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. On others, the top of my back swing feels all wrong. When that happens, the result is usually a big pull to the left. I’m getting that with my iron play also, but not as much anymore.

I was having some serious trouble with my driver recently, but I broke it out for 10 to 15 shots at the range yesterday and I was hitting it quite well. So, either I fixed the problem, or my reduced golf time over the last couple of weeks rebooted me and I’m good to go now.

I’m starting to hit everything better. I think it’s just about time to get back on video and see where I’m progressing with the one-plane swing. I feel like I’ve eliminated some of the hip slide I was experiencing, but I’m sure I’m stuck in a “feel versus real” situation where I’ve only slightly improved even though it feels like a big change. I’ll need to keep on top of that to make sure I’m emphasizing by hip turn and getting rid of the slide.

I had a bit of a sinking feeling when I got out of my car at work early this week and suddenly my back was in pain, just like when I was rehabbing a herniated disk. I immediately renewed my commitment to my back strengthening and overall fitness program, despite my stress-induced couch potatoism. Within a few days, I felt pretty decent again, up to the point where I was able to have a great range session on Saturday.

I’ve always been intrigued with the idea that stress and other strong emotions can cause physical pain. I wonder if it was a coincidence that this episode happened during the height of my stress at work, right when I got out of my car to face a day that I didn’t really want to face. Hmmmm….

Either way, I feel a lot better now, and my renewed discipline in getting my workouts in can only help.

I had a great workout this morning, and it looks like the day is going to be a washout, so I think I’ll just relax and get ready for a long vacation (more on that later). Hopefully it’s sunny wherever you are.

We’ve been getting a lot of rain around here recently. When that happens, even if the sun has started shining again, the course gets saturated and the game changes some. With an awareness of the issues and a few adjustments, you’ll be ready to tackle a round on a wet course.

Length Becomes a Premium

Without a doubt, when a golf course is wet, it plays longer, sometimes significantly. Just about all shots will roll less after landing, if they even roll at all.

On a wet course, club selection is critical. Depending on how much water the course is holding, it may make club selection very easy. If it’s wet enough where you’re seeing little or no roll on shots, then you simply play to the full shot distance. In other words, if you normally account for some roll after a shot lands, you’re going to want to play the shot to land where you would normally expect it to finish rolling.

Adjust Your Course Management Plan

You really need to consider the makeup of your course and how it handles water when you’re trying to come up with a course management plan for the round.

Consider my course, for instance. When it’s holding a lot of water, the fairways and rough get very saturated. So much so, that you can hear the turf squishing as you walk. On the other hand, the greens were very well made and drain well. Most times, the greens dry out much faster than the rest of the course.

This adds a wrinkle to my course management plan on wet days. I have to account for shorter shots off the tee and less distance on lay-ups. When it comes to approach shots, though, unless the rain was very recent, the greens will react much like they would on a normal day (at least until they get hard during the hottest stretches of summer).

It’s a minor point, but something worthy of consideration. You have to adjust your plan to your course and to the way it plays during wet conditions.

Tend to Your Hardware

Water and mud can have a serious effect on the quality of the shots you’re able to hit. The big thing to be aware of is the presence of mud on the ball. See below for some of the rule implications, but in general, if the Rules allow you to clean the ball, then do so. Mud stuck on the ball will affect its flight.

On the putting green, a little mud on the ball will have a more profound effect. It will tend to pull a putt off line, and with such a small target, it can mean the difference between missing a putt or making it. In Dave Pelz’s Putting Bible, he describes his experiments where he moved a ball’s center of gravity (from mud being applied to the surface). He showed that, depending on how drastic the center of gravity moves (how much mud is on the ball), a putt of 9 feet can be guided several inches off line. That is more than sufficient to miss a putt.

Another thing to consider when playing in wet conditions is that you’re keeping the grooves on your clubs clean. The grooves will tend to fill with water and mud, reducing the amount of spin that they impart on the ball. Make it a habit to clean your club’s grooves after each shot, making sure to towel off excess water. One gotcha to avoid - picking up water, mud, and grass on practice swings. Be sure that you clean off anything picked up during a practice swing before attempting the real shot.

Rules Implications

When the course is wet, there are a few rules implications to keep in mind.

One situation you’re much more likely to encounter on a wet golf course is an embedded ball. Luckily, Rule 26-2 addresses this. When a ball is embedded in its own pitch mark in any closely mown area through the green (basically anything mowed to fairway height or less, except for the tee or green), you can lift, clean, and drop the ball.

You may have noticed sometimes when watching golf on television, that they play “lift, clean, and place” when the course is wet. The Rules of Golf provide for the ability for the Committee to create a local rule to handle this situation. It is covered in Appendix I, Section 4b. Remember that in the absence of a local rule, you must play the ball as it lies.

Another provision in the Rules that you definitely want to be aware of is the allowance for relief from casual water. Casual water is temporary water on a golf course that is not within a hazard. Casual water may be visible either before or after you take your stance. Just to confuse things a little, snow and natural ice are either casual water or loose impediments, artificial ice is an obstruction, and dew and frost are ??????not considered casual water.

If you find yourself affected by casual water, refer to Rule 25-1 for the proper relief procedures. Depending on the extent of the casual water, you may prefer to play the ball as it lies. For instance, if the nearest point of relief puts you at a disadvantage, you might just choose to not take relief.

Knowing is Half the Battle

Playing golf in wet conditions holds the possibility for bad scores, but nothing is written in stone. Understand the situation and adapt. Adjust your course management plan, tend to your equipment, and let the Rules work for you and you’ll be able to overcome the little twist that the weather has thrown at you and shoot a good score.

That’s right. I said it. You want to play better golf? Positive attitude is a great way to do it.

I’ve never read a book that covers the mental game that advocates anything but a positive attitude on the golf course. I’ve never heard otherwise in a lesson or from a pro or from watching an instructional program on television.

So why is it that so many players have such a poor attitude on the course? I’ll tell you why - they don’t realize the importance of the mental game and they let their emotions get the best of them.

Golf is an expensive game. It takes a lot of time to play, and a LOT more time to play well, in the form of practice and exercise and lessons. Why would anyone want to get anything less than the maximum out of a round?

I’m sad to say that I succumbed to negative attitude on the course a week or so ago.

I was struggling with my finesse wedges. I had just duffed about a 100 yard wedge up to about 60 yards. I tried to regain my composure as I approached my ball. I rehearsed my next swing several times and felt like I had it. I stepped up to the ball and did the same thing again. Fat city.

Add together a few bad shots a stressful couple of weeks at work and I was drowning in negativity. I slammed my club down, clenched my teeth, and grunted. It was not a pretty picture and somewhat out of character for me.

Eventually, I pulled myself together and recovered. I regained a good attitude after a few holes, but the damage was done.

Emotions are a very powerful thing, both positive and negative. Drawing upon positive emotions can give a boost when things are looking grim.

Let me ask you a question - what’s the worst shot you ever hit? Most of us can’t even easily come up with a list of candidates, except maybe from the last several rounds. See? You’ve already learned to get rid of those negative thoughts. It just took longer than it should have. Now, what was the best shot you ever hit? I bet you already have a few possibilities in mind. How does it feel thinking about it? Good, I bet.

If you can find a way to harness that kind of positive energy, it feeds back into itself. It shouldn’t just be the product of good shots - it can also be part of the cause.

We can’t control all the adversities we face on the golf course. We’re going to hit bad shots. We’re going to get bad lies. We’re going to get bad breaks.

What we can control is how we deal with those things.

Let the negativity creep in and you’re going to drown. Find a way to stay positive, and you’ll suddenly find the game a whole lot easier. You’ll feed off that energy and find that these bouts of adversity are just tiny bumps in the road to success.

Most conventional teaching has a player keeping the hands ahead of the ball at address to promote a crisp, descending blow. Unfortunately, many players try to do too much of a good thing and take that bit of advice way too far. I’ve even caught myself doing it.

It’s true - when addressing a chip shot, the hands should be ahead of the ball (closer to the target). But how much? I personally use the technique that Dave Pelz describes in his Short Game Bible. He recommends that the hands be aligned with the inside of the left thigh.

To recap his chipping address technique: stand with the feet very close together and the ball opposite your right ankle (for right-handers) and your weight slightly more on the left side (about 65%). The feet should be flared about 20 degrees toward the target. It’s helpful to align the ball to your right ankle before turning your feet toward the target, because the change of perspective makes it hard to tell where the ball is really aligned, at least until you’ve had time to practice. You should be standing close to the ball, enough to get the heel of the club slightly off the turf and you should be aligned parallel left of the target.

When considering how far ahead the hands should be, the key thing to consider is that the feet should be very close together. This means that even with the ball aligned with your back ankle, the hands aren’t all that far ahead of the ball.

Try an experiment: address a chip shot as I described above, and set your hands so that they’re aligned with the inside of your left thigh. They’re not all that far ahead, are they? Now, move your front foot toward the target maybe a foot or so so your stance is about as wide as you’d use for a finesse wedge shot. Make sure your hands are still aligned with the inside of your left thigh and your weight is still favoring your left side (about 65%).

See how much different that is? Your hands are waaaaaaay ahead of the ball now. I see players fairly regularly chipping like that. They take a much wider stance than necessary and set their hands too far ahead. Or, some will take a narrow stance but still set their hands much further forward, toward the middle or even the outside of the left thigh.

So what happens when you do that?

That will cause a much steeper angle of attack and you run the risk of bringing the club right down on top of the ball. Or, even worse, you may start to incorporate some body sway when you make a chipping stroke because your subconscious is astute enough to realize that you’re going to bring your wedge down on top of the ball and it doesn’t want that to happen, so you end up stubbing it into the turf. Either way, you’ll probably experience some inconsistency.

Remember that the club should hit the ball with a slightly descending blow. Address the ball as I described above and don’t let those hands get too far ahead and you’ll be on your way to making a much more consistent chipping stroke.

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 reverting to the old hip slide.

That’s natural because I just started to work on the new move, so it’s a long way from becoming muscle memory. On the course, you have to trust your swing and let it become automatic. That’s one positive thing I had going for me. I wasn’t getting too mechanical in my swing thoughts, so my body just reverted to what it knows well. It’s nice to know that my mental game is improving that way.

I’m interested to see how this will progress my overall move toward the one-plane swing. Right now, I’m keying on my hip turn, but Jim Hardy’s one-plane swing concept focuses on turning the torso and shoulders hard because of the rotational action of the swing. I’ll need to make sure that as I progress, I eventually start to incorporate that into my learning.

This is one swing change that I’m going to have to dig out of the dirt. It’s going to take a while, so that’s a little frustrating. It looks like we’re in for some rain today, so I’m going to have to just sit here and stew over it.