Moving the Chains: Shanks happen

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I trust everyone is familiar with a similar phrase that inspired the title of this piece.

If you’re a golfer, then you totally understand.

If not, give it time.  You’re about to find out.    

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If you ran across a foursome at the local golf course and asked them to name their biggest fears, they would range from hitting a ball out of bounds … to getting the yips* … to being struck by lightning during a thunderstorm while trying to make just one last putt for the best round of their lives.  (If that third one sounds rather personal, it’s because it is.  By the way, I made the putt and wasn’t on the receiving end of a lightning bolt – although the hot dog stand behind the 18^th green was burnt to a crisp.  

*To put it in layman’s terms, the yips is when the hole suddenly becomes

the size of a shot glass, making it virtually impossible to sink a ball into them.

But one thing every golfer will mention – and if you’re a golfer, you might want to avert your eyes right about now.  Shanks occur when the ball is hit with the heel (rather than the face) of the golf club.  Once again, using layman’s terms: if the golf ball were an airplane, it would be like taking a flight from Miami to Buffalo and landing in the Atlantic Ocean.  Or, for a left-handed golfer, taking a flight from San Diego to Seattle and ending up in the Pacific.

Either way, the result is disastrous.  I hit my first shank playing in a high school golf match – and believe me when I say shanks are like potato chips: it’s hard to stop after just one.  I hit so many shanks my sophomore year that my teammates started calling me ‘zip code,’ a reference to wondering where my next shot would end up.  

But It’s not just amateur golfers like you and I (assuming you play golf) who hit shanks: members of the PGA tour have been known to hit them as well.  There are YouTube videos of golf’s biggest stars hitting death bombs, including Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy, and Scottie Scheffler.  Even Tiger Woods’ golf balls have been known to ‘exit stage right,’ so to speak.  The golf ball could land anywhere: in the woods, over the scoreboard, and into the crowd.  Once or twice, they’ve been seen ricocheting off a spectator’s head.  You might even run across a video of POTUS hitting a shank (as well as one or two of his caddy dropping a ‘spare’ golf ball after the first one was lost).      

So to golfers everywhere, take heed: shanks can happen to anyone.  Any time.  Any place. Anywhere.  

Again, if you’re not a golfer, you have to trust me when I say there is nothing that strikes fear in a golfer’s heart more than hearing the word ‘shank’ said out loud.  Try doing it sometime: you’d get the same reaction that you might get from shoving a cross in a vampire’s face.    

As for me, I quit playing golf years ago, so hearing it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.  

Here, I’ll prove my point:

shank shank shankity shank

I didn’t feel a thing.  That’s because hearing it is no longer my Kryptonite.  But if it happens to be yours, you can always do what I did.

Quit.    

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(I explain – in detail – why I stopped playing golf in my book:

 balls: slam dunks & strikeouts & shanks, oh my!)