The LPGA was at the Lake Merced golf course, which is in Daly City. Paul, a golf instructor for the local community college, gave me a ticket and since Barb was off at plant places, off I went on the BART. I have a new Senior Bart card that I wanted to try out too. All in all, it was time for high adventure.
It took about an hour and a half to get there. I just missed the train from Pleasanton and spent 17,33 minutes waiting for the next one. The Bart cars were pretty empty on the way out. The tournament provided a shuttle service from the station to the course. It was couple of minute's drive and then I was on site.
I'd been to this course before when I went to see an American Junior Golf Association tournament. It's a hilly course with mostly Cyprus trees, wide fairways and Po Ana grass greens.
When I watch a tournament on site there are a couple of things I like to do. I will walk the course if I've not been there, I like to watch the players at the driving range, and find a good spot where there is a lot of action near a green. I wandered on to the course and walked over to the range. The ladies were warming up before going out. The range had distances out to 250 and the gals were getting there.
I'll get back to what I noticed there in a moment. From the range I wandered just a bit and found the back of the fifth green. From a virtual tour I just looked at, this is 420 yards long. The gals were playing it as a par 5. Now, that's a nice distance for me for a par 5, but I'm surprised that it wasn't a par four for the ladies. Most of the gals were getting there in two shots. The green is pretty fast and a lot of shots that landed on would run to the back and even off into the light rough.
There were traps to both sides of the green. The green is triangular in shape and the pin was placed in the back right corner. There are drop offs if you miss it right, so most of the shots were coming in left and a lot of those were catching the bunker.
The spectator ropes were placed very close to the edge of the green. It was a great place to watch and had everything I wanted so I settled in. I watched about 15 groups go through. I could see them with my useful binoculars hitting from the fairway, then whatever work they needed around the greens. There was a lot of chipping and pitching and many long sand shots. One gal rolled over the back on the short side and partly down the slope. She managed to flop the ball into the hole for an easy birdie.
I think I saw about two bogies, a few pars, many birdies and just the one eagle. Again, it was all of 420 yards and on a good day I could have gotten there in two. The gals were good around the green. It was pretty fast and the putts and chips didn't need a lot of effort to get the ball to the hole. The long bunker shots were usually played to the center of the green. One gal got aggressive and ran it through the green and ended up with the rare bogey.
I sat near a gal in her 70s who with her husband comes down from Humbolt county to watch the tournament every year. They are on site for all 4 days. She golfs about 2 or 3 times a week, has a grandson who plays. We exchanged some golf stories and watched each other's stuff while water was fetched or refreshments procured.
There is an old line supposedly by Mark Twain about the coldest Winter he ever spent was the Summer he spent in San Francisco. Lake Merced is a lot like that. I was quite cold on my prior visit, so this time I brought fleece, double walled wind breaker, long wind breaker pants, and my Winter hat. It worked well and I was comfortable. Most of the players were bundled up too. Long sleeve shirts, vests, long pants, hats, etc. Except for the gal from England who wore a couple of thin top layers and then fairly short shorts. Yipes! It may all come down to what you are used to, I guess. I saw her later on the range and she was still in minimal clothing.
After I watched all the groups go through, I went back to the range. I wanted to take some video, which was explicitly against the rules, but no one seemed to care, though there wasn't a lot of it going on. One of the things that struck me was how many of the gals were still working on technique. Now this is a bit obvious and every time I've been to a pro tournament there are players with aiming sticks and towels under their arms and such. There were a couple of coaches working with the gals and stressing things that I was aware of. It struck me, this time, that the need to investigate technique would have been dispensed with years ago. The gals are the best in the world, the assumption that you'd have to know it pretty well by the time you got to that level, but empirically this is wrong.
As I keep at this game, I find more and more things to think about and try. The gals have been at it longer than I have and supposedly at a deeper level. Of course there is the stereotype about the dumb jock who can do it, but doesn't know nor care how. A bit of the old savant, I guess. Coaching for tournament players is a profession; there must a need for it. So we can conclude that the pros to some degree don't know what they should be or are doing.
Here are the technical things that I noticed. The pros swing slowly. The shoulders turn, the arms come up and then there is very slow move back to the ball. It looks about 1/3 as fast as I think I swing. I'm determined to work on this. It should provide better contact and probably higher ball speed.
I ran across an article about releases and rolling the forearms looked to be useful. Of course I ran across another article that suggested that you don't want to do that. Don't roll and just rotate through the swing. The ladies don't seem to roll the forearms.
Finally let's talk about trying to spin a chip shot. If we think about how this is done with a tennis racket, we have a lot of motion that is in a different direction than the ultimate direction of the ball. The greater the difference between these two directions trades forward motion for spin. Many of the short shots the gals made around the greens was done not as a swing, but as a glancing blow to the ball and club would not be completing the swing -- it would be stuck into the ground. Its motion restricted to providing mostly spin.
So, next up are experiments in tempo, wrist release, and spin creation.
I had had enough and was ready to go home. I walked out, caught the shuttle back to the Bart station and was on my way. It was a nice day and it's been a long time since I was at a pro tournament. The gals put on a good show for me. They are not so far removed from my abilities that I can imagine being able to emulate their skills one day.
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