What a year. Actually, this year has been pretty good as far as my golf game goes. I’ve learned so much and have made huge improvements in my swing. Obviously, the big issue of late was my surgery. As you may know, I went in on September 7th for bariatric surgery to help me with weight loss. I’m happy to say that so far, I’ve lost about 46 lbs. I’m feeling better all the time and continuing to lose. I feel both mentally and physically better than I have in a long while. I feel completely healed with respect to the surgery itself, though I’m not cleared to do any heavy lifting yet for another week. I’m really looking forward to get back to some kind of regular workouts. Some of that lost weight has been muscle mass, an unfortunate reality of losing so much so quickly, so I’m looking forward to putting it back on and saying goodbye to fat alone. Golf-wise, I was cleared to start playing again a couple of weeks ago.

As I sit here watching Dustin Johnson get the short end of the stick in the PGA Championship, with rain outside my window, I thought I’d take some time to take inventory of my own game. It’s been a while, but then again, it’s been a while since I’ve even stepped on the course. I’ve made mention before about some kind of rib pain that hit me on the driving range about five weeks ago. I was hitting shots when suddenly, in my follow-through, it felt like someone stuck a knife between my ribs in my side, kind of more toward my back. I hung the clubs up for a week while I was in pretty bad pain, which only really affected me when coughing, sneezing, or swinging a golf club. At that point, I left town for vacation for three weeks. It slowly improved during that time. When I got home, I gave it one more week, which took me up to yesterday. I went out to the driving range yesterday to test out