Progress Update: August 18, 2009

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The dog days of summer are here.  I was grinding away with the pain in my hip/leg area since my last update but fortunately, it seems like it might be very nearly gone.  Over the last week or two, I’ve been able to play and practice more and haven’t really been troubled at all.

I did lose a little of my golf stamina because last week I hit a lot of range balls in the morning and when I tried to play that afternoon, I was definitely fatigued.  It doesn’t help that the heat finally kicked in here in New Jersey and when it’s not hot, it’s raining, but I’m adapting.

So, to sum all that whining up, “blah blah blah blah, I stagnated for a month.”

On the positive side, I had a playing lesson last week.  Believe it or not, that was the first one ever for me.  I’ve had tons of traditional lessons on the practice tee, but never a playing lesson.

It was quite an interesting experience.

For those that have never had one, I’ll describe how it went.  Those of you who have had playing lessons before, I’d love to hear how yours went.  Specifically whether they were different than mine and what you feel that you got out of  it.

Basically, it consisted of me showing up and playing a 9-hole round with my pro.

He preferred that we didn’t take a score card, but left it up to me, and I was fine with that.  He simply asked that I explicitly talk my way through every shot.  The experience was very eye opening.  It pointed to some good things about my game, as well as a few problems.

First, the good stuff.

In general, he liked my course management process.  I was doing a good job taking in all of the variables, and adjusting well to them.  There were only a few times where he felt like I could have chosen a better shot and he encouraged me to actually try those alternates to see the results.  One time, we talked through club selection prior to a shot, he changed my mind, and it turned out he was exactly right.

He complemented me on my putting reads, as well.  I’ve always felt that’s something I do well, even when I’m not seeing results. I’ve been working on alignment, and I’m not there yet, so I didn’t putt well, but it was great to know that it wasn’t a problem with reads, because I don’t really need that sort of uncertainty causing doubt.

Now, the not-so-good stuff.

I have a number of technical problems that I need to work out, and alignment is the biggest.  I knew I was having trouble on the greens, and I was even starting to suspect it with full shots, but I didn’t really realize the degree to which I was off.

One shot kind of put the exclamation point on the issue for me.  On the 9th tee, a straight par 5, I called my shot.  Because there’s a creek running up the left and because I have a natural draw, I aimed at a tree in the distance up the right side.  I hit the most solid drive I could muster.  Except it went dead right, probably 50 yards right of my target.  I remarked that I pushed it way right, and he pointed out immediately that I was aimed probably 40 yards right of my target.

So, in reality, I only pushed it about ten yards, which would probably have resulted in me being just in the right rough instead of lost on the 14th hole.

I played another ball from the tee with him helping me line up this time.  It felt really, really strange.  I would have sworn I was going to put the ball right in the creek.

The other main problem is that, at times, I get a little quick in my tempo and come slightly over the top.  I don’t tend to slice a lot, but instead my miss is more of a pull hook because my hands close the club face quickly to compensate.

Unfortunately, these little problems intertwine to cause bigger issues.

For instance, I start pull hooking a little, so I aim a little more right.  But my misses are bigger hooks, so I aim even further right.  On top of that, I stop releasing the club correctly and end up holding the face more square through impact which straightens the shot out some.  At that point, I’m aiming way right and holding the club from releasing just to hit a decent shot.

I’m not too concerned, though, because I know exactly what’s going wrong and what I have to do to fix each problem.

My pro warned me at the end of the lesson that if I want to truly fix these problems (and not just patch my swing to get me scoring better in the near-term), that I need to prepare for some setbacks.  I’m OK with that because I’m in this for the long term.  I don’t want any short cuts.  I want solid fundamentals.

I’m going to schedule my next set of traditional lessons shortly and get to work on these alignment and other issues immediately.  It’s kind of a grind right now because of the heat and humidity, but I need to dig deep and get through it because the end of summer is near and the amount of time left this year to work on my game will dwindle quickly.