The Details and a Boring Round

So I've been working on a couple of swing thoughts, mostly for the long ball.

Mostly I've been able to wack it well if I stay behind the ball and not slide during the swing.

With the long ball in some form of order, I found putting was a issue.  I believe that my alignment and aiming of the implement was my big problem.

Yesterday I wandered over to the local Golf Mart and played with the clubs they had and wound up with a Seemore FPG Milled putter.  I had seen these talked about on youtube and they looked interesting.

This has a number of technological aspects to it:

• The putter is balanced at the 70 degree swing path
• There is an alignment marker on it that forces you to setup consistently
• There are milled groves on the face 

Some details:  The putter is not faced balanced, but when you suspend it to the swing angle the face stays on line.  Thus swings that are off line are somewhat self correcting.  Oh you can twist it horribly and man handle it, but if one is gentle, the putter will strive to get back on line.

The putter is close to a center shaft and behind the shaft is a large red dot.  The putter shaft down by the face is a black material.  What you do is line up the putter to the target by a normal alignment line and then hold the putter so the red dots is covered by the shaft.  Now everything is locked into a consistent position.

Face grooves are supposed to roll the ball better. 

Basically, align to the target hide the red dot and then move it back and forward.  If you do this with a small arc, the red dot will stay hidden and the ball will go where it is aimed. 

Now, how about that round, I hear you say.

It was pretty boring.  I parred the first 11 holes, took a bogey with a crappy chip, parred a few more, three putted the 16th and then parred in. 

I had a couple of up and downs, but other than a 12 footer on the first hole, nothing was too challenging.  I had a bunch of birdie putts, but was not able to convert.  Nothing was real close.  No real problems with two putting.  I was hitting them close for the most part.  The one 3 putt, I was above the hole on a fast down hiller and I left it quite short to start with.  Hit a good second putt, but the break was not what I played for.


I had more problems with irons going further than expected.  I'm hitting them better and they are going beyond their calibrated distances.

It will still be a struggle to keep the new swing thoughts active.  It was a slow round today, lots of hit, walk, wait. 

Here is a link to the putter:  http://www.seemore.com/putters/fgp-original-rh.html

Mine is milled, not sure about this one.  But, so far, so good.

Catching Up

The changes I've managed to incorporate have worked quite well.  I'm very happy.

However I have the usual problem of keeping the old swing actions buried.  Dave Pelz suggested that 20,000 repetitions would be required to ingrain this. 

I've been held back with recent scoring with my putting.  I tried a 35th Anniversary Ping Putter that I had acquired along the way.  It makes the ping but I have a tendancy to close the face on it  The face is quite long I had problems with it.  It was also less powerful than my Musty putter and longer putts and generally coming up short was a problem.

So I kind of splurged and bought a new putter today.  I'm playing tomorrow and I'll pass on the details tomorrow.

Stay tuned!

More Notes as I try to Remember the Good Times

This moving off of the ball and then staying there has changed the game Mr. Hume is familiar with.

There has been 9 holes under par -- a lifetime rarity - and others at even and one over.  I played the back 9 in one over in a 25 mile an hour breeze today.  I won't tell you how many close birdie putts I had, but I missed them all.

The driver is becoming a very favorite club and I'm turning my attention to my putting as the source of my current woes.

So the points I need/want to remember:

• A lateral move to the right during the backswing, using the shoulders to move the arms into position.
• Feel like I am coming down with the arms and leaving the shoulders turned away from the target.  It probably isn't like this, but that's what it feels like.
• If I do the above correctly, the arms feel like they run a long path to the ball contact.  If I shift my weight forward and slide, the swing feels faster, the result is worse, of course.

I was goofing off and remember a comment by Ken Venturi about letting the arms just fall and drop the club on top of the ball.  This is a strange feeling for me.  But you feel this long path effect as mentioned in the 3rd item above if you do this.  Worth the effort for the experience!

I tried to apply this falling arms to full shots and it works.  No real loss of distance and more control.

(Another fun thing is to putt while looking at the hole.  There are mental gymnastics going on when this happens.  Another interesting sensation for the wary.)

I brought out my 35th anniversary Ping n Ping putter onto the course for trials today.  It does make a lot of noise.  I putted ok.  It doesn't seem to have as much power as my Musty.  I left a few short, but the greens have been recently punched and it was blowing 25 or so, so I will draw no conclusions from this round.

The new Pings and other clubs have variable face patterns, which provide more efficiency to off center hits.  Look at the videos for Envroll putters on youtube - quite interesting.  I like the Evnrolls, but they are close to $500.  I'm still frugal.


Sadly, I must report the retirement of my Mizuno golf bag.  It was one of the limited edition bags from Japan that I found on Ebay.  I looked, but could not find any others.  I ordered a Sun Mountain 3.5 bag, which arrived today.  I like the pocket setup on the Mizuno better than the SM, but I gain a water bottle pouch!

The pockets are smaller for the most part, so I may have to lighten my load a bit.

That's all the news that's fit to print!

A Good Day

I was watching a video by Bobby Lopez on Youtube yesterday.  It was a rebroadcast in re the shoulder turn of Tom Watson.

The discussion led quickly back to Bobby's main point is that the golf swing is a shoulder rotation from behind the ball. 

He has a lot of videos on this and I will not dwell on the details.  Take a look if you are curious.

But I am here to report on how well it works.

I attempted to slide or lean backwards and then rotate hard from there.  To do this, the idea of "use the shoulders to rotate the arms back, then use the arms to come back down."  Bobby's words.

I was able to do this.  It was the best ball striking day of my remembered golf life.  Oh, I pulled a couple and hooked a couple of shots, but hit only one bad drive (old habits return at the damnedest times), but I was taking a rip at the ball and hitting it quite well.

The golf course has the greens punched and we played the front 9 twice.  A nine where I probably average 40 or so and smoothly shot 38 and 39 without any birdies.  The holes I usually feared, were trivial in their problems.

I wanted to play more and was not tired at all.  My lower back was happy and all was well. 

This is Tuesday; on Monday I played the back 9 twice, where my average score is a number of shots less and scored about 4 strokes worse than today.  And the greens were unpunched.

It is a different game when you know that you're going to be able to smack the ball.

I look forward to the future!

Notes from Today, March 9, 2017 - happy birthday dad!

Posture and create the circle with the club.  Don't go forward to hit it, just spin and enjoy. 

I've just seen a couple of Peter Thompson vids on you tube.  

1) A shorter backswing generates more speed and more control.  Taking the club back to parallel requires about 80 degrees to recover.  His examples showed golfers losing the club angle at impact and golf picking up about 20 yards when they shorten.  I hope this works, I'm probably going to try it tomorrow.  If I get energetic I'll go back to the range and try it out.

2) Point your head to the right at address.  This is to allow the shoulders to turn without being blocked by the head and neck.  I like this as I agree with the blockage.

My big problems are remembering all of this.  It worked mostly, but didn't create any monstrous moments.

I also want to control the backswing with the right hand and not allow the left to move the club flat and behind my back.   Thus more of a throw of the club than some swing. 

Making some progress 3/14/17

I've been out a couple of times since the last post.

I hit the long ball quite well today and was pleased.  I only played 9.  Two bogies and one birdie for a total of one over.  The ninth hole at Las Po requires a very good tee shot, which I didn't provide, and I needed to pitch out.  I wasn't able to sink a 15 footer from past the pin and took bogey.

What was interesting about the 9th was the approach shot.  I had 115 to the pin and choked up on a 9 iron, which I've calibrated at 120 carry.  So I was expecting less than 120, but I swung very well, and fairly softly, cleared a tree, hit past the pin, and then spun it back a bit.  It was one of those creamy, solid strikes that one covets.  Could it be possible that a slower swing can provide a full speed club head?  Nah!

I was doing a good job staying near plane on many swings and had a lot of birdie chances.  It was a very easy 9 holes without much drama.

My putting has been creeping into my areas of interest.  I was trying to ensure that I kept the putter face at impact to match that at setup.  I used to just swing it and trust, but this was more controlled and I hit a lot of good putts.

 

Back on the Course! 3/3/17

I've been traveling and northern California has been collecting rain.  At least my little corner of it.

I returned to the course today and noted some very interesting high tide lines around the parking lot and the restaurant.

Various bushes along the creek had flotsam in very high branches.  There were pumpkins along the creek bed, many, many plastic bottles and at least three coolers that were collected by the floods.

I was told that the parking lots were 4 inches deep in mud and water.  The sewer grate where I like to park, and where I think about dropping keys down it, is fully packed with mud.  No longer 6 feet deep, it's at 0.

But we are not here to talk of the weather!  Back to golf and its propensity to cause mental anguish.

I was trying a few things, as what else is new, and I tried to pull down from a back swing position and pull down hard.  Aiming at a spot about 2 feet to the rear of my right foot.  Amazingly I still managed to hit the ball and hit it well.

I think this effort caused a couple of things to happen: I didn't slide forward to hit the ball, and it helped to keep the wrists cocked until the area of impact.

I managed a very nice 5 iron and 6 irons on the 18th, a par 5 and ended the day with a par.

I'll have time at the range to play with this tomorrow.

Now this technique is not unknown to the rest of the world, but it's the first time I tried it.  It was nice to swing hard and the solidity of the hits were an added bonus.