Years Later

New world like two years latter huh? 

There was John then someone else?   No, Mike.  Then back to Kev and back to Mike and hitting balls at Heartwell.  New job.  No time.  A whole summer wasted - 24 handicap slips back to 26.  Shit.

My lessons in golf started a long time ago and I don't really have much to show for it when you look on the surface.  A couple good rounds breaking 100, a few closest to the pins, I can make in down the fairway usually in three shots instead of seven... It's hard when you start at the max of 30 to even get to 25.  It doesn't even feel incremental.  I also don't have all my old score cards to show improvement - maybe if had kept them the story would look better but I live a life as free from clutter as possible.  I am hard on myself after all.

Dig a little bit deeper though and all these really beautiful stories emerge.  A wonderful loving boyfriend, smart and funny friends, a new job because I met someone even worse at golf than me out there swinging sticks and getting some sun.  Yes, we tend to look at the negative, why am I not a 20 handicap yet?  All this money on golf lessons... all this time just trying over and over and over to sink a putt from five feet.  All the frustration, lost balls, lost mind, lost heart.  We miss the point.  The game we play is the exact same game we watch on TV.... you can actually watch golf on TV 24 hours a day - a whole industry built around hitting a ball into a hole.  At the same time, it's not the same game at all.  We don't have sponsorships, and tour cards to keep, we putt from off the green, bump and run with a 7 iron, get really good at punch out shots to get back to the fairway and when we finally get the ball in the hole it's our friends that say, nice finish - and they mean it.  They want you to play well too.

I suppose though there is an easy road and a hard road.  The hard road is hacking away until you get better.  I'm choosing the easier road with all the practice and the lessons and the score tracking.  Trying to see if I can't get some statistics to emerge.  Actually kind of seems like the hard road huh?  I'm waiting to make goals until I have somthing measureable but I think beyond low scoring it will have a lot to do with figuring out hybrid clubs, hitting those greens in regulation, and after I stop swaying like a tree in the breeze every time I hit a golf shot adding those lost yards Mike took away from me.

New Pro: LPGA Class A - Note the L in LPGA. 

Lesson 1 - Ye 'ol Setup

This has been tweeked, modified, changed, scrapped, re-build, added on to, straighened out, added tilt, you name it by everyone who has seen me. Kris didn't have much to say - three things I'm working on.

Looser arms
Club butt pointing at left ear
60% of weight on inside of the right leg

I'm very bound up when I swing - Mike did this to me.  He too had a compact swing and he also had a fast swing without a lot of body rotation from what I remember.  I'm actually not turning at all.  I played this Sunday at comedy with a guy who has no body rotation at all.  Less than me!  I noticed some of the issues he was having were the same that I have been having - balls going every which way.  While the lesson did not focus so much on body rotation I did notice notice quite a change in my driving and overall distance when I played 9 at Skylinks this week...

Keeping the  weight in the right leg promotes "staying behind the ball" and not swaying forward twards the target.  A big turn "back facing the target" promotes good power.  I had 6/10 fairways at Skylinks yesterday (didn't play a whole round casue it got dark).  I noticed when I focused on that weight in the right leg I hit straight - and long.  My longest drive was 240 yesterday. 

My best round was this summer in MN and I was driving out of my mind - I've never played like that again.  Kevin asked me what my swing thought was I said staying behind the ball.  I think this is what I was doing - weight in the right leg but I didn't know I was doing it.  Excited to keep practicing this at setup - if I continue to hit balls like this I will hit 90 this summer.