I’m a left-handed golfer in the body of a right-handed man

‘WHERE’S your shorts,’ shouted Niall Doogue as I clambered out of my car having dashed across country from Tomacork trying desperately not to be late for my first meeting with Baltinglass Golf Club pro Tom O’Neill.

My attire was the last of my concerns before leaving home 28 minutes beforehand as I made emotional appeals through gritted teeth to my dog Poppy to come into the kitchen so I could shut the door while opening our ‘gate’ and then close it and stop her getting out on the road and meeting a premature end which would see me most likely evicted from my home due to the adoration that is poured on the canine’s head by my beloved wife and children. (I had allowed her out to pee).

When Poppy knows you need to go somewhere, she deliberately avoids coming in just to wreck your head. It’s quite amazing really, and impressive if it wasn’t so incredibly annoying. Eventually I managed to coax her in with a slice of cooked ham and I was off like a rocket (a speed limit-observing rocket, obviously).

I put the word gate in inverted commas because it is not really a gate. It’s more a collection of wood that looks like it was untidily hammered together by a man desperately trying to escape from a desert island who has no tools and is nearing the point of death from starvation. Still, it keeps Poppy in and the neighbours out, and what more can you ask of any gate to be fair!

I glanced down at myself when Doogue shouted this welcome and was more than relieved to see that I wasn’t still wearing the pyjamas to be honest. It wasn’t 9am yet and I had enjoyed a healthy quantity of fine cider the previous evening after a testing few hours in the garden while being overlooked by the all-knowing, all-powerful better half, so I wasn’t overly confident I had thrown on the pair of blue jeans and the nearest thing to a ‘golf’ top I could find in my horrendous wardrobe. Luckily, I had.

For anyone reading this and wondering what in the name of holy hell this lad is going on about, I started playing golf last week and am going to torment the dear readers of this fine paper with my adventures over the coming weeks. I’m doing this for a number of reasons: the first being it will give me something to put in the paper; the second is that it will get me out of the house, away from the gardening and allow me to breathe the air of a free man yet again.

I was due to meet Tom O’Neill on the Wednesday but a thing called a conference call on Teams got in the way, and if you’re not aware of what that is then count yourself lucky. So, the multi-talented and ruggedly handsome Niall Doogue of Baltinglass Golf Club rescheduled what I was picturing as being a milestone event in my very brief golfing career for the Friday morning.

Doogue said Tom O’Neill was sound the previous week. That’s always slightly worrying in my opinion. One man’s sound is another man’s quare hawk but I was very pleasantly surprised to find that Tom O’Neill is not just sound but he’s a sound Dunlavin man, and you don’t meet many of th...! (Only joking. All Dunlavin people are sound).

A quick nod in each other’s direction and we’re off to the practice hole (no handshakes here, me boy). Doogue has a business empire to control so it’s just me and Tom under blue skies and in the chorus of what sounds like a choir of enthusiastic birds.

Tom began his golfing career in Rathsallagh Golf Club as a youngster and fell in love with the game. He showed a serious talent and played off +1 as an amateur before turning pro. The former Dunlavin underage GAA player did his training in Rathsallagh under Brendan McDaid and completed the PGA course run out of the Belfry in England. He now spends his time between Tulfarris and Baltinglass golf clubs and Naas Golfing Range spreading the golfing gospel and occasionally trying to improve the golfing lives of people like me.

To me, Tom O’Neill is like that mechanic you put your complete trust in to fix your car, or the plumber who is going to save the day when those pipes block. He’s the dude. He knows his stuff. He talks about the game of golf like a lover talks about the woman of his dreams.

He’s also laid back but very observant which is a big help to a beginner like me.

‘Have you any injuries?’ he asks as we stroll to the tee box.

I was going to clarify whether he meant physical or mental because we would probably have needed to block book some time off if it was the mental side of things given that I’ve covered Wicklow GAA for nearly 10 years. Luckily for him it was physical and I have only a slight issue with the left shoulder that doesn’t seem to impinge on my awkward golf swing as of yet.

I have to admit there was a slight feeling of pressure given that I was in the presence of someone who knew what they were talking about. That’s not to say that Niall Doogue or Liam Horgan, who were with me the previous week, didn’t know what they were talking about. They most certainly did. But I imagine it would be sort of like me and Kevin O’Brien giving advice to a young footballer; the chap should probably listen to Kevin.

There’s no beating around the bush with Tom. There’s a heap of balls - time to walk to the walk. First shot goes well, heads in the general direction of the green. Tom’s impressed, I can tell. I’m a good judge of that. What’s rare is wonderful.

Second shot is horrendous. There’s something wrong. I’ve felt it since I stepped up to that practice area that first day I rocked up to Baltinglass Golf Club two weeks ago. Something is not right and I can’t put my finger on it.

We battle through the session, with Tom proving to be a man of virtue and patience. Most of the shots go left, some don’t go anywhere but despite Tom’s supportive words I’m not happy to say the least. I’m struggling to see how the unnatural feeling of my grip is going to improve. It genuinely feels like I’m breaking some sacred law of gravity.

It’s only when I’m at home swinging the club in the lawn at a tennis ball (like Tom advised) that I cop what’s wrong (or what I think is wrong). I’m a right-handed person who should be playing left-handed golf. There’s no denying it. When I swing left-handed it feels completely natural. Obviously, I only had right-handed clubs because I am right-handed so I couldn’t test it on the tennis ball but all the buttercups on my lawn that I aimed at (all 875,000 of them), I successfully beheaded with impressive accuracy leading me to believe that I have a serious future in this game if Tom O’Neill can prove his worth and get me scratch by the time I’m 45. Otherwise, I’ll expect his resignation (a little over a year, Tom, if you’re reading this, no pressure!).

I’m in good company if I’m correct in my evaluation of my golfing tendency. A certain Phil Mickelson is right-handed but plays golf as a left-hander. Of course, I could be completely wrong and am just utterly useless at the game. There’s always that possibility, too.

I’m back in Baltinglass on Friday morning at 8.30am and I’m going to do things properly this week. No cider on Thursday night, or certainly not anything near the quantity I consumed last week. Poppy is under strict instructions to behave, and I’m just going in there and letting my inner left-handed self express the true beauty of golf with careless abandon.