Links to Leadership Charity Golf Clinic

After my exhilarating introduction to the sport of polo last Friday, I figured I would keep the first-time athletic experiences rolling into this week with an activity that is considerably less dangerous. Yep—before Monday I had never played golf.

Six days later, I still can’t technically say I’ve played golf, but I can say I’m a pro at gripping a golf club. “You all know something about golf already,” hall of fame golfer and golf instructor Kay McMahon said to a group of 30 newbies on Monday, raising a club in the air. “This is the end you hold on to.”

Me-Natalie- practicing GCAP with some pretty intense focus.

Kay was speaking at this week’s Links to Leadership golf tournament and clinic held at Albany Country Club. The annual event came about three years ago when cochair Georgia Kelly went to a golf tourney and noticed there was only one woman participating. She set out to create an inclusive women’s golf tournament that raises money for women’s causes; this year’s beneficiaries were Capital District Women’s Employment & Resource Center and Girls Inc. To make it so that anyone who wanted to be involved could be, regardless of golf ability, she added a clinic component. That, obviously, is where I found myself.

“There are only two rules,” said Kay, who teaches golf through her eduKaytion Golf 8.5 Academy. “You’ve gotta look good. The other 1 percent we’ll call golf.” While wardrobe is included in the looking good category (one attendee told me she almost went to Dick’s Sporting Goods to buy a shirt for the day before finding an old polo at the bottom of her drawer) Kay mostly meant that you should look like you know what you’re doing—no penguin waddling up to the ball allowed. For that reason, most of the day was dedicated to GCAP, an acronym for grip, club head, align, posture. Only when we mastered our approach to the ball were we allowed to begin learning how to swing, a movement Kay has broken down into 8.5 easy(ish) parts.

The clinic participants with Kay and her protégé, 13-year-old golf phenom Maria Glavin.

Throughout the afternoon, she taught us valuable tools for succeeding on the golf course: that there are only two things to consider in golf (distance and direction), that if you get the ball in the bunker you’re allowed one swing and one throw, that it’s your game and you can use a tee wherever you want, and to beware advice from “Helpful Harrys” on the golf course who may instruct you to keep your head down, among other things. “Everyone tells you to keep your head down,” she says. “That’s garbage, garbage and more garbage. If someone says ‘You lifted your head, I’ll watch the ball for you,’ tell them to go to hell.”

—Natalie Moore