So last weekend, in celebration of the US Open (see previous post) I went to Urban Golf in Soho and played Torrey Pines with some friends. I could blame my below-par performance on the cocktails, or on the unaccustomed clubs, or on the lighting in the booth - or on whatever you like. The upshot is that I played appallingly.
The closest culprit could be the graphics of the simulator – not that they're bad, but they are at best a 2-dimensional representation of a course, where in real life you would use your prrimate monkey-senses and your homo sapiens intelligence to judge the distance to the pin with your eyes. Oh evolution - Darwin would be pleased. In the simulator on the other hand, you're dependent on interpreting the size of the pixel flag or the computer's instructions: 78 yards to the flag; 28 foot putt.
My problem is that I am terrible at interpreting the image on the screen, but even worse at understanding yardages. 23 yards? How far's that then? I really have no clue. My friends started off with helpful advice, like “about as far as that wall” but before long I was just guessing. Still, it was hilarious and I wasn't the only one struggling, so I'm not too worried about it.
This inability to grasp yards as a way of measuring distance is something of a handicap though. The other day I blasted the biggest drive of my life, but I can't tell anyone how far it was, unless they know the course I play. “You know the fairway on the 8th, where it narrows and there's the tree on the left? And you know how the fairway has a kind of shelf? So my ball was like about this far past the top of the hump!”
Honestly, it was a really good drive.
