My (Less Than) Triumphant Return to Blogging

Has it really been more than three months since my last post? Wow, I've got some catching up to do. September, October and November proved very fruitful as far as number of rounds played was concerned, with our season here in the chilly climes of Minnesota lasting all the way until the 1st day of December! I played on November 30th by myself at a local muni and managed 24 holes in just under three hours. I made my last birdie of the year, missed a few other short birdie putts after making fine shots to reach the greens, lost the head of my 4-iron while attempting to tee off with it on a short par-4 (bad idea), and generally had a wonderful time. It was a great note to end the year on.
As far as the odyssey that is my swing is concerned, well as Johnny Cash once said "I've been everywhere." Bobby Clampett's "The Impact Zone" book has had as profound an effect on my golf swing as any text I've ever read. The hands-ahead-of-the-ball-at-impact idea actually feels like it will become a reality of my game soon. My wife bought me an artificial hitting mat that I've been able to use regularly in my garage to work on my swing even though the temperature is in the single-digits outside. My grip feels good, my backswing is slow and smooth, my transition is solid and allowing me to accelerate through the ball at impact. And I'm leading the swing through the hitting area by pulling down from the top with my left arm (still straight), allowing me to feel some actual clubhead speed and release during and through impact. It's a wonderful feeling, to tell you the truth.
Now if I can just keep this thing going all winter, at least until late March when we head down to KC to get the 2010 campaign started off with a bang! Swimming, jogging, weightlifting, ball-striking.....swimming, jogging, weightlifting, ball-striking.....

More Golf Swing Revelations

I'd seen an episode of the Golf Channel's "Playing Lessons From The Pros" some time ago with Woody Austin playing the part of the professional. I'm sure it was wintertime when I saw it because it was only when it was re-run recently that I realized something Woody said would help my game immensely. Again, having to do with the transition at the top of the swing, Woody made it clear that to hit the ball solidly your shoulders must start to rotate back through the ball on a much steeper angle then that of your hips. Turning your shoulders parallel with your hips will pull your arms and hands away from your body and cause you to slap the ball with the dreaded "inside-out" swing path. So now I'm thinking "load the club in the backswing, smoothly accelerate into the downswing with the right shoulder driving down towards the ball, right knee firing through the ball, hands close to the belly rotating with the torso through to a high finish." Nothing to it, right? And oh yeah, don't forget the new hybrid "interlock/overlap" grip that's been feeling so good wrapped around the grip of the club. Regardless, I'm playing the best golf of my life right now so I think I'll stick with it for now. Only if I could get my chipping and pitching game back to where it used to be, then I'd be a real force on the course!

2009 PGA Championship

I was lucky enough to score tickets to the last round of the 2009 PGA Championship last weekend at Hazeltine. I met some friends behind the 3rd green at about 11am and we sat there for 3+ hours until all the groups had played the hole. Watching 20-some groups play into that long par-5 was quite an eye-opener in that none of the players went for it in two shots and all but a handful had very makeable putts for birdie because of it. Tiger Woods was close enough that I could see him breathe and I must admit he was quite a vision on the golf course. His torso seemed shorter then it does on tv (maybe he had his pants hiked up pretty high?) and his skin looked smooth as a baby's butt. After his group finished, we hustled over to the 14th and stood behind the green for an hour or so, watching players go for that "short" par-4 off the tee. We just missed Yang's chip-in for birdie as we had just moved on to the 15th fairway to watch the big boys bomb it on that extra-long par-5. What a sight! After Woods and Yang played to the green, we hustled over to seventeen but were too late to really be able to see anything. We finished the day watching the final group play eighteen from well down the fairway. If you think Yang's second shot looked hard on tv, you should have seen what it looked like from down the hill behind him. I was amazed when the crowd roared up by the green--it was a shot I couldn't have hit once with an entire bucket of balls at my side. Indeed, these guys are good.

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.

Wrong Ball

I hit the wrong ball today for the first time in my young golfing life. We were playing as a six-some and it was cold and rainy. I'm easily the shortest hitter in the group so after we all teed off on the long par-5 7th hole at my club I started walking towards the nearest ball in the fairway. Seeing it wasn't mine I naturally proceeded to the next ball and, trying to keep things moving, quickly went ahead and hit it. Turns out it wasn't my ball that I hit--I had actually out-driven two people in my group and was the 3rd shortest ball in the fairway. Two stroke penalty, I would go on to make a 7 on the hole. Didn't cost my partner any money as he thankfully went ahead and made par (net birdie) to halve the hole for us. But I didn't give us a chance to win the hole either and it was embarrassing to boot. From that point forward I have amended my pre-shot routine to include the question "is this your ball?"