I’ve got a handle on the twanking!

I’M a very happy man this week. Very happy! Last week I was an awful twanker but this week I think I’ve finally got the handle on the twanking and my golfing future looks very bright.

Last week, Baltinglass club pro Tom O’Neill was looking at my drives with eyes filled with a mix of sympathy (and horror, I imagined), and endless patience. I was so ‘all over the shop’ as a Dublin native might say that I was becoming a danger to myself and other people, not to mention the various outbuildings behind and around the 17th tee at the beautiful West Wicklow club.

But last Friday morning something happened - a moment of spiritual awakening, a physical understanding, a universal secret was whispered into my ears on the soft summer breeze by the golfing gods and I discovered how to successfully use my driver, or as I like to call it, to twank due to the sound made when you make a sweet connection with the ball.

It’s all down to Tom O’Neill to be fair. He has managed to infiltrate my stubborn brain with his constant encouraging and easy-to-understand messages and by doing so he has both lowered my blood pressure and increased the safety levels at Baltinglass Golf Club by at least 90 per cent.

What’s the secret? My head. And I’m not talking psychologically or metaphorically or anything like that, I mean my actual head, that oddly shaped decoration at the top of my shoulders with its rapidly receding hairline and recently grown beard.

We teed off from 17 last Friday morning and I can tell you now I wasn’t a happy camper and neither was the bird population of those stunning trees down the left-hand side as they cowered in fear whenever this golfing cretin lined up his shots (there were many).

Tom was breaking it down little by little, getting me to concentrate on the simple things: the half swing back, eyes on the ball, the follow through, all that helpful stuff that to me sounded like a different language. I was trying to understand it but nothing was getting through to the core of my athletic being so that I could turn those messages into automatic, instinctive actions.

And then Tom mentioned my head, not in an insulting way, as in, ‘Jaysus, you’d think you’d do something with that head of yours,’ or anything like that, but more of a ‘stop moving your head.’

Now, I need to add quickly that it was actually my chest moving, as Tom pointed out, but I was seeing it as my head moving. The Dunlavin man took a short video and showed me and there it was, my stunning Knockananna cranium lifting a good six inches from the moment I began my swing to when I connected with the ball. In other words: absolute disaster in terms of striking the ball in the general direction of where you want it to go.

It was like a light being switched on. Now I had something concrete to work with. I’m limited enough in terms of physical capabilities but holding my head steady is still within my grasp, for now.

I connected well with the first shot post video. I smiled. Tom offered praise and demanded another shot. I connected even better this time. I was holding the head steady, swinging back further until the wrists turned and finishing strongly on the front foot.

The third one was a beauty. The twank off it was like golfing poetry, and it sailed off towards the green and a surge of joy and relief washed up my body. It’s hard to explain the horror of not getting something, of not understanding something that you desperately want to understand but it’s easy to explain when that light comes on and you suddenly have something to work with, something you can build on, tweak, so that you can become the best twanker you can be.

Weather and family events thwarted my efforts at practice at home over the weekend on the back lawn but Monday evening I strode out the back door with seven balls in my pocket, the driver and pitching wedge in one hand and the old duvet cover in the other.

I hung the duvet on the children’s GAA goals but within 15 minutes the seven balls were in the crop in the field next door as my new-found confidence took an awful battering. There are few games that keep you as honest and down-to-earth as golf. You go into golf thinking you’re something you’re not and you’ll soon be taking a count on the ropes.

‘Settle down,’ I said to myself.

And then I found that place again. Head steady, eyes on the ball, swing back, follow through, strong finish.

There were sweet shots and there were bad shots but the big difference was they were all shots.

The duvet cover was hammered for over an hour and a half, despite the best efforts of my cat, Penny, at distracting me from my twanking.

Finally, I’m a real twanker. It’s a great feeling!