Hit a wedge today

Nothing crazy, just a 3/4 wedge I borrowed from a guy on the range that I practice at. He was a little tentative at letting me use it at first, but I talked him into it. I teed it up as well so as to minimize any risk of impact stress on my shoulder. To be fair, it was a bit offline, a slight block about 5-8 yards right of target, but compressed and in the center of the clubface. Man did that feel good! No pain whatsoever either, very exciting! I only hit one, didn't want to tempt fate. If my doctor was there he'd have probably kicked me in the nuts as we're currently about 2 1/2 weeks from "possibly" being allowed to hit chip shots. Oh well, I just couldn't help myself. I thought for sure the first ball I hit coming back would be a timid, cold top, but I got after it and made a nice aggressive swing, pretty amazed actually. Just think, only 2-3 months and I can do that for real (sarcasm).

US Open Qualifier tomorrow

Played another practice round today for the Open Qualifier on 5/7. Shot 75 today in what was probably 40 MPH winds, so 3 over with a double on 14 after rope hooking it into a bush. Looking at the golf course and the conditions, I'd take 75 right now and take my chances. Played with a guy from the Nationwide Tour in today's round and had a pretty good time. I'm whipped now, going to bed early. Wish me luck tomorrow!

Progress check

I've uploaded the video from another lesson with Jeff today. I must say, and I don't take this lightly, that I am truly hitting it better than I ever have in my life. Today we added the movement of the right elbow moving "deeper" behind my ribcage on the backswing, which adds more flattening elements and consequently more steepening influences, and it made all the difference in the world. Over the past week I've hit some pretty darn good shots, but it's like night and day to where I'm at now. The changes in ball trajectory are significant, extremely penetrating off the face and rising to the apex, dropping softly.

True story, today after the lesson I'm hitting some balls before I headed home, the collection of balls on the range was such that there was a not exactly large area of grass where balls had not collected, making a reasonably good target. I hit somewhere in the range of 6 out of 10 six irons inside that area, all on the same line, same trajectory, same divots, same sound. The 4 or so of the approximately 10 balls were still hit well, just pulled slightly left. Part 2 of the true story is the follow up practice session this afternoon (which I typically do on instruction days). This course near my house has very nice turf, so I enjoy practicing there on the weekends. The left corner of one of the target greens was devoid of any balls so I started hitting 8 iron to that part of it. After 12 or so shots I became aware of the fact that I had again striped every one of them, same trajectory, line, divot, sound, etc. and landed all of them on this left corner of the green. Of course ball 13 got yanked ("you're brain was getting in the way" - Romeo), but the consistency of these shots is bordering on ridiculous.

So that last statement was one that perplexed me as well. Ridiculous? So exactly what in the hell have we been going through for the last 6 months and why if we're going to call it ridiculous? Certainly the wrong word. I believe what I'm looking for is "exceeded expectations". Jeff commented to me that the next few sessions will be 100% focused on short game as the full swing is right where it needs to be. So out of all the times I've come to him with "I'm hitting it great" and he has me change something else, we're finally nearing the point where this is all coming together. Very exciting times.

In the past 2 weeks, I've had a golf instructor use me as a model for his student when giving a lesson, had a group of 3 husbands and wives (snowbirds) watch me hit balls for 10 minutes and ask themselves out loud "I wonder who he is and what tour he plays on?" (haha, if they only knew!), and the father of a college student getting lessons interrupt my practicing to tell me how good my swing looked. None of that means a damn thing at the end of the day, but 6 months ago, noboday cared 2 licks about who I was, I just blended in. Now I can feel people stare at me when I practice, that's pretty damn cool.

This upcoming week should be a lot better in terms of practice time. Now that it's light later in the day, I've been trying to get into a routine of 2 a days, where I practice at lunch and then again on the way home from work. This past week I was scheduled for meetings or lunch appointments every single day. My wife is also out of town, so a couple of days I was unable to practice after work as well. I'd like to get settled in to a full scale twice a day routine, but I'm also toying around with the idea of working out a flex schedule to take a 1/2 day on Wednesday or so to go play. We can't just beat balls, I'm not trying to be Vijay here.

Hey, I can hit a driver again!

I setup an "emergency lesson" with Jeff this morning so we could go through my ailments with the driver. I was hitting some 8 irons decent warming up when we went inside to capture some stuff on video. Jeff had me flatten the swing out as I'd gotten a bit upright since the last time we met. I'll be fighting that forever.

Anyway, we made some really exaggerated moves flattening it out and hit a few outside again, immediate and dramatic difference in compression and ball flight. "Let's hit a few drivers now, just at about 80%" he says. Ok, well here's the real test. Very first ball, bam, better than I've hit a tee shot in the 5 1/2 rounds since this began. I hit 15 or so with him, and nearly every one was nutted. A few offline, which is to be expected after making such a drastic change in plane. I then hit 10 or so more after we were done and hit them all quite well.

So now it's lunch time so it's off to the range to hit some balls during the break (my daily vacation away from my job). Well what do you know, it's the first 80 degree day in Phoenix and the place is PACKED. I have to settle for a spot on the far right, just next to a couple of guys who are "hootin an hollerin" after their shots that by the descriptions "musta went 5 miles there". So I find a spot between their bags, chairs and pitcher of beer (no, I'm not kidding) and settle in. I was prepared to drown out any noise but began to realize that these guys were literally betting quarters one each shot to see if they could hit it farther than me. Now, I'm hitting wedge here, so I'm not quite sure what that's going to accomplish, but suffice to say they were quite impressed that their drivers were blowing by my wedge shots. Me too I guess.

Back to it, so with the newfound ability to hit driver, I'm ready to duplicate the success from earlier now that I've gone through Wedge, 8 and 6, and the G10 did not dissapoint. The very first swing was met with a resounding click of success and the ball did fly quite high and far, with a little draw. Then the Duke Boys joined in again - "WhoooooWeeee, you hit that like Tiger Woods! I bet you 5 dollars you can't do that again". Ok, now seriously, that was funny. So with a gracious "thank you" from me and a desperate attempt not to laugh, I made good on my mans challenge, although he did not pay me the $5 I was rightfully owed. I finished up with 8 or 10 more drivers, then cycled through some pitch shots to the closest green as is customary.

As I was leaving, my new friends informed me that they were there to give me lessons any time I wanted (self depricating sarcasm, I think I like these guys after all). Alas, I had to go so I was unable to join them in their newly refilled pitcher of beer (again, not kidding) and thanked them for their kindness. Ah what the hell, I'm so happy I can hit a driver again, I don't even care. What a great day!

Rainy day practice

Man do I need some rain pants. I went and practiced at lunch as usual, only today it had been raining all morning. Luck would have it that it let up and although windy and cold, the rain subsided on my trip to the golf course. As I proceed down to the practice tee, there's only one other person down there, so lots of room to practice. I've been singularly focused on a tournament coming up in 2 weeks (more on that later) so I'm pretty much in my own world right now. On the plus side, I am really swinging pretty well, hitting shots pretty solid, everything is really coming into focus with the changes I've made.

So I'm going through PW, 8 iron, then 6 iron. Through that time, I notice that 3 new guys showed up on the practice tee, which kind of surprised me because the clouds looked ominous. I like practicing on days like this as I feel like I can pick up progress on everyone else as not everybody chooses to practice in incliment weather. Not today it seemed.

So I'm working through some shots, hitting it fairly well, pulling quite a few though, not sure if it was the extra layers (T-shirt, golf shirt, jacket) that I'm wearing or what. So I'm focused on a target down range (175 yard sign) when I begin to notice that I can't see it very well. That's when I realized that it was actually pouring down rain, and my entire right pants leg was soaking wet, I had water running down my back, and it was freaking COLD. I also noticed that there were 4 half empty buckets of balls on the range now as the other guys who were just hitting balls all bailed because of the rain. Now I'm happy again, as I'm still hitting shots. Screw it, I'm already wet, and water dries. I don't know how long it was pouring like that before I realized it, nor how long I was out there alone before realizing it. I'd like to say it was my intense focus on the task at hand, but it's probably more likely that I'm just too stupid to realize things like this. Ah whatever, either way it was fun.

Nothing really to report here, other than I feel good about plugging away in the rain when everyone else decided to pack it in. I do wish I had some rain pants though as literally 6 hours later I was still soaking wet.

What's that clicking?

Today was one of those days where things "clicked" for me during my lesson with Jeff. We've been working for a long time on flattening the swing, laying it off, etc. which is all well and good. Well now we've moved on to getting my left wrist flatter at the top vs. cupping it which I've done for years. I'll be honest, I'm really struggling with this seemingly small change as I have no "feel" for the correct position. So for the past week since we instituted the change, I've been back and forth between good shots and bad, really struggling to get it worked in.

Today Jeff added an impact element designed to provide an additional steepening influence into my swing, to combat the shallowing influences that I've had for years with the upright swing. According to Jeff, we have 2 things to add to the swing and then it's maintenance / refinement mode. We'll see if I can manage to screw that up.

So anyway, back to it. The addition today was the straightening of the left leg at impact, vs. the "soft" left knee that I had previously. My first practice swing targeting a solid blow to the turf whiffed the mat completely, but from that point on, I got it. I mean really, really got it. It connected the reason for the flatter wrist to results at impact, which over the past week had been missing. After we were done I went back outside to hit 20-30 balls while everything was fresh. I literally miss-hit one of them, the rest were as pure as the driven snow. I cannot stress enough how that move with my left leg connects the change we made last week at the top. I left the golf course today thinking that I could quite possibly be the best ball striker on the planet. Your planet may be different than mine, but on mine, it's quite possible.

I went later this afternoon to a golf course near the house to practice again (I try to hit balls again on lesson day when things are fresh). Here's where it gets weird. So I'm striping my 9 iron, just killing the center of the clubface. My landing area is no bigger than my dining room table, no lie. Ball after ball, sa-woosh off the clubface, landing in nearly the same spot, with the same line and trajectory as the last. I'm thinking "damn this game is easy". Well the flag for this particular practice green is 153 yards from my spot, not a 9 iron for me, so I pull 8 iron, it's only one more club, let's stripe some at the target. Out of the 40 or so remaining balls there, I hit exactly 3 of them as good as with my 9 iron, probably 20 of them the same distance as the 9 iron, and the remaining, well, not so good. Amazing that I could have such drastically different results from just one different club. I think we're definitely on to something here, and I'm not discouraged at all that after less than 100 balls it's not quite grooved yet. I'm extremely excited about where this latest change has me, and I can't wait until tomorrow morning to get up and go practice some more.

So exactly where have I been?

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted! I've basically been in hiding, toiling away on these changes that had rendered me a lump of quivering hack. Up until a week ago, it's been brutal. During my last lesson, I spent a 3 hour block of time chipping away attempting to essentially perform a quadruple bypass on my swing. Well, I sort of did, if you consider requiring 2 months of recuperation.

So after my 3 hour session, I went and played a round with a friend of mine. I was hitting it incredibly short. I literally lost 20+ yards off my tee shots, and at least a club off my irons. On the plus side, I was hitting my irons fat AND thin on alternating shots, so the distance wasn't my main concern. While that sucked, I chalked it up to a minor glitch and continued on. What I found was that every time I practiced and every time I played, I was hitting it worse and worse, and shorter and shorter. In the past, I'd hit my driver over the fence at the end of the range at Rio Salado, but now I was rolling it into the bottom of the net. Considering the fence is 30'=40' tall, that represented a pretty serious drop in distance. Naturally I stopped playing and only practiced. My lessons started to focus on power drills, I bought a Speed Stick, and basically curled up into a fetal position at night to keep from going crazy.

My man Mike at Rio Salado always checks in on me to see how things are going and I just spilled my guts to him. Told him what was going on, told him what I was working on, how much I was reading, working out, etc. His advice, stop reading for 2 weeks. Just hit some balls, and then he invited to me to play 9 holes with him after the holiday's, just to play, no swing thoughts, just hit it and find it golf. So I kept plugging away, and I knew I was getting close. I started hitting it a little better day by day, which was a miracle considering that for a time I was hitting it worse and worse each day. I made a swing or two or three per session where I hit the ball the correct distance again. Not every time, but I was getting there.

The day I showed up to play with Mike I was hitting it well. Oh hell, 1000% better than in weeks past. Mike stopped by to let me know his lesson was almost finished, and that his buddy from Texas who played and was getting ready for Q School for the Eurpoean Sr. Tour was going to join us. Ah great, it's bad enough that Mike's going to laugh at me, but now this guy gets to pile on too? Oh well, the way I'd been hitting it, and the intention of the round, I didn't really care how I was going to play. This was about Mike kicking me in the ass and getting my head out of the way, and by God I was going to let him do it. So off we went to the first tee for the first golf I'd played in over a month.

His buddy is from Texas (I'm an Oklahoma fan, Texas can suck it. No offense to anyone, other than Texans), so right away we started jabbing each other. That was cool, a good ice breaker. Didn't feel like I hit it incredibly well off the first tee, but I got down there and had actually bombed it. Just a little flip wedge to the green. I was so stoked about the tee shot that I just fell asleep on the pitch shot. Thinned it over the green, back on, 2 putts, bogey. Hit it dead on line on the par 3 second to about 12 feet, just missed it. Hit a really good 3 wood on the third, then tried a new pitch shot move (out of the Stan Utley book I've been reading) and left it very short. New rule, no more of that garbage. Chipped on and made the putt for par. Hit it dead online on the par 3 fourth, about 20 feet short though, 2 putt par.

Now it gets good, bombed my driver (325 yards if the card's yardage is correct) on the fifth. Par 5, 430 yards, weird hole, should be a par 4. Anyway, 105 out, solid wedge to about 8 feet, and nearly made the putt, yep it even had enough steam to go past the hole, so 2 putt birdie. Feels good now, having fun, fall asleep again and yank hook a 3 wood on the 6th, huge hill on the left so it funnels back down into play. Ball is well below my feet, 100 yards out. With the old swing so upright, I tended to pull hook these shots, so I aimed right at it. Now wouldn't you know it, the new swing puts the ball right online, so it goes right and short sides me into the bunker. We start screwing around with a few shots out of the bunker, miss the putt, bogey. Or double. I think double, yeah cause I took 2 shots. Well that sucks, thought I made 5, dammit. Next tee box the guys start getting on me about how long it takes me to set and pull the trigger so they have me back away and we talk about trimming up the routine. I reset, pull the trigger quickly, right online but short of the hole, say 30 feet. I jammed the ball up the hill about 6 feet past and missed the putt.

The 8th is a weird freaking hole, they put up a fence to keep everyone from hooking it into a parking lot on the East side of the golf course. So it requires either a 30 yard hook with (what I now know to be) a 7 iron. so hitting a dead straight 5 iron puts the ball into the lateral hazard. Couldn't find it, dropped a ball, mis-judged the distance and put it into the front bunker. Out to 4 feet and made the putt. Was going to hit 3 wood off the 9th, but got my ass chewed by the guys. "Hit your driver, practice putting it in play on tight holes like this, we are PRACTICING remember?" So I hit driver, not well, but good enough to be in play. A little flip wedge in, hit it well and one hopped it to a foot for a closing birdie. Those feel good.

Felt REALLY good to play again, even if just for 9 holes. When I beared down, I got great results. Looking back over the past 2 months, I didn't think I'd ever hit a good shot again. Just this round alone, I hit several, and didn't have a bunch of swing thoughts like I'd been paralyzed with while practicing. Mike, mission accomplished my friend. Thanks for clearing my head.

Willpower and patience

Ugh, what a weekend. Had a 3 hour lesson on Saturday morning, and hour with Jeff getting the swing laid off to an exaggerated condition in order to continue fighting the across the line move. We even had a "who can lay it off more" contest in the studio. So the very first run, I clearly had it more laid off, he wouldn't believe me. We laid out lines in the V1 software on screen, he still wouldn't believe me. Then one of the other instructors there came walking by and I asked him to settle it. He was, non-committal. Haha, it's a conspiracy I tell ya! I won, hands down.

So anyway, first hour working on that, then an hour by myself hitting balls to keep the feeling going, then another hour with Jeff to make any adjustments to hopefully keep me going down the right path. I made several, check that, a bunch of swings that were actually laid off. Now, that's not what we're shooting for, but to get from how far across the line I was to actually laid off, is an accomplishment of gargantuan proportions.

After all that, I was whipped. Took a break and then ended up playing twice since then. First round was at The Duke where I'm playing in the Golf Channel event in 2 weeks. I don't know how long it's been since I hit irons this bad, but it's bad. I hit 12 of 14 fairways however, but approach shots were fat, blocked, pulled and weak. A difficult combination to throw into play all at once, but I somehow managed to pull it off. On another positive note, I have made quite a few good putts and the short game is getting locked in well. I had 2 out of 2 kick in up and downs from the bunker as well. On a down note, I ended my run of birdieing (nice word) the first hole at 4 rounds in a row.

So lets take an inventory of what's going well and what's going uhhhh, not well:

Good:
Fairway percentages
Putting
Short game
Bunker play

Bad:
Short irons
Mid irons
Long irons
Distance
(Wow, now that's a list that you don't want to see)

So I basically have finally reached the point that most people reach when they take lessons, I'm just turned around and don't know if I'm coming or going. But to add insult to injury, I'm hitting it S-H-O-R-T. Playing these courses that I've played before, I'm 20+ yards short on some tee shots from where I used to be, hitting some of the same clubs that I've flown greens with, landing them short now. Sorry to just dredge up a bunch of negativity, but I'm just not too happy about this right now. I know it's all for the best, and it's a short term problem, but it's pretty demoralizing to absolutely nut a 9 iron from 140 yards and end up short of the green when you finally put a good swing on it.

The good news about how bad I'm hitting irons, is that I'm not in the typical mode of blaming your swing coach. I know what Jeff is doing here is correct, and I'm practically begging him every time I see him to help me stop crossing the line. So there you go dude, careful what you ask for. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to wash my bag towel as it's caked with dirt from all the fat ass irons I've been hitting all weekend. I wonder if my wife will be mad that I clogged up the washing machine with 7 cubic yards of dirt?

Pulled muscles and commitment

So I finally got back from my trip to Seattle, 3 straight days of not touching a golf club. That was torture, I don't know how you people can live around that much rain and dreary skies. I was very happy to get back to sunny Arizona. On the positive side, I got to spend a bunch of time reading some old books and drafting my goals for the upcoming year. I'll post those here soon.

So anyway, I get up this morning, excited about grabbing some clubs to take with me so I can stop after work for some practice. I had a lunch appointment today, so I had to wait until after work. Well wouldn't you know, I literally pulled the muscle that runs from your neck down across your shoulder blade while putting on my freaking shirt this morning. Yep, that's the end of the story. There's no follow up line like "and then a bear came in and I wrestled him and pulled a muscle", I was just putting on my shirt.

So on the drive to work, it's getting tighter and tighter, literally to the point that I couldn't even turn my head to look into the other lanes of traffic on the freeway. I spent the entire day stretching my back, arms, shoulders, neck, etc. Literally in every meeting, while I was on conference calls, every spare moment, and by the end of the day, I was actually loose enough (just barely) to stop by Rio Salado and hit some balls. I started out pretty easy as you can imagine as I didn't want to make it worse. So after a couple of tentative, and fat, wedges, I started putting some ooomph behind it.

Very happy to report that the changes I made Saturday seem to have stuck, I still feel "IT" at the top of my swing, and although I didn't have the camera rolling, I "feel" like I'm still in the correct position. And I hit one wedge, three 7 irons and three 3 woods that were just absolutely perfect, wow did those feel great. I'll be bringing the camera tomorrow to make sure I'm on track, and then I have 2 rounds back to back Friday and Saturday. They are friendly rounds, but we've got some juice riding on it, so let's hope to stay interested.

I'm off to bed, just took 800mg of Ibuprofen and a muscle relaxer. I have a bag of ice and a hot pack that I'm about to start rotating. I'm hoping an hour or two of that with a good nights rest will get me back to normal for tomorrow. For now, I'm just absolutely miserable.

Before and now...

So here's a couple of snapshots of the top of my swing before I started taking lessons and from a couple of days ago at the range. Before it was all feel, didn't care about position, just wanted to hit it where I felt I was aiming it. I've been working hard, scratch that, I've been working my ass off to flatten this out and get it on plane, parallel and not across the line. I'm still a bit across the line, but a far sight better than when I started.

You are welcome to add comments about the pictures and progress. I'd be interested to hear your opinions!


Before:


Current:

About time for an update

So as you may recall, I contemplated giving tournament golf a bit of a break so I could bear down with my instructor and get some things going with the swing changes. So I've been doing that for a couple of weeks now and I think I'm seeing some pretty positive results. I made one absolutely picture perfect swing during my lesson last week, which I can't tell you how proud I am about it. Everything from the takeaway to most importantly my position at the top was exactly where we've been wanting it. The key obviously is to groove it in there, which I've been working hard on with some pretty diligent practice sessions.

Now my theory on practice is on the side of quality, not quantity. I have spent many afternoons just beating balls, with little to show for it. My practice regimine now consists of heading to Rio Salado during my lunch break to hit a medium "bucket" (God I hate that term), which consists of about 50 balls. I take 2, sometimes 3 clubs, alternating days. One short iron, one mid to long iron, then sometimes a 3 wood or driver. I've been working really hard on alignment by setting a stick down at my feet to ensure that I'm on the correct line. Once that's established, I'm free to work on position throughout the swing. Again, I've been working hard on flattening and shortening the swing. The changes Jeff has put into my swing have completely changed how I compress the ball and the sound that it makes. Trajectory is a bit lower, and a hell of a lot straighter from shot to shot.

So funny story from yesterday, I'm on the range and there's one other guy out there, he's got a whole mess of Ping G-10 clubs, literally 5 or 6 of them in his bag, that's a lot of woods. So I comment to him about them, he notes that I also have a G-10, and we continue. I pick up the driver and hit a few shots, and actually start breaking tees. About the 3rd or 4th shot in he looks over at me and I say "man, I keep breaking tees". He then proceeds to inform me that I'm probably teeing the ball too high, maybe I should lower it, and sweep the ball off the tee a bit more, etc. I tell him thanks but I've got it teed just where I'm wanting it. I can see out of the corner of my eye that this guy is now watching me as I'm teeing this one up and he says "okay" as in "fine, don't listen to me, we'll see what happens". So I just absolutely murdered this shot, big high soft draw, the G-10 just screaming in pain as the ball comes off the face. As the ball is about halfway down range I hear him say "well, okay then..." and he turns back to his balls to continue hitting. Classic, man did that bring a smile to my face.

So I have another lesson tomorrow with Jeff, hopefully I've not strayed too far with my swing plane, although my gut tells me I've slowly gotten more upright again over the past week. This is a long process, so that's to be expected for sure.

One other note, they just got done re-seeding the range at Rio Salado and let me tell you, the grass is just perfect now. I'm in absolute heaven. The last month or so every golf course has gotten to the burnt out grass that we all experience down here, so this time of year is especially nice. I would also like to thank Mike at Rio Salado for letting me know that the bowling league is open for tryouts. Nothing like a little shot in the arm of humility. Thanks Mike, I love you too. :-)

Sliding the Scotty Cameron into play

So I posted earlier that I was moving the Scotty Cameron putter into the lineup, goodbye 8802! Just wanted to update that I went back to Bear Creek tonight to work it back into the rotation, putted for about 1 1/2 hours to get my feel back with it. I feel like it's a major positive change on putts inside of 5 feet as the action is straight back and straight through, which is what I've been playing for 10+ years, rather than the inside/open to square to inside / closed move that you have to make with a blad putter. It just feels a lot more natural. In all I probably hit 150 putts inside of 5 feet tonight (as well as a bunch of other longer putts of course) and feel much more comfortable. Until tomorrow!

Practice Diary

Probably not the best way to keep track of this, but I'm going to try to do it in a constantly updating blog post. Not sure if every update will move it to the top, if so, I'll re-work it. I'll just start with my practice sessions since my first lesson on 8/4/2007.

8/6/2007 - PW & 7 iron. Working on swing plane. 60 balls.
8/7/2007 - PW & 7 iron. Working on swing plane. 60 balls.
8/8/2007 - Flew to San Diego for work today, so hit some chips and putts. Worked on long lag putts, I made one bomb from about 50 feet, lipped out another from the same distance. Hit 2 of 3 others from just over the same distance to within 12". Practice green is rough, no working on 4 footers, headed out to the backyard putting green for those tonight.
8/9/2007 - PW. Working on swing plane. 60 balls.
8/10/2007 - Short lesson with Mike and then to another course for practice. 8 iron & 5 iron. Working on club position at the top. 70 balls.