It was the Worst of Times and the Best of Times

Ok, I stole most of that from a more prolific writer than myself, however it sums up the last two days quite well.

On Sunday I had an excellent day at the range; I could do no wrong.  I was excited about playing on Monday with my usual group.

It was pretty much a mess in re the driver.  I managed an up and down two over on the front, which is a good score for me.  The back was a study in frustration.  Very few drives were reasonable.  It was not much fun.  I must confess that thoughts of taking some time off crossed my mind.

Tuesday was an invitation from Phil to play Wente, where the fairways are long and the greens are elevated.  A side note here, the course sports all of 5 greens that you can see from the fairway.  The others are all elevated with fronts that block your view.  Las Po, on the other hand, has a view of all 18 from the fairway.

I was determined to fix this driver issue.  I've made some progress in that I can feel the wrong stuff as I do it.  Blocking that from happening has to be possible -- I would think?

I read The Inner Game of Golf  a number of years ago.  By Gallwey, I think, too lazy to look it up, but he had a mechanism for making change.  The idea was that you concentrated on the object you wanted to change, then rank each swing and assign a score of 1 to 5 to what you did.  Gallwey contended that your brain is really good at solving these kinds of problems, if you trust it to do so.  Thus, assign a score, iterate and let the brain solve the problem.

I've not played with this for a long time - I'm talking decades here.  I've no recollection of how efficient it might have been or if I had seriously tried it.  But since I don't do this on the range, it might be a perfect test of the theory.

But back to my story.  Determined to be better with the big stick, I was trying hard to swing easy and not try to crush it.  For the most part this worked well.  I hit some nice balls and only one horrible one, which was a topped ball on the long 18th.  This was not a disaster as I usually cannot reach the green anyways.  So it was topped drive, 6 iron then 9 iron.  Almost made the putt too!

And I must say that the swing on 18 felt great and I was doing wonderful things except for the top.  Perhaps I had swayed back in my efforts to keep from launching my lower body, which is the big problem.

I also hit numerous wonderful irons - full distance and straight like a happy laser beam. 

I even putted pretty well.  A little more courage and I would have made about 4 from length.  Wente greens are tough to putt and one tends to be defensive when putting there.

I'm much happier tonight than I was Monday night.  I have hope for the future!  I'm back out with the boys tomorrow and I'll see if I can keep getting closer to what's available on the range.