It seems like at times I get so mentally sloppy that I can’t be trusted to make course management decisions on my own.

Case in point: yesterday, I played at my new club for the first time since I joined (and for the first time there in a year or two). I wasn’t playing great, but the conditions were pretty rough. The course was saturated, there was a ton of wind, and the greens had recently been de-thatched for the spring and haven’t healed yet which made putting tough.

So I’m teeing off on the 5th or 6th hole (I’m still trying to memorize the holes) and there’s some water kind of off to the right off the tee, but not in a position to be any trouble. I was kind of tired from a session at the driving range and got lazy, let myself get out of whack and duffed the ball weakly low and right off the tee. The ball either skipped once on the water or just made it across on it’s own.

When I got over there, I find that there’s a strip of unmaintained rough on the far side of the pond that’s never mowed. And it tends to form huge clumps with little valleys in it. It took me a while to find my ball, and actually found several others in the meantime (a telling sign). Eventually, I found mine and it was nestled down in between a group of clumps.

Now, mind you, this isn’t just deep rough that you just choke down, grip tight, and slop the ball back out to the fairway. These clumps are solid and there’s no way a club can pass through. So, I’m left with a decision. I can play it as is, or I can call the ball unplayable, where the best option would be re-hitting from the tee.

For some reason that I can’t even put into words, I decided to play the shot. I swear, it wasn’t that I was too lazy to go back to the tee or that there were people waiting and I felt guilty. I was free and clear to make the decision. I thought, “well, at worst I’ll just slop it out a few yards and play from the fairway or the normal rough.” Yeah, right.

I decided that my best bet was to take a really steep back swing with my pitching wedge and kind of come right down on top of it and pop it up out of there. I gave it a try and the ball moved maybe an inch. Now I’m annoyed. I gave it another swipe and it pin balled around in there and came to rest in just as bad a lie. So I try yet again. This time, the ball popped 5 feet or so straight up in the air. As I flailed around trying to get out of the way, the ball hit me no less than four times. Great. So I’m hitting seven now, I think. There might have been a complete whiff in there at some point. But I was still in the mess. And at that point, I was just hoping there’s a decision that covers getting hit by the ball four times in one act so it would just be a two-stroke penalty instead of eight.

Luckily, good fortune prevailed and after my Plinko session with the ball, it kind of came to rest on top of one of the clumps and I was able to gouge it out to the fairway. I was so frustrated that I invented a ten-shot max local rule and finished out the hole and called it a ten (the course may already have a standing 10-shot local rule…I should check).

I’m sure my brother was amused by my Three Stooges antics, but I was not. There’s no other way to look at it: that whole fiasco was just plain stupid. If I had played the hole with nothing but my pitching wedge, I could have probably gotten a bogey. It was a complete mental breakdown. Possibly one of the worst golf decisions I’ve ever made.

One of the more frustrating aspects of the situation was the fact that once I played my first shot from the mess, I lost the ability to go back to the tee under the ball unplayable rule because now I played a shot from there. Taking a drop two club-lengths would have left me in the mess. The only other option was to drop behind the pond on a line extending from the hole through the ball. But it was all mess there. I think I would have had to play it on the previous hole under that remedy. Thinking back, that still would have been a better play.

My poor decision meant the difference between a score in the mid-40’s and one in the low 50’s (or mid-50’s if there’s no local 10-shot rule).

The moral of the story is: learn to recognize the difference between digging a hole and digging a grave. Climb out of the hole, set the shovel down, and walk away. Or better yet, work on good course management so you don’t have to start digging in the first place.

I’m a huge fan of using video feedback to analyze my golf swing, both during lessons and during my practice sessions. Recently, I’ve discussed video feedback in a couple of posts. But there’s one problem: when I go out to the range and find a spot at the far end and set up my camera, I feel like such a dork. Why? No good reason. But I can just feel people looking at me, thinking “Who does this guy think he is, Tiger Woods?” I wish.

In reality, there’s no good reason for thinking that way because chances are no one really notices me and if they do, they’re probably thinking “Hmm…I should try that some time.” Sometimes imagination just runs wild and we feel self conscious for no good reason. If I want to be a golf pro then at some point I might have to play in front of a few spectators (I’m not talking about the Masters…heck, there are spectators at a lot of the mini-tour and larger amateur events). So I can’t allow myself to worry about the perceptions of others, especially when those perceptions are most likely in my imagination.

Because I’m serious about my goal, I’m going to suck it up and start recording some shots at sessions here and there. And if I start to feel really bold, maybe I’ll post some here for public ridicule and/or analysis. Check back this weekend and see if I went through with it.

One thing I’ve learned from my video lessons over the years is that what I perceive that I’m doing is usually very different from what I’m really doing. The interesting thing about the golf swing is that our bodies are really smart about committing repetitive motions to muscle memory. Unfortunately, they don’t bother to figure out if those motions are good or bad.

Typically, we all find out that we have some bad swing motions and go about changing them (with the help of a professional, I hope). What we eventually realize is that the tiniest change in the golf swing feels like a monumental difference. This is where things turn sour. At that point, our perception often is that the problem we set out to correct has been corrected, especially if we see some improvement in our shots.

What I’ve realized over the years is that my perception lies to me. I think because it also represents my lazy side and wants to just stay in the nice comfortable groove (rut, really) that I’ve worn for myself. So I think, “all fixed” and move on to something else.

These fixes that we set out to make are usually incremental, and those increments can be very small. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some night and day fixes that can show instant results. Most often though, changes are slow to achieve.

When we try to implement changes in our swings, we have to be diligent about making sure that we continue to work the changes until they are complete, then we have to continue to work them some more until they become part of our muscle memory.

This is one reason why video is such a valuable tool when working on your golf game. Video lessons are great. They let us see beyond our own perceptions because the video doesn’t lie. Plus, once we see our faults and understand why they rob us of distance/consistency/etc. and understand what the fixes are, then we can even record our own swings in between lessons to be sure we continue to progress toward the goals that our teachers help us set for ourselves.

If you go several weeks or months between lessons, then it can be hard to tell how well you’re progressing with a specific technique until the next lesson rolls around.  Recording some shots during each practice session will help you tell if you’re actually progressing as much as you think.

Keep in mind that analyzing your own swing on video doesn’t make you David Leadbetter. You need to coordinate with your pro to make sure you understand what you’re seeing as well as what you should be seeing as you make corrections. It’s still a good idea to maintain your normal lesson schedule instead of trying to completely self-diagnose problems. But it certainly can help you make the maximum progress at your practice sessions between lessons if you understand what to look for.

Let me be more specific: this is about my biggest swing flaw. If I start getting into general flaws, we’re going to be here a while.

I have a case of “chicken wing”. No, I didn’t say I ate a case of chicken wings. I said I have a horrible swing affliction. For those unaware, “chicken wing” refers to a problem where the left arm and wrist don’t stay firm at impact and break down. This results in a power drain and lack of consistency. I first discovered this problem at a lesson a couple of years back. It’s not necessarily apparent because I have a lot of power. But the camcorder exposes the problem big-time.

My belief is that in my case, the cause is a late or stalled action of my legs and hips on the down swing. If I hang back on my right foot a little too long it starts the whole thing in motion. Because I have a lot of power, the chicken wing is basically my body’s defense mechanism to keep parts of me from tearing or snapping like twigs. Amazingly, I still get decent distance. When I first discovered this problem, it took me a ton of effort on the practice range to start to correct. Then I got injured. Now that I’m back, so is the chicken wing. I haven’t verified this on tape yet, but the subtle symptoms are there: higher ball trajectory, less consistent ball striking, more shots thinly struck, and of course, less distance. And perhaps the most telling symptom: soreness in my elbows. I believe that the rapid, violent breakdown in my left arm/wrist causes me some soreness in my elbows. On top of all that, and I don’t have any evidence of this, but I believe this inefficient swing flaw could be a source of or contributor to my back problem.

So what’s the cure? A couple of years back, my teacher had me working on this problem by having me try to make my right knee and hands move through the ball at the same time. This boils the fix down to one easy swing thought that’s easy to practice. To get my right knee moving through the ball at the same time as my hands, my right foot has to come off the ground earlier in the down swing, and that means the transfer of weight to my left side will have to start sooner and not stall out. It eventually worked for me after a ton of practice time (and times when I made only a tiny improvement but thought I was completely cured).

Recently, I read an article at Golf Digest online by Rob Akins from 2003 that gives a different approach to solving the problem. His belief is that you must resist letting your hands cross in front of your chest, and you do this with a hard chest turn in the down swing. This allows the hands to lag behind and avoid the chicken wing.

I believe both these tips achieve the same goal through different means. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. You might find yourself having trouble executing a certain corrective action, but find success when it’s presented to you in a different way.

Another lesson-learned that I’d like to pass on is: if possible, take a video lesson so you can see for yourself what your swing looks like. I would have never realized on my own that I was doing this because I still have a fair amount of power. The symptoms seemed like it was just an issue of putting in some practice time to work out some consistency problems. The problem was, I was grooving this move. The mind and body are wonderful things. But it’s a fine line between a groove and a rut.

My plan for now is to make this my maximum priority. I will absolutely never achieve any level of success with this flaw. Since the weather has been bad here for a bit, I’ve been taking some partial swings in my living room and am trying to learn the correct action so when I address a ball for real, it’ll start coming to me faster.

Unfortunately, this is a sad necessity for most people. Without being independently wealthy, it’s not easy to follow dreams without a ton of hard work. Jobs and bills don’t disappear because we’re setting out to follow our hearts down a path of eventual happiness and success. I’m not here to whine about how hard it is. I’m here to tell you: let’s suck it up and follow our dreams.

I’m reminded of the famous Langston Hughes poem, “Harlem: A Dream Deferred”. You may have read it:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Right now, my golf game stinks like rotten meat. But that doesn’t matter to me. I’m pursuing my dream. And to do that, I’m going to need a better plan.

One thing I have going for me is that I’m single and have no kids. Not that being single is super appealing, but I don’t have any obligations to keep me from putting time in on my goals. Just a job and some bills. My to-do list covers most of the things I need to accomplish but right now some things are more critical than others.

Most important is my health. That means weight loss and exercise to fend off this herniated disk in my back. After that, I need to practice and play. Sounds easy, but that’s a lot of stuff to do. My target is to work out at the gym at least 3 days per week. I should also be doing my back-specific physical therapy exercises 3-5 times per week. I’d like to shoot for four practice sessions per week. Two full-swing sessions, one putting session, and one short-game session. The practice sessions can probably be combined into two actual sessions with two parts. On top of all that, I’d like to play three times per week. I’m shooting for two 9-hole rounds and one 18-hole round. And that’s all at a minimum. Balancing all that with 40 hours of work per week (and a 45-minute commute each way) is going to be a challenge.

Here’s what I have going for me: my work schedule is very flexible. The down side is that I’m not a morning person and I’m accustomed to showing up for work around 9:30 am or so and getting out around 6:00 pm. During the summer, when the days are long, it wouldn’t be so bad, but by the time I get home playing is mostly out during the week.

If I want to meet my short-term goals, I need to come up with a better plan for managing my time. Right now, it seems like the best option is to suck it up and get to work earlier so I’m getting out with much more daylight. Maybe get in at 8:00 and out around 4:30. That puts me on the course or driving range around 5:30. Plenty of time for 9 holes and even 18 when the days get longer. I think I’m willing to substitute a gym workout for a walking round of golf because that’s pretty good exercise, but I still need to fit some workouts and my back exercises in there.

I’m going to give this some more thought and follow this up with a formal time schedule that will be realistic. Stay tuned for that. My dreams may never come true, but they will not be deferred.