Article #34
Today's teacher: Jitterbug
To meet this week's teacher, or to purchase a copy of MUNIE ~ The Jitterbug Collection, go to www.bobbysteiner.com
Jitterbug and I visited Ed Miles, a member of Firewater National in Cashiers, N.C., for a round of golf at his trendy club.
"Sunny Ed," as most people knew him, was a cheerful, peace-loving vegetarian who practiced Yoga, Tai-Chi, and a few other mind-and-body arts. I knew him from my days playing Munie, and was more than excited to show up as his guest at Firewater.
"It's your lucky day," Ed said, shortly after we arrived. "I've reserved the two best caddies we have."
"You didn't have to do that," Jitterbug said. "Shoot, Bobby and me can carry our own clubs."
"Of course you can," Ed said. "But it's the rules. Everybody has to take a caddy on weekends."
Our caddies stood at attention as we pulled into the practice area. "Bobby, I'd like you to meet Orion," Ed said. "He's very meticulous, and will provide you with whatever help you need."
I extended my hand. "Nice to meet you, Orion."
Orion seemed like a strange duck to me. His hair was tousled, and the right front pocket of his trousers was worn thin in the shape of a protractor.
"I have my own personally designed yardage book," Orion said. "It is very detailed. I shot all the yardages myself."
Ed turned to Jitterbug. "And, this is Toadstool. He doesn't say much, Jitterbug, but he's a terrific caddy. Feel free to use him however you'd like."
Walking to the first hole, a wide-open par four, Jitterbug pulled the head cover off of his driver, and asked Toadstool, "Is this the one?"
Toadstool glanced at the driver in Jitterbug's hand, and nodded, as if too lazy to speak. Hearing the crack of Jitterbug's drive, Toadstool gazed up just in time to see it was hit long and straight down the middle.
Following Jitterbug's lead, I walked to the tee with my driver. "Say, Orion, is this the one?"
Orion raced through his yardage book. "Uh, how far do you hit it?"
"I can poke it out there 300 yards," I bragged.
"There's a creek 308 from the front of this box," he said. "But, with the wind like it is, you might be fine. What I'd worry about is the bunker on the right; it's 271 away, and if you happen to get in it, there's no way to go for the green in two."
Suddenly, the prospect of finding the fairway seemed a bit more daunting. "So, keep it left then?"
"Not too much," Orion said. "If you pull it more than fifteen degrees, there's a staked hazard you can reach easily."
"OK," I thought, "don't hit it too far down the middle, right or left." I drew the club back, but suddenly sensed I was aligned too far right, and rerouted my downswing to keep the ball from finding that menacing bunker Orion described. Of course, it didn't matter because I topped the ball, and bounced it into the creek some thirty yards from the tee; the only trouble I hadn't considered.
After taking a drop in the long grass, and advancing the ball twice more, I finally got past Jitterbug's tee shot.
"All right, Toadstool," Jitterbug said, "what's the shot?"
Still appearing detached, Toadstool looked at Jitterbug's ball and then the green. "Aim five feet right of the pin and hit it 162 yards," he said.
Jitterbug swung a seven-iron.
"That'll be all right," Toadstool said, as Jitterbug's shot danced around the hole."
Arriving at my ball, I asked Orion, "Is this shot as straight-forward as it appears?"
"Not really," he said. "It's 112 to the middle, but you should subtract six yards from that. Too long is better than too short, but you definitely don't want to be above the hole or left."
Squaring up over my shot, I couldn't conjure up a clear image of what I intended to do. With a cautious, keep-the-ball-out-of-trouble swing, I moved through impact, and sent the ball-along with a terrific tear of sod-into a bunker short and right of the hole.
After getting down in eight shots, and watching Jitterbug roll in his birdie putt, we made our way to the second tee, a dogleg-right par five.
Jitterbug turned to Toadstool. "What'd we need to do here?" Yawning, Toadstool replied, "Hit it 220 straight at that waterfall in the bend."
With great certainty, Jitterbug swung his two-iron, commissioning an arrow-like tee shot directly at his assigned target.
"That looks perfect," I said, walking to the tee with my five-wood.
"What club do you have?" Orion asked me.
"I'm gonna wangle one out there with this little five-wood," I said.
"If you can carry it 250 yards, you can clear that bunker on the right," Orion said. "From there, it's just a mid- or long-iron to the green. This is the only eagle opportunity on the course."
I reached back to my bag and pulled my driver. "Poor Jitterbug," I thought. "I bet he wishes Toadstool would've let him in on this eagle opportunity."
I murdered a drive, and flew it just left of the right-hand bunker. "GET DOWN!!!" Orion yelled.
"What do you mean, 'Get down'? I asked.
"I told you to hit it over the bunker, not left of it," he said. "You hit that ball out-of-bounds. I'd hit a provisional."
The rest of the day went nearly the same.
Counting up the bets after our round, Sunny Ed said, "Wow Jitterbug, sixty-eight! That's only two shots off the course record. You should be very pleased with that."
"I had a good caddy," Jitterbug said.
"And, let's see, Bobby," Ed said. "…plus six is forty, and five is forty-five for…eighty-six. Not your best, but not bad for your first time through."
I wanted to chew nails.
Driving home that afternoon, I made no bones about it: "Can you believe that worthless Orion guy? He didn't give me one bit of help! All he did was point out the trouble! And, even when I had my mind made up about what I wanted to do, he'd say something to change it. He ruined my whole day!"
Jitterbug nodded and smiled. "That's probably true, Bobby," he said. "And, maybe Orion wasn't exactly a sports psychologist with his delivery, but perhaps you should start lookin' at what you learned today."
"That's easy for you to say. You almost shot the course record! It must be lots of fun for you to think about what you learned today!
There were ten minutes of dead silence in Jitterbug's car as we made our way down the highway.
"All right, Jitterbug," I conceded, "you're probably right."
"About what?"
"There must be a positive I can take from this."
"Let me tell you something, Bobby," Jitterbug said. "What Orion did to you today is no different than what all of us, from time to time, do to ourselves."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when it comes to the qualities that make up a good mental package, the idea is to think less, not more. Orion got you thinking more, and you let him do it. Instead of seeing the shot you knew you could hit, you listened in as Orion pointed out all the shots you ought not to hit. It was like everything he said came with a warning label, and you took heed to every one."
"You're right," I said. "There was a lot of negativity in what he told me."
"Whether it was positive or negative is not the point. There was just too much of it. The golfer with more than one thought, whether positive or negative or happy or sad or ludicrous or ingenious is simply not focused on the task at hand. Playing to your potential hinges on your ability to stay single-minded about what you're trying to do. Too much information, whether accurate or not, makes things fuzzy; just disconnects your mind from your body."
I live for the day Sunny Ed invites us back to Firewater.
"By the way, Jitterbug," I said. "Next time I get Toadstool. You can have Orion if you want."