Today, I swung a golf club for the first time in my life.

A buddy of mine, Kevin, and I met at the Hank Hankey Golf Ranch of Austin tonight. Kevin asked me earlier in the day if I golfed, to which I replied “no” and he asked me to hit the driving range with him tonight. I figured “why the heck not?”

So, we met around 7:45, and rented a large bucket of little white golf balls for $13.00. There were about 100, maybe 150 balls in the bucket.

The section of the driving range set aside for drivers was pretty full, so we headed over to the side that’s set aside for irons, and I got my first lessons from a buddy.

The first advice Kevin gave me was typical Kevin: “You wanna know what the first thing you need to know about your golf swing is? Just try to look cool!”

I laughed.

Kevin said “No, I’m serious. It sounds stupid, but try to look cool, and relaxed. Don’t get too tight, be conscious of the fact that you look cool doing this, and you won’t feel so silly making the small adjustments I’ll tell you to make throughout tonight.”

So, I took his advice. And I hit my first ball with a 3 iron.

It went pretty far (I think) but sliced way to the right … waaaaay to the right.

Kevin was just impressed I hit the ball.

We both nailed about 100 little white balls down the driving range with irons before heading over to the side for the drivers. Then we polished off the rest of the balls before retiring to our vehicles to polish off a beer.

It was a lot of fun and I’m really looking forward to my future golf game. It can only get better from here.