekend of friends, teaching yoga,  some body combat and a great round of golf on Sunday afternoon. I subbed for Kims class on saturday, it was a gentle yoga class, taught 75 minute power vinyasa flow on Sunday, and my normal gentle yoga class today. I really love it ~ I feel so happy every time I am leaving there after teaching. Its just so much fun to connect with people ~ and people doing yoga are generally really happy people! I love getting to know them, to recognize my regulars and to welcome new people into the class. Teaching is a privilege and I just feel so lucky to be able to be experiencing this. Its still not quite 100% real to me that I am an actual, working, teaching, yoga teacher.

Golf. Nate and I played yesterday with the team captain of the second team and her fiancee. She is probably about 55, super friendly, and doesn't play with anything than a 7 wood in her bag. Yet she hits that 7 wood dead straight, every.single.time she hits it and can get up and down like, ever time. Me? I'm very long with my driver /woods and irons, but yesterday couldn't chip worth a damn. It was still encouraging though as I was driving the ball well and hitting my irons well. If I can get some touch back with my short game I'm more optimistic than I was a week ago. I may not win any matches, but I at least feel in my game enough to be out of sheer embarrassment territory. We play from the gold tees for competition, so thats all that I have been playing from to get used to it. The course is LONG.  5600 yards from there. Long. I'm hoping to play at least once this week and twice next week, we have 2 clinics for the WGAP players with the club Pro……..and I'm just really, really hoping it can come together somehow.

I got my team shirt and team jacket yesterday ~ its a pink SHIRT not shorts. Black bottoms. I can live with that. Its quite cute actually. I also learned a lot more about the etiquette and whatnot……its scary how many rules there are and things that you have to just…know. (not just golf rules, but competition/match play/league rules) Like, the guest always gets the first tee. Certain things that one can get penalized for with stroke penalties or conceding the hole entirely. I'm not responsible for counting their strokes, but when we get to the green if I've lost track of where they are I have to say what I lie, and then etiquette demands that they tell me what they lie. Putting rules. Giving puts. Strategy. SO MANY RULES. I feel like I need to study before heading into this! Okay, I am studying.

I've also been hearing about how so many places are having a harder time fielding teams for their WGAP matches. The reasons for this are threefold, more women who would be hitting the point with their children are hitting school or in their golf game handicap wise where they could play are working, and older players are "retiring" from competition and there just aren't many people to replace them….and sadly,,, golf is rather sexist. Ive seen this firsthand……I don't really have a single friend my age who plays, and thus far all of the women I've met at our club who play the most are a good 15 years older than me, minimum. The head of the women's golf social committee is 71. I think that maybe I'm just in a weird age gap, where girls weren't flocking to junior golf  yet, as I'm the same age as Tiger. Him exploding the game missed women who were my age ~ at 18 we had already aged out of youth golf and few people take up the game as college students with no income. After that????? I started playing at 28 when Nate and I started dating. 10 years ago now….. had three kids and lost all of 2012 to the broken hip. And one problem with golf is how long it takes ~ and when babies come along it gets hard to simply disappear for 6 hours. Few women take up golf in their 30's during the young family years. Starting anything, especially something hard, is probably daunting at 40+ (though thats when my Mom did it, and she is a fabulous golfer). Its just really interesting to me ~ and I hope that behind me is a whole ton of women golfers who were inspired by Tiger or other young stars and started playing during the mainstreaming of golf in the USA. Its not easy to play ~ I did a lot of pumping and a lot of playing pregnant (I will never forget pumping at the turn at Sawgrass…..) but its doable. It helped  me immensely in my career ~ it was a great thing as a woman to be able to take men out to golf as you were an anomaly. Its a game that can be played for life. Its one of the rare games where due to handicapping, two golfers with very different skill levels can have a great time playing against one another competitively….unlike tennis or most other sports I can think of. It doesn't have to be expensive ~ great sets of used clubs are available for very little money and there are a plethora of public courses available to everyone. The sexist bit IS a problem, however. Women play 5 gap matches……all on weekdays. Men? They play on the weekend. So a woman who worked full time would have to take off one week of work to participate. Also, at least where we are and at most private courses in the area, women can't play on Saturday or Sunday mornings before a designated time (frequently noon)….so that the men, who presumably work all week , can play. Ladies day and all tournaments etc.  are on Tuesdays. Its sexist. And thats a problem that at some point, Golf is going to have to address. If they want women golfers in the game, they have to find a way to make golf and competitive golf as accessible to working women as it is to working men.

I don't know why I'm writing a commercial for golf.   I can't wait to see Jules start junior golf this summer. I can't wait to someday play in Mother daughter outings with her. Of course she may hate it……but something tells me that I'm going to have a lot of fun playing golf with my kids as they get older. The idea of heading out with the kids as a foursome makes me really excited!