Welcome!

Greetings.

I am The Naked Golfer and welcome to my blog.

What is this all about? Good question!

The purpose of this blog is to invite you, the golfer, into the mind of one of your fellows. It is often said that golf is a game that is 80% mental (or is that 80% of golfers ARE mental?) however we seldom, or never, get the opportunity to peer into the inner workings of the minds of our golfing comrades. Well here's your chance!

As we move into this busy time of Club competition, with the Club strokeplay champs in August rolling into the matchplay champs in September, culminating in finals' day in October, I thought I would take the opportunity to record my thoughts and actions for posterity (and your amusement). You will have the opportunity to follow The Naked Golfer from now, as I start planning my glorious(!) campaign, right through to finals day and the hoisting of the club championship in my grade. (NOTE: May not actually happen)

Hopefully, by the end of this, you will have learnt that all golfers, whatever their level of expertise or experience, go through exactly the same things as you do. Sitting at work thinking about your next game (or your last). Re-living that perfect 7 iron you hit at that par 3, and not being able to help having a little smile at the thought. Fretting about that fizzing snap hook you sent into the racecourse off 13 last week, and how it's bound to happen again on Saturday, bound to!! And why am I off 13 again?! Every week! Raging internally and shaking a mental fist at the Golfing Gods as you trudge down to 13 once more, already saying "Provisional, Top-Flite 3" to yourself before you even hit the first one.

Oh yes my friends, I live in this head space as well, as do all golfers somewhere deep down (some are just hiding it better).

I will try my best to let you in on how I'm feeling as the rounds progress. I will analyse what I have done well and what I have done badly, and how I can improve. I will keep you up to date with any practice (snigger!) that I do before we get underway in August, and what is working well or not so well with my game. Mostly however, I hope that YOU will take something away from this, even if it's just the consolation that there's someone else out there suffering as badly as you are. Maybe there will be things that I do that you will want to adopt into your own game or routine (unlikely), or maybe you will just take a perverse pleasure in my failure to qualify and my slow decline into insanity as the 3 footers just continue to stay above ground.

Whatever it is you take from this, I hope you enjoy it.

Naturally as time moves on it will be increasingly difficult to keep my identity hidden. All part of the fun I guess. Obviously I won't be too precise with my exact scores, but will certainly give you an indication of how satisfied I am and where I'm standing relative to the competition. And keep reading, as there's every chance you may find yourself starring (under a code name) if we play together, or if some humorous misfortune befalls you that I shall be obliged to recount in the blog!

Finally for today, please don't read the blog hoping for some kind of technical instruction. I am a technical incompetent when it comes to golf technique. Basically, I know you hold onto the rubber bit, aim yourself in the general direction of intended travel, and hit the go button. I am not Jay Carter (small mercies) so he is the first name eliminated from The Naked Golfer suspects list. (I will not actually be playing naked, not that I have any aversion to nudity, in fact I'm all for it, but it would be too easy to spot me in the Saturday field). I can confirm though that I will be naked under my clothes.

Well golfers, good luck! I hope as many of you are making the effort to play in the Club champs as possible. It really is the biggest time of the year for the club, and the better we support it, the better it is. Remember, your name will be up on that board forever! And that's a long time.

See you on the fairways! (and the rough, and in bunkers, and under trees, and looking for balls in the racecourse, and most importantly, upstairs for a cold one afterwards)

The Naked Golfer

P.S Don't forget to leave your feedback! Stories about triple bogeys and temper tantrums particularly appreciated! Tell your friends.......