Things are starting to come together. Every time I hit the course or the range or the practice green, I feel just a little more sharp than the last time. My scores are coming down, but my 18-hole scores are nowhere near where I want them to be. Last time out, I shot an 88 that could have been much lower, were it not for two blow up holes on the first nine. I managed a 41 on the second nine to get me to 88. I’m starting to mix in birdies fairly regularly. I’m also facing a lot more makeable birdie putts. I’m not making as many as I’d like, but it’s a step in the right direction. I did something yesterday that I’ve been putting off for too long. I scheduled a series of three lessons with the pro at my home course. It’s a switch for me from my regular pro that I’m making for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a lot closer to home and is more convenient. Second, I

So far, I haven’t had a chance to play golf out here on my Texas road trip. I was going to try and play here in Fort Worth, but it just didn’t work out. Tomorrow, I head down to San Antonio for a few days, so maybe I’ll have better luck. Visiting the Colonial Invitational on Friday really lit my golfing fire, though. I’ve been in serious withdrawal. Tonight, I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to seek out a driving range for some evening practice. A little Googling turned me on to Leonard Golf Links, an awesome practice facility just outside Fort Worth. If you live in the area or find yourself traveling around Fort Worth, I recommend it. It has a large number of grass tee hitting stations, each with a club stand and bench. The tees are all bent grass. There’s a covered area for practicing in inclement weather. In addition, there’s a nice practice green, and a green for bunker and short game practice. On top of that, it has a

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. Not so much with respect to golf. It’s one of those times when “real life” interrupts dreams. Nothing drastic, just a tight deadline at work that led to a good deal of stress. It’s interesting that I really didn’t work much more than the normal number of hours, but the constant stress just turned me into a lump of worn out couch potato. It’s amazing how much fatigue can come from a mental drain. Well, all that is behind me now, so it’s back to work (the golf kind). I managed to get in a few range sessions and a couple of rounds on the weekends. The weather has been uncooperative as well, bringing rain at all the wrong times (like right now, when I’m really itching to play). Short game and putting need more refinement, but that’s pretty much always the case. I’ve been having some trouble with my finesse wedges, as well. I’m not quite sure what’s going wrong, but on some shots, all is well.

It always seems to get worse before it gets better. I already knew that, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. After last week’s video analysis, I started to work on improving my hip action. I have a tendency to slide laterally toward the target on the down swing, causing several problems. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to be one of those quick fixes that just clicks into place suddenly. It’s a long-standing problem of mine. At the driving range yesterday I tried to key on really rotating my hips instead of laterally sliding. My swing thought was a common one for this type of situation: pull my left pocket behind me. Of course, such a drastic change threw me all out of sync and I was hitting the ball pretty poorly. Every so often, I started to catch on and would hit one that felt great, but I wasn’t able to make it repetitive. On the course later on, it was more of the same. More often than not, I found myself

It’s been an interesting week. My swing went south, so it seemed like the perfect time to do something I’ve been meaning to do. I broke out the video camera for some analysis. I’d like to share the video here, but my technology is a little outdated, making it difficult to get the videos uploaded in a usable form, so we’ll just talk about it until I work that issue out. My main goals were to see how I’m progressing with the one-plane swing and to see if I could figure out my swing problems. Over the last week, I haven’t been playing terribly, but I’ve been seeing the following symptoms: Contact with the ball has degraded slightly I’ve been smothering the ball, especially with the driver I’ve been blocking the driver way right With those things in mind, I broke down the video this morning when I got home and took a lot of notes. I was very interested with what I saw. Some things were better than I thought, and some things were