Golfing - Jan 11, 2008 |
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| Friday, 11 January 2008 | |||||
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105!!! My highest 18 hole score since the start of the year. Nothing felt right, nothing flew right. Well ok, not everything was unbearably awful. My green side chipping was excellent and my putting was fair; but the driver and the irons were OFF today and when I say “OFF” I mean way off. I haven't lost so many balls or almost lost so many balls in months. In the practice session afterwards though I discovered a technique I've been wanting to use for a long time and will detail further down. What a way to start off my ambitious journey toward the 2009 US Open. If you haven't read it yet, check out the specifics of my quest for extraordinary golf on the “My Quest” page. In spite of the unusually high scoring, I did manage to enjoy playing and even met a fellow golfer named Ted who played along with me for the whole round. I'd guess Ted is in his early 40s and he hit the ball fairly well. I got the impression that he is used to making pars for the most part cause he got a little upset with shots that I would have been happy to have today. But who can complain when it is 50 degrees out and the sun is shining in January in Kansas? After finishing up the 18th hole, I decided I needed to go to the driving range to work out whatever it was I had been doing wrong all afternoon.Ted stuck around for a couple minutes and observed my swinging and gave me some hints as to what I was doing wrong. I hit about 70 balls with my driver and I think I finally got it worked out. I had been trying to hurry the start my downswing all day and in doing so had sent most of my balls flying right. What I finally did was focus on making a full backswing and then pausing for a split second before bringing my hands down. When I did this I was hitting the balls more consistently and mostly straight. I found if I took too long with my backswing though, then I tended to pull the ball to the left. By this time the sun had set and the light in sky was not sufficient to see the balls past the 150 yard flag. I grabbed my lob wedge then and was just hitting balls randomly switching between a full backswing and a 3/4 backswing.. Then I decided to experiment. I rotated the club in my left hand so that it was about 20-30 degrees open; then when I addressed the ball I rotated my wrist so that the club face appeared square to the ball again. I tried this with mostly half shots or less and I discovered something. I was getting enormous amounts of backspin simply because the face of the club was closing through the ball rather than hitting it square. By the time I realized this it was almost too dark to see the balls landing just 50 yard in front of me, so I didn't get to test this with non-practice balls on the putting green. I can't wait to give this a try the next time I go out. I've never been able to get the balls to check up or spin back on approach shots and I think I may have found a way for me to do it. So while the scoring today was not very encouraging, the 45 minute practice session afterwards was very rewarding and gives me a couple things to test and tweak when I go to the golf course again.   
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