Another rhetorical question to start it all off. Sorry to all the purists out there.
Also, this may degenerate into a semi brag session, so I should apologize for that too. But, there is golf news, so I shall say no more about form and content and just provide some!
It's Friday evening as I type and I played Thursday at Wente from the Blue tees, which are a bit long for my current abilities. I start with a routine bogey as I can't get it up and down from a short side. But then simple pars on two and three and four. Ok, they were not that simple. I hit a tree on two, but go on in regulation. Blasted to a foot on three when I hit a fat shot into a short par 3, and then a lovely pitch up a hill and a three foot putt on 4.
Five is a short par 5 and I have a wedge in for my third shot, but it rolls out a bit. Not unexpected on this green. But I slam a putt in from 20 feet and I'm back to even par. That score holds up until 9, which is long and I find it difficult that day. There might have been a ball out of bounds, I don't tend to remember holes like that successfully. My father would term that "selective memory repression." I don't think that is a bad thing in the game of golf -- you can't let bad holes make furture holes worse. Let go, let go and expect better outcomes ahead! That's my motto.
We'll let the rest of Thursday slide away and we can talk of today. I looked at a couple of videos last night. One is from Athletic Motion Golf (AMG), which has a lot of data from professional and amateur swings. They had a nice video on the take away and the big three errors they see. AMG was also kind enough to provide some drills to help the golfers who can't get it right without a bit of help.
I'm a firm believer that if you take it back badly, you're not going to come back down well. So the information was quite useful. And it changed the way I've been taking it back. Golf is interesting that while repetitive, strange changes creep in slowly and take over. Then you wake up and decide that you have lost an important element and some ugly thing has taken its place. I was seeing this in my backswing. I was trying to get my arms out of it and the AMG people were saying that it really needs to be there! None of this "one piece takeaway" stuff.
Ok, I'm willing to change bad habits unless it's ice cream or licorice or something. And today I put that into play.
There were two elements I wanted to incorporate and one was the armsie takeaway and the other was the left hip moving dead left to start the downswing. And by the Golfing Gods o' Scotland it worked. While it was not my best scoring day ever, it was in the top couple of days in hitting the ball. I split fairways -- even with the driver!, hit shots close to pins and even putted pretty well. Three birdies on the day, distance control was excellent, contacts were in the middle of the club face, etc., etc. Ah, what a day to be alive!
I'll try to remember the changes and make sure I apply them next time out. Not the easiest of task, mind you. And as it always happens, the game gels on Friday and then I have a couple of days off to forget what I was doing! But I found an old Levenger note pad and I've kept it by my side for a week now. I've covered about 8 pages with notes and comments. Hopefully that will maintain some continuity going forward.
To the future! May all your swings be smooth and unhurried!
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