the quit line

Sometimes in any process, the idea of quitting when failure seems to become the norm as apposed to being the exception, starts to creep into your psyche. That has been the case for me the past couple weeks. With a lack of quality practice time and a swing that seems to resemble a runaway truck more than a steady sedan, those thoughts seem to creep up more and more. Each time I feel like I've found the "missing peice" I wind up taking two steps back. Each time I push through with positive thought, but as time goes by and progress is minimal it tends to lean on you heavily. I found myself contemplating retreating on my pursuit of these goals and simply going back to playing each weekend and having fun. I was at the range yesterday during a brief stop on my way to the airport heading home. Bought a large bucket and decided to focus on two fundamental swing thoughts, start from the ground up and swing inside out. Each swing felt like I was doing both, however, ball flight stated otherwise. with about 30+ balls to go, I had a swing that was more of a nice fade than a slice and as a posed and then looked at the finish, CHICKEN WING!!! Why you son of a bitch!!!!! where and when did you creep in there!!!??? once that "diagnosis" was complete I was striping shots down the range, 265, 275, 285 carries with my driver, switched to my trusty 8iron, 150, 155, 160, nice, high draws, each time! finished with my 3wood which has been my nemesis lately and........BLAM!! 250, 260 carries with the last 10 balls, most with a nice baby draw!!! I was not so much happy with the results as much as with the fact that I was able to diagnose the issue on my own, simply with feel and observation. that alone gave me new found hope and confidence!!!

new found progress

I was able to get out for the first time after the session with my new instructor. Overall it went quite well. I had about a 4 hole stretch where I was back to some bad habits but after those few disasters I was able to get the swing back to what we are working on. I was quite pleased, not with the score of the round, but with the recognition of what I was doing wrong and the ability to resolve the problem in a shorter period of time than previous. After all this time working on takeaway, swing plane, wrist position, blah, blah, blah, the simplest concept escaped me and apparently is not on the front burner of most instructors which is squaring the club face at impact. I had another range session this afternoon and it went very well. My ball flight is getting much better and not ballooning as much, although I believe I will need to get some irons with different shafts as my kick point is sending the ball into the air a bit too quick but that is all a mute point until I can get consistent with my ball striking which is improving with every session. I really feel a sense of confidence knowing now what a "true" strike of the golf ball feels like. I have broken my instruction and learning into phases to best suit my improvement process:

1. Become a consistent ball striker with all clubs
2. become 80% putting success from within 10 feet
3. become 80% putting to within 3ft from over 20ft out
4. become 80% with all chip shots to within 5 ft
5. Learn the feel of Half and three quarter shots consistently
6. Learn to control ball flight(high, low, draw, fade)

The time lines on each of these has not set date. This removes pressure to accomplish these by time and allows me to focus on accomplishing these by success instead which will produce better results for me. I'm gaining a much better understanding of the process it is going to take for me to accomplish what I've set out to do. Now I just need to stay the course(pun intended!:)) and see this through to complete success!

begginning anew

So I may have found a good fit for my new coach. Went and saw him yesterday evening and we had a good interview. His teaching philosophy is pretty straight forward(get the club face square to the ball for maximum contact) I started asking about mechanics and he said ask Jim Furyk. LOL! I thought that was classic so away we went for an hour session. he didn't try to change much, just focused on impact to start. He found immediately that my body turn was really good but there was no release on the follow through. As mentioned in a few previous blogs, all the attention recently has been on my takeaway and zero was spent focusing on the impact and follow through. It was immediately clear to me that this instructor was going to be something different. It was very refreshing when I asked him if he sold lessons in packages and he said no, he only wants to take money for a lesson served. Hit some good shots but most important, I was able to lay out my goals as they pertain to the overall achievement of attempting to qualify for the US Open in 2017.

1. to place top 5 at nationals this year
2. to get my HDCP index to below 4 by end of 2011
3. to start playing tournament events in scratch flights by mid 2012
4. to start placing well consistently in scratch events by 2013
5. to win 2 tournaments in scratch events by 2014(play us amateur qualifier)
6. to play us amateur qualifying in 2015
7. to qualify for the US Amateur in 2016
8. QUALIFY FOR THE US OPEN IN 2017 AT ERIN HILLS!

pretending or contending

Your either pretending to succeed or contending to succeed. It's very similar to the quote "your either moving forward or moving backward, there is no static motion". As the news has been released that the 2017 US Open is going to be held at Erin Hills in Erin, Wisconsin, it has now set the gauntlet down for me and my goal to qualify for it.(Laugh now!!). I feel it is a reachable goal to achieve in 7 years, the only thing I need to do is maintain discipline and focus on that goal. The National Championship for the Golf Channel AM tour is September 26-29, and that will be a huge turning point in my quest. After that tournament I will have interviewed and selected a new instructor to completely dismantle my swing and rebuild it from scratch and teach me the proper way to swing a golf club from the stance and grip all the way to hand position at the top to the release. I have begun to budget for a yearly range and short game pass at a top practice facility here in Orange county. This way I can have a place to go and work on everything my instructor needs me to work on with no second guessing where I will be practicing or how much it would cost, because it will be paid for. Fitness will continue to be an intricate part of my daily routine going forward to maximize my swing and the lessons I will be learning. It is going to be an incredibly difficult road and there will be milestones set down which I will update on in future blogs. This blog will be much more active going forward as I find it very helpful to write out my experiences(good, and bad) in order to better reflect on them from an outside perspective and improve, because as the opening line states, your either moving forward or moving backward!!!

Fairways and greens to all!!

inspiration and motivation

I about finished reading "Paper Tiger". It is a must read for anyone who has ever had the fantasy of quitting there job and pursuing a career as a golf professional. Over the last couple weeks(thanks to my Uncle Jim and Michael Breed of the golf channel) I've found two extremely glaring swing faults that for some reason my current(and now former) instructor could not see. First off as mentioned in a previous blog, i had zero lower body involvement in my swing. As I was working on getting my legs into the swing I happened to be watching "the golf fix"( I have 20ft ceilings so there is a lot of club swing going on all the time in the apt) and he was going over proper turn. As he was going over shoulder turn I initially thought to my self "well that's not an issue, i have plenty of shoulder turn". Well as I watched and he went over it in detail I was trying to mirror his motions and found that I had almost zero shoulder ROTATION. He said that a lot of AM's have shoulder "turn" but no "rotation". after about 20 min of mimicking the motion in the apt i immediately went to the range to test this out. Wouldn't you know it, my distance was back to full form and I was again hitting a nice, high baby draw(when I didn't sneak 5 chunk shots in) ;) something so basic should have been picked up on by a 85$ an hour golf instructor you would think. After much thought and reading into the current state of golf instruction today, one phrase comes to mind.......Fuck, I'm so screwed! Many articles I've read lately have stated you need to "interview" your perspective coaches in order to weed out the assembly line coaches that are being spit out each semester. I am now in search of my zen master to turn me from, "yea he can play sometimes" to "yea, he's that fucking good!"

as the journey continues, the search for more fairways and greens goes on!

hidden in the obvious

I will start off by giving a huge thanks to my uncle Jim who was able to point out a glaring flaw in my swing this weekend. My major issue the past few months has been distance loss and lack of balance in the swing. each time I would go to my swing coach and tell him he would continue to spew the same info over and over, "stay connected, I want your arms and shoulders to stay together from start to finish, which is correct, however he failed to mention or even notice that I had almost ZERO leg involvement in my swing. My uncle was able to point that out in 7 holes. after my first round this weekend of 88 I was able to get my scoring back into the low to mid 80's, and that was with average to below average putting. My confidence level soared knowing that with 150-160yds to the green on approach I'm once again able to hit 8 iron instead of 6iron(LOL!!) The remainder of this weeks practice time will be dedicated to regaining the feel of leg drive through the shot and extra time will be assigned to putting distance control! I'm feeling very confident about the TPC Scottsdale tournament in 9 days!!

another day, another lesson

Had a lesson this evening to figure out where I was leaking distance. I have been some 20-30yds short on almost all my iron shots, even when I feel like i put a good move on the ball. It was pointed out to me that the shots I felt were "pure" were actually traps. i was swinging across the ball with my shoulders but still closing the club face which would start the ball to the right and either draw or slightly fade. the shots were mostly straight but I had no idea how far they were going. after 100+ balls I was able to regain about 85%-90% of my distance. My ball flight was back to a baby draw so after today all is well in the ball striking department. Tournament this weekend so we shall see how this works out. My short game has been my savior as of late. without being able to hit many greens in reg I have been leaning on my chipping and putting to get by. Most rounds have felt like a grind, working my tail off to shoot 85,86,87. If I was striking the ball even average I would be shooting 80,81,82 so hopefully this does the trick! Long term goal is still to finish top 5 at nationals at TPC sawgrass so with some hard work I feel like I'm on my way!

Fairways and Greens to all!!