I Think I'm Onto Something

"It's all about the transition," Bob Torrance said. So I started thinking about it and couldn't say I necessarily disagreed. I went outside to my hitting net and started trying to take it back slow and starting the downswing gradually, thinking that you can't accelerate into the ball if you're swinging as hard as you can as soon as you start the downswing. The only thing you can do is slow down, and we all know that's a killer. One after another the ball jumped off my clubface and smacked into my homemade net. My left wrist felt flat (and long) and powerful going through the ball. Even 4-irons were rocketing off the tee and into orbit. Wow, I think I'm onto something. I can't wait to go hit balls again.

Career Low Round

I shot my career low round today, a 1-over par 73 from the back tees at my home club. In hindsight I didn't do anything extraordinarily well (11 fairways, 10 greens, 29 putts) I just didn't do anything terribly bad either. I had one ugly 3-putt from about 40 feet and a shanked 4-iron approach to the difficult 15th green, otherwise it was just a steady stay-out-of-trouble kind of round. It was that simple, I guess. I hope I can do it again sometime very soon.

Sandbaggin' At The Member/Guest

I recently played in a member/guest at a relative's club and had the exact same experience there that I had the last time I played in it some five years ago. The same people win the tournament every year, according to my relatives, because these people are sandbaggers. My relatives won't even entertain the possibility that these people are good pressure players, or better yet, that they themselves choke under the pressure of playing for "big money". Maybe their $5 saturday morning games haven't prepared them properly for the high stakes of the member/guest. And they certainly won't even think for a minute that maybe the majority of the players in their club who don't win the tournaments are actually reverse-sandbaggers (or vanity handicappers, as we call them) and can't possibly play to their index because, well, they aren't as good as they pretend to be. Now granted, a 5-handicapper who shoots 68 under tournament conditions (tough pins, greens running 11 on the stimpmeter, tees back, etc.) should be thoroughly investigated. But hey, I'm willing to entertain the possibility that this guy has ice-water in his veins and just shot the round of his summer under the greatest of circumstances. Immediately crying "sandbagger" when someone plays well cheapens the experience of competing and thriving in that setting, and I'd hate to think how they (the vanity ones) would feel if they caught lightning in a bottle and played over their heads one day and no one felt the need to congratulate them. Its sad, actually.