TPC Sawgrass Day 2

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Kevin

Day 2 was an early-morning start at the Stadium course. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail right now, but suffice to say that my game was not on this weekend. Nowhere close. I don’t know exactly why, but my suspicion is that my body was just tired from the last few weeks. My swing, my feel, my body – nothing ever felt “right”, even at the range as I was warming up.

The end result was a 99 for Day 2, putting me in last place for the tournament. Lesson learned, I hope. Perhaps I’ll discuss more about the tournament later – I have video from Day 2′s round – but for now I want to put it behind me and move on.

Although, I have to mention the highlight of the day. On the par-4 15th, with 153 yards to the pin, I knocked a 9-iron that hit a few feet from the pin, bounced once and rolled into the hole for an eagle. That just about made up for the entire weekend.

Posted in Tournaments | Leave a comment

Tough Day – TPC Sawgrass Day 1

Posted on July 24, 2010 by Kevin

Today was Day 1 of the TPC Sawgrass Major for the Golf Channel Am Tour. We started on the 10th hole of the Valley course.

It was a tough day for me. I shot an 87 (+15) to end in last place for my flight after round 1. While I made a few short game mistakes and my putting left a lot to be desired, the biggest issue of the day was hitting my driver. I hit 5 tee shots into the water, which isn’t all that difficult on a course with water on every hole, and you can throw in a few more penalty strokes for the 3 or 4 OB’s I had. Take all those penalties away, and my day wasn’t that bad.

I felt like I was concentrating on the right swing thoughts, but my body just didn’t feel right or that it wanted me to execute. I felt tired from the very beginning, and the extreme heat and humidity didn’t help the situation. I’m looking at it as a really bad off day with the intent to get rest and come back feeling good tomorrow.

Mentally, I didn’t focus as well as I should, but after thinking about it post-round I don’t think I arrived at the course with a mental approach that works for me (intense focus every minute). I had mental lapses throughout the day, and I let a few bad shots get to me early on.

Perhaps next week after this is all over I can go through the round shot-by-shot. I have it all marked on my scorecard, and if not I can remember just about every shot anyway. There will definitely be some lessons to be learned.

Tomorrow we hit the Stadium course. My tee time is nice and early at 7:30am – first off the block, which is nice in some respects because we experienced some ridiculously slow play today. Regardless, it’ll be nice to set our own tempo.

I expect to play well tomorrow. I have some lessons from today that I will be addressing tomorrow, whether that’s the mental game or my pre-round preparation. The key, again, will be the tee shots. I don’t mind getting into trouble and trying to save par, but I need to minimize the bad tee shots. Straight and short is better than long and wrong.

I worked on my putting in the hotel room tonight, since I pushed a lot of my putts today. After working on the range, specifically with my driver and woods, I’ll be spending some quality time on the putting green before the round tomorrow.

Posted in Tournaments | Leave a comment

Last TPC Sawgrass Practice Round

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Kevin

Shot a 79 for my last practice round at TPC Sawgrass Stadium before this weekend. Not bad, but it’ll need to be better. I 3-putted on 4 greens, so that’s four strokes right away that should have been saved. Chipping didn’t help a few times, either.

Today is a rest day, although I will spend about 30 minutes working on putting and chipping.

Posted in Golf Round Update, Practice, Tournaments | Leave a comment

The Key

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Kevin

The key to my performance this weekend will be one simple thing: allowing my body to coil between my shoulders and hips. It’s not anything different than what I’ve been talking about recently, but unfortunately, executing it is easier said than done.

Plus, since it’s somewhat unnatural for me right now to separate my shoulder and hip turn, it takes a lot of mental concentration to do it well and get the results I’m looking for.

Too little concentration and my hips turn with my shoulders, leading to my entire swing’s results being based on my swing rhythm and timing. Too much concentration and my body tightens up, I don’t pull my hip turn through on the downswing, and I either hook, slice, or top the ball.

It’s a difficult balance, and it will be a challenge to focus on making sure my body feels the appropriate tension in the backswing every shot for 36 holes, especially as I get tired. However, if I can maintain that focus then it should be a very good weekend.

Posted in The Mental Game, Tournaments | Leave a comment

Narrowing In

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Kevin

I feel like I’m starting to narrow in on peak performance after playing 9 holes last night. While I shot 3-over and had some driver issues – no surprise there – I realized that it was a 3-over that could have been 3-under with better concentration. Right off the top of my head I can think of 3 strokes that could have been saved.

Continue reading →

Posted in 9-Hole Round Update, Practice, Progress, The Mental Game | Leave a comment

The Valley

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Kevin

Last Friday I played Dye’s Valley at TPC Sawgrass. It’s definitely easier than Stadium in that it’s more forgiving, but the course is no pushover. I ended up with a +7 for the day, which is okay considering how poorly I hit the ball off the tee that day. Like Stadium, I think if I play my game I can score pretty well there.

I’m going through some intense practice sessions Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week. I’m focusing a lot on two key areas: working the club through the impact zone and separating my shoulder rotation from my hip rotation. My goal by Friday is to start making these feelings more of a habit in my swing, so when I get into the tournament I can focus more on shot execution than the mechanical movements of my swing. Continue reading →

Posted in Practice, Progress, Tournaments | Leave a comment

TPC Sawgrass

Posted on July 13, 2010 by Kevin

This past weekend I went to TPC Sawgrass to play on the Stadium course for the first time. Unfortunately, the course was in pretty rough shape from the recent aerification, but I was okay with that since I mainly went to learn more about the course layout in preparation for my upcoming tournament there and at the Valley course, also at TPC Sawgrass.

There’s a lot I could say, but the TPC Sawgrass experience all sums up to one word: amazing. The practice facilities are top-notch, and the professional atmosphere makes you feel like you’re playing with the pros. Continue reading →

Posted in Golf Round Update, Tournaments | Leave a comment

Shoulder Turn

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Kevin

While I’ve been striking the ball well lately, some days I stand over the ball and start to swing without any idea where the ball is about to go. For instance, just the other day my driver was spreading about 100 yards from left to right. While I know the physics that would cause the error in each drive, I’ve been struggling to understand how my body mechanics are causing such day-to-day inconsistency.

Continue reading →

Posted in Golf Swing, Learning from Pros, Practice | Leave a comment

The Mental Approach

Posted on June 24, 2010 by Kevin

Perhaps the biggest difference in my game lately is the mental approach I take for the round, the hole, and each shot.

A little while back I  realized that I hadn’t focused much on my mental approach on the course and recognized that it was probably one of the weaker areas of my game. For starters, I was struggling with the mental game in tournaments – I was shooting 20-30 strokes higher than my scoring average as a result. I also started to realize that nobody else seemed to find themselves in the same sorts of bad lies or tough shots I tended to find myself and concluded it was a result of poor decisions.

So, I started doing research and some reflection on my own game. I played a few non-scoring rounds where I focused on nothing but my mental approach for each hole and each shot. I cared less about technique and more about hitting my target. For course management, I started outlining a strategy for my round prior to the course, including determining which clubs I would use for each shot. I focused on balancing aggressive play with conservative play and on only taking risks when I knew that failure to execute wasn’t going to seriously damage my chances of making par.

The result? My next tournament was my best score yet (the 83 at the state qualifier). Not too long after that I had another best tournament score at 74.

Continue reading →

Posted in The Mental Game | Leave a comment

Tournament Updates

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Kevin

Time flies sometimes. I didn’t realize it’s been almost a month since I last updated the blog.

As mentioned in my last post, earlier this month I competed in a qualifier for the state amateur championship. I shot an 83 and didn’t qualify, but I left the tournament feeling confident about my game. Despite a quadruple bogey on the 6th hole, I was only 4-over after the first 9 holes and was otherwise playing well. Unfortunately, my putting fell apart on the back 9 and I had a bogey on 7 of the last 9 holes to finish with my 83.  It wasn’t necessarily the result I was looking for, but it’s a lesson learned. I decided to take the positives with me to the next tournament and focus on strengthening my weaknesses.

Apparently that strategy worked pretty well because I just shot my best tournament score yet – a 1-over 74. I was actually 2-under and tied for 1st place heading into the 18th hole when I had difficulty making a club decision off the tee. Even though I hadn’t committed to my tee shot, I still swung and ended up topping the ball into a hazard. I tripley-bogeyed the hole to take 2nd place. Again, lesson learned. I left the place very excited and confident about my game. In fact, that may be the first time in my life I’ve been so happy about getting 2nd place. Finally, the results of hard work are starting to show. Perhaps the best part is that I didn’t even feel like I played close to my best – I felt like I played well, but I could have played much better.

Continue reading →

Posted in Golf Round Update, Progress, Tournaments | Leave a comment