Faldo Golf School-Come for the Golf, Stay for the Early Understanding of What Arthritis is Like

We're back and almost fully recovered from 24 hours of golfing in a 50 hour period. If, instead of galley slaves, the Romans for some reason had needed Golfing slaves, our experience would have been a lot like that. Except that the food was good. And there weren't any beatings.

On the other hand, who needs to give your Golfing Slave a beating when he's doing this to himself?:














That is Human Torch's sunburn. He apparently took his nickname a little too seriously and lightly grilled his tragically-Irish skin in the desert sun all day Saturday.

While it's true that the redness of HT's calves is shocking, I still can't decide which is more awful: the redness of his calves or the whiteness of what's above 'em. Either way, he looks like 2/3rds of a Bomb Pop.

Here's an improvement on that view. It gives you a basic idea of the salt mine we were slaving away in all weekend:














And here's another picture, which is the whole Faldo School May 24, Session 2, known and feared across the Coachella Valley as the Window Breakers:














Working from right to left, it's Human Torch, Adam aka Yak Herder (I have no idea why, but I like it), Ian (Father of Yak) and Mike Ellis, golf pro and A-list trainer. He's got the 1000-yard stare of a guy who's just spent two days watching four grown men totally fail at something.

But speaking of arthritis, as mentioned by Yak Herder in a comment yesterday, I did notice that as I slept on Sunday night, my right hand slowly formed into a kind of claw-like tool. Still useful for digging in shallow, soft dirt or perhaps picking berries, it was no longer so good for the higher order functions such as typing, using a fork or making the "A-OK" sign.

I estimated (just now, while I'm actually typing this) that I probably hit 1000 golf balls over the course of the weekend. That's the equivalent of hitting one golf ball a day for 1000 days! Just imagine.

Lots more to come on Faldo, including video, equipment shenanigans, encounters with drunken and youthful locals on the 16th hole (or as we called it "the Riff-Raff hole") and more. But for now, I'll leave you with a shot of Mike putting us through one of the more stringent drills of the weekend. I think those are 5 irons we're holding down there. That thing in Mike's hand is one of those golf training gadgets. I can't remember what he called it: