My name is Shane Henrie. I’ve been golfing since I was 2 years old some 37 years ago. When I was a toddler, my father cut down a set of old clubs to my size and I’m told (I can’t remember) that I was able to break neighbor’s windows with golf balls. Growing up, my father who is now a zero handicap was my golf instructor. I grew up on a dairy farm and I would take a handful of golf balls and hit them from one end of a grass field to the other end.
I played on my High School golf team for 4 years. For the state championship my senior year, I was voted most improved by my coach. While I was on the high school golf team, I received some golf instruction from the course pro to help me out. It turned out to be very frustrating initially because I went from being comfortable hitting the way I knew how, to not being able to get much distance hitting the new way the pro was teaching me. After several weeks of working on my new golf swing, I finally started to get my length back and the best part was I was more consistent.
My father subscribed to the golf digest and I would practice using the techniques taught in the magazine articles. I also used two golf instruction videos a great deal while I was in High School; “Golf My Way” by Jack Nicklaus and “Sybervision” with Al Geiberger. I really like the was Jack Nicklaus teaches you how to use the same exact golf swing no matter whether you want to hit it straight or draw or fade the golf ball.
My biggest benefit to being on the golf team was that I could play our local golf course in for FREE during the spring until school got out, I played 18-36 holes everyday Monday-Saturday. At the time, Roosevelt was only a 9 hole course. One of my most memorable rounds of golf as a teenager was when I eagled a par 5, hole #2, twice in a row the same day.
Growing up, I played Wilson Staff blades and persimmon woods (Remember when woods were made out of wood?). For the last several years, my father and I and a couple of my 5 brothers have been building custom made clubs for ourselves out of components. It’s been fun because you can play around with different designs and if you don’t like something, it’s easy to replace something or make a new one.
I have a couple of other websites focused on AAA Golf Courses, AAA Golf Vacations, and “A” Game Golf Instruction with some really great resources. Click these links or check them out on the links section of this blog.
Now that I’m married with children, I’m not able to frequent the golf courses near as much as I’d like, but I do really enjoy it when I can. My golf game is much more of a social event now than a competition, because I don’t have the time to practice to make me as competitive as I could be. Now when I play, on average I’ll play in the high 70’s.
Even though I live in the city, I have a hay field behind my house that I occasionally hit golf balls into for practice and then go out to see if I can retrieve 50% of them (Hay fields don’t typically get cut very low). I also have a net up in my back yard much of the summer to hit balls into so that if I get the opportunity to go golfing, I don’t need a lot of warming up except my putting which could use some work.
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