Well it was a good idea at the time - take the visiting Father In Law and my son to check out the new Top Golf Gold Coast while the mother in law, wife and daughter visited the local strawberry farm (helping support the local strawberry farmers after idiots here in Australia put sewing needles in them).
What I got though was a masterclass in driving prowess from a guy who'd never taken the club's up ever..
So what is Top Golf?
It's a multi-level new age golf driving range with access to plenty of food and drink and laughs a plenty. You hire a booth (well a tee of pad) by the hour and take turns to smack the taste out of your golf balls and hope one of them lands in one of the scoring zones. There's a few different types of games and the host explains them all when you get there.
Given it was our first time, we figured the basic 'land a ball in a zone, score some points' was more than enough for our skill level...which was:
Me: Worst slice in the world (courtesy of rolling my wrists - thanks Chris)
Baz the father in law: Never played anything other than Mini Golf
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| See those crater things? They're the scoring zones. |
Action Jackson the seven year old superstar: Still can't work out if he's left or right handed
GAME ONE - Twenty shots each, highest score wins.
After getting briefed by the host going over the rules (no Happy Gilmore running shots you idiots and stay behind the marked lines) we got down to business. You step up, wave your chosen up at the sensor and it spits out a microchipped ball ready to be thunked into oblivion.
I rolled up, aimed straight ahead and sliced it right into the side fence. My infamous curved shot from hell rearing its ugly head again. From here on in I'd have to aim extreme left to land somewhere in the middle.
Jackson stepped up and needed a quick lesson in how to hold a club and the difference between a hockey and golf swing. It'd take him a few shots to finally connect club to ball and it would just dribble over the net guards and onto the green below.
Then came Baz who stepped up, sized up the field (and potential competition) and then drove ball after ball in perfect straightness time and time again. Into this scoring zone, into that scoring zone - the man made it look like he coached Tiger Woods part time in between truck driving.
'This is revenge you see' he grinned as he raced ahead in the points 'For kicking my bum in the go karts this time last year.'
So it was no surprise that he wiped the floor with us both in the first game with a lead of 40 points above my lackluster 42. Jackson also managed a couple of decent swings with enough mustard for the ball to roll into the closest scoring zone, racking up a proud 6 points for the game.
GAME TWO - Twenty shots each, highest score wins but we've only got ten minutes left before our hour is up.
With 15 mins game time left the staff came to check of we wanted to go for another hour but we passed, paid our bill and decided to make the most of our remaining time limit.
Once again Baz put on a show of dead straight drives and a scoring masterclass
Once again I bananed everything.
Once again Jackson swing for high heaven and connected one in every 6 shots.
With thirty seconds left on the clock, we decided that visiting Baz should take the last shot which he did...managing to shank the poor ball right into the overhanging roof...
He quickly looked around to make sure no one had seen his misfortunate swing (judging by the marks in the roof he wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last to hit a shot like that) and was quite content to completely forget about it until Jackson pointed out that hilariously it still managed to score some points!
Somehow it had hit the roof and still had enough juice to hit the green rolling and throw itself into a scoring zone.
Even when he found it, he wins.
He giggled about it the whole way home and then bragged to his wife about how good a golfer he suddenly found out he was.
I don't think he's going to give up truck driving anytime soon though..
Now that scores are even, I'll have to come up with something completely different to take the title back when he comes to visit again next year.
Indoor skydiving maybe?
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