Progress Update – October 21, 2007

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I got some recent feedback from a few people that I should do more progress updates.

The underlying purpose of Life in the Rough, after all, is to follow my progress toward being a golf pro. But somehow, I had gotten away from reporting that progress. Times have been rough and it’s no fun to report all bad stuff.

Recuperating from surgery has given me a lot of time to think about it, and a progress update is the perfect way to ease back in after a week of down time.

I’m going to dedicate each Sunday to cover my progress for the previous week as well as to talk about any overall progress items of interest. Finally, I think I’ll have a “tweaks” section that will mention any changes in routine or approach I’m trying out to continually improve each week.

This Week

I have nothing to report for the previous week because I’ve been sitting here not able to do much, counting the hours until these surgical staples come out. About the only thing I can report is that I’ve been eating fairly well.

Overall

Overall, I’m not where I want or expected to be. I haven’t lost the weight I’d expected. A couple of injuries sidelined me for extended periods and my workouts fell off. My efforts were not focused correctly to maximize improvement in my game. I spent too much time worrying about content for Life in the Rough and not enough time worrying how to stay out of the rough myself.

As far as specific aspects of my game, my driving has become pretty erratic. Most recently, I’ve been pushing everything out to the right.

It’s not all bad, though. I’m having fewer blow-up holes. I score more pars. Putting is adequate, though a little imprecise. My short irons, say from 7-iron down are very good right now. My distance control is better than it has been in a while.

My short game is not bad right now. Around the greens, I’m more consistent, though again, a little imprecise.

My scores are hovering in the low to mid 40′s for 9 holes.

Tweaks

This edition of tweaks should probably be called “overhauls”. I’ve had a lot of post-surgery time to think and try to plan for the future. I’ve come to terms with a lot of things that need changing, so let me go over those here.

1. After I fully recover from surgery and am able to play and practice again, I’m going to get a lesson. I kept saying this all year, but every time I had resolved myself to do it, I fixed some little problem and that reinforced my thinking that I could just fix my own issues.
2. Overhaul my workout plan. It’s not necessarily a bad plan, but it’s too rigid. It seems like every day, I learn a new exercise that I want to try out, and my plan is already too full to accommodate anything new. I think what I’ll do is create a pool of exercises, organized by body part/area. Then, during each workout I’ll do something for the hamstrings, something for the abs, something for the back, etc. This will give me a much wider array of exercises to choose from, and most importantly, it will give me better coverage because no two exercises hit an area exactly the same. Keeping things fresh and different each session will also help to offset boredom and keep things from feeling tedious.
3. Dedicate more practice to putting and short game. It’s not as fun for me, but it has to be done. I spent way too much time this year focusing on the long/medium game because of various swing afflictions. I knew this ahead of time, but it did prove that fixing those things will not provide as much benefit to scoring as a solid short game does.
4. Start weighing myself every week for more immediate feedback. I kept food logs for few periods of time, but it didn’t do much because I wasn’t backing it with specific numeric results. On top of that, the logs didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t know. But if I weigh myself on Sunday morning and see that I gained two pounds, then I’ll really be thinking about what I put in my mouth the rest of the week.
5. Refine my stat tracking. While I like the stat tracker software I use, I got too wrapped up in the level of detail it can do. Much of it won’t do me any good at this stage in my development. Instead, I’m going to just keep track of basic stats for every round. That way, stat keeping won’t be so overwhelming during a round and it won’t take so long to enter in the software at the end.

I’m sure I’ll think about more stuff that needs fixing. But, it’s a start and I still have some time left to sit around and think before I’m cleared to go back to work and start playing again.

Waiting is the hardest part. It doesn’t help that the weather has been great here and November is approaching, meaning that the golf window will be closing before I know it. I have a lot of work to do if I want to get into the 30′s by the time the year is over.