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

Anyway, it’s a good sign. I have roughly 3 days to get ready for the TPC Sawgrass tournament, and I’m feeling good about my game.

After last night I decided to change up my practice plan a bit. Instead of banging around balls at the range, putting green, and short game area, I’m going to try to either work on the practice course or play a round today, play my round at Sawgrass tomorrow, then keep it light Friday. Yesterday’s 9 holes really helped me from a mental standpoint in terms of my course management and pre-shot routine, and I realized I need to get a little more comfortable being on the course with the latest changes to my swing and swing thoughts. So, “play, play, play” will be the game plan heading into the weekend.

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.

I’m also working on my short game in the rough around the green. Sawgrass has some thick rough, and I’d hate to lose a stroke because I can’t get the ball out of thick rough and into a reasonable putting position on the green.

Putting doesn’t feel quite as comfortable as I’d like it to, but I know it ebbs and flows. Hopefully by the weekend I’ll start draining the putts again.

I’m also working on my driver and woods off the tee. Unless you’re a glutton for scrambling, accuracy off the tee is extremely important at Sawgrass, and based on my practice round I need to be able to hit my driver, 3-wood, and 5-wood equally well off the tee. I’ve put more attention on my pitching wedge, also, especially since #17 at Stadium is roughly a PW for me. Besides #17, I noticed during my practice round that I was pulling out the PW pretty often for my approach shots.

After the intense practice days, I’ll play another round at Stadium on Thursday before having a light practice on Friday and heading to Ponte Vedra that afternoon. Hopefully that will help my body recover by tournament time - between the heat and the hard work I’ve been putting my body through to improve, my body is screaming exhaustion.

Oh, and I have a story about bees. I’ll save that for next time.

That’s really my goal at this point: day-to-day consistency. I know I can play well. The problem is that depending on the day I can also play very bad. On the days I play well, my shot spread is very small (+/- 15 feet for a wedge). On the days I play poorly, that spread can be 3-4x’s larger, if not more. I also tend to see more pulls left on those bad days.

This weekend I’ve really focused on what I can do to get more day-to-day consistency. I pulled out the video camera and recorded some swings, and I’m starting to see a couple areas to work on after comparison with Tour player videos.

To start, I need to keep working on staying connected through the swing. I’ve made progress on this in the last two weeks, but it’s not quite where it needs to be yet. The benefit of staying connected has been less pull-hooks and more small draws. My misses are starting to trend back to slight pushes or small fades, which is what I want.

Next is the shoulder turn. Or perhaps I should call it “the coil”. When I compare my video to a Tour player’s video, it appears that my hips are turning way too much, Instead of a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of my shoulder turn to hip turn, it seems more like a 1.5:1 or in some cases even a 1:1 ratio.

Right off the bat, I know this means I’m losing power. I know that you leak out power if you don’t coil your body in the backswing. Basically, you want to get your shoulder turn to 90 degrees, but only turn your hips as much as is necessary to get your shoulders that far. From what I’ve read a 3:1 ratio is good (someone correct me if this is wrong).

A good example of the power I’m losing is some of the work I did today on the practice courses at LPGA. On the par 3 I was hitting from about 168 yards to the pin. I picked my 8-iron, which is usually around the 158-163 yard mark for me. I knew I hit the ball well, but I didn’t realize I overshot my target by about 10 yards until I got up to the green. So, by limiting my hip turn I hit my 8-iron somewhere around 170 yards instead of 160 yards.

While the added power is nice, I have another suspicion on the hip turn: consistency. I suspect that I’m over-swinging, partly due to my hip turn being greater than it needs to be (this also explains why I’m able to get my shoulder turn > 90 degrees). By over-swinging, I’m starting to believe that my entire swing has become dependent on timing.

Yes, timing is important in the golf swing, but having a timing-dependent swing can lead to pretty erratic results. Some days your timing will be good, other days it will be bad. And when the timing is bad… who knows where the ball is going to go.

As a result of this, I’ve also realized that I’ve started to keep my feet too close together at setup. Feet should be shoulder-width apart with a short-iron, and I’ve noticed on video that my feet are just inside shoulder-width apart. This would explain why I feel a little off-balance at times. I may video my putting stroke as well. I’m curious if getting a more stable base will translate into more consistent putts.

So, that’s what I’ll be working the next few days before going on vacation. I’ll be heading out of town for the 4th of July, and I won’t have golf course access so I’ll be working on drills and resting my body. The good thing is that the types of changes I’m trying to implement don’t require a golf ball, so by the time vacation is over I’ll be drilled-up and ready to go.

I had to tone it down on practice this week due to a left rib cage strain. I think the lessons and three rounds of golf this past weekend kind of did me in physically. While it’s fun to play the rounds, sometimes I need to just say “no” so I can either get some physical rest or focus on practicing, which I know will make me better faster.

My practice this week has focused more on the short game than the swing. The swing is starting to get pretty solid, and while there’s still plenty of room for improvement, I’m starting to believe it’s the short game that’s preventing me from reaching par.

I’m also working on my mental game while I’m practicing, which I’m finding is making it more difficult to practice for extended periods of time as I start to lose concentration. This is a good thing though, since it means my mental game practice is working out my mind and wearing it out.

To practice the mental game I concentrate on going through a pre-shot routine for every shot I make, whether it’s on the range, chipping, putting, or any other movement of the club striking a ball. I’m also starting to challenge myself more with small games, such as how well I can hit my targets, how close I can chip the ball to the hole, and how well I can execute the pre-shot routine. I’m even considering starting a notebook I can take with me to the course to keep my “practice score” for things like this.

I know I’ve said it before, but I feel like achieving Par is very close and is becoming a matter of strengthening the weak areas of my game, especially as my swing continues to become much more consistent. I’ll get to test my practice this week during the two scramble tournaments, and while I won’t have my own score, I’ll be able to gauge any improvement by how well I personally play. Looking forward to it!

My body hadn’t felt as loose as it did during that swing in months. The awkward feeling seemed to come more from the fact that I didn’t feel any stretching or pulling or sore and tight muscles than because it was really an awkward swing. In fact, the swing felt pretty solid from a mechanics standpoint.

So I grabbed the first ball, went through my pre-shot routine and setup, and took a 3/4 swing. Perfection.

I’ve gone through two range practice sessions since then, and both sessions have been great practice. Despite taking the last week off I’m executing my swing mechanics better than I was before the time off. Granted, things aren’t perfect all the time, but most of the time I’m executing very well. That’s exciting.

My next lesson is this Friday morning, so I’m working hard to make sure the great swing mechanics are for real. It’ll be about a month since my last lesson, so I want to show that I’ve made some good progress in that time.

Oh, and vacation was good!

Wednesday and Thursday it rained all day, so I couldn’t make it to the range to try to figure out what was going wrong before my Friday morning tee time. So I arrived at the course about an hour and a half early so I could get some time to figure out where my swing was going wrong. While I had my quality shots at the range, I had very few solid shots during the round – something just wasn’t right with my swing.

Since that round I’ve spent a good number of hours on the range following a disciplined process of taking a shot, analyzing the shot and the feeling of the swing, taking a few moments to feel the adjustment I wanted to make, and repeating the next shot.

I’ve spent about 8 total hours on the range this weekend working through shot after shot, primarily with my 7-iron and 8-iron. It’s been a grueling process, but I’m starting to see progress.

I decided to focus on the swing plane since it has been a big issue for me in the past. Besides, I can tell from my ball flight that for the most part the problem has been related to the clubhead path on the downswing being either too far in-to-out or too far out-to-in.

While I could try to control my arms, hands and wrists more, out on the range I came to the conclusion that my problem was more subtle and indirect – the hip pivot.

Basically, I realized that during the downswing I’ve been putting too much spin in my body and not enough weight shift forward. Or, if I do shift weight forward, I’ve been allowing my head to drift with my body.

Every shot at the range has been focused on allowing my hips to slide forward right before I initiate the downswing. While it’s only a millisecond or less of time, sliding my hips forward at the start of the pivot allows my upper body – arms and hands – to get the clubhead on the swing plane before the downswing is initiated. Once the downswing starts, there’s no stopping it, so this hip movement is crucial to a solid swing.

My shots are perfectly on-target and solid when I execute this hip motion. In fact, the swing is nearly effortless.

After going through all this practice I decided to hit the course for 18 holes both for fun and also to see if my body has started to retrain its muscle memory. Thankfully, the answer is yes, but I have a while to go before I can call it consistent.

Scores for the week are overall good: 81, 79, and 77. My average score keeps dropping and has now reached a low of 82. Handicap has now reached 7.4, also a new low.

Besides the shot consistency, my course management needs improvement. For instance, club selection on windy days is pretty poor. This week has been a fairly windy week, and I missed a lot of greens short on approach shots because I didn’t consider or read the wind very well.

My short game continues to be solid, and I think it’s part of the reason my scores have stayed so low despite missing the green more than I want to on approach shots.

This week I’m off work, so I plan to play nearly every day. On Friday I’m heading back to the Tour Academy for some private instruction, which if I don’t figure it out by then may shed some light on my swing plane issues. So far, I have a tee time planned for Saturday morning at one of the more difficult courses in the Orlando area (Shingle Creek), which I’m looking forward to trying for the first time.

Last post I recapped last week and how I finished off Sunday with a 78 (+6) round of golf. Well, I did better this week. You can see my scorecards on oobgolf:

• Tuesday, Indigo Lakes: http://www.oobgolf.com/golfers/score.php?id=676556
• Friday, Cypress Head: http://www.oobgolf.com/golfers/score.php?id=683623

On Tuesday I shot a 39 (+3) during the 9-hole round, which is my best Tuesday score so far this year. To add to the great score, I made an eagle on the first par-5. I started with a 280 yard drive, leaving me about 196 yards to the pin (pin in the front) and about 210 to the center of the green.

This is where SkyCaddie is useful. If I didn’t know the yardage to the front of the green, I probably would have used my 5-iron, which would have put the ball on the back of the green or over it. But SkyCaddie let me know that I really only needed a 6-iron. So, I went through my pre-shot routine, put the one swing thought I’m working on right now in my head (keep the right wrist hinged through impact), and let’er rip. I came on top of the ball just a little, but it had a small fade on it leading the ball right at the pin. It landed about 10 feet short of the pin, took a bounce to the right, and came to rest.

As I got up to the ball I realized that the putt to the cup was fairly simple – not much break left or right, just uphill and straight. The green did seem to have a slight lean to the left, so during my preshot routine I aimed my ball mark slightly right of center of the cup. For once, I wasn’t all that nervous about one of these putts – I’ve had eagle chances before and missed them. Once I did my preshot routine, I pulled back, let the putter clubhead go, and watched the ball roll into the center of the cup. Eagle. My first one ever.

After 5 holes I was even-par, which got me excited about possibly making par for the 9-holes. That was dumb of me. I shouldn’t have even thought about my score because I ended up getting a bogey on the last 3 of 4 holes to end +3. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Which brings us to today: 18-holes, same course as last Sunday, shot a 75 (+3). The new best round ever and very close to the whole goal of me starting this blog (how funny will that be if I make par this year – I won’t be “going for par” anymore!). I made two 30 foot putts, had 3 birdies, had my highest green in regulation percentage, and didn’t think about the score much at all. Instead, I focused on “winning” each hole (par or better).

My focus was so good today that I didn’t even realize I made even-par on the front 9 until I added up the score before starting the back 9. That’s another first: even-par for 9 holes. Awesome. I only had 13 putts for those 9-holes too – real awesome. I finished with 28 putts total for the 18 holes.

The only unfortunate thing about today’s round is that I started getting tired as I got to the 10th hole. I attribute the tiredness to the 2 hour practice I went through in addition to the lack of food before playing. Plus it was a hot 90+ degrees Farenheit. Oops.

But I went into grind mode after I got tired of making bogeys and even got one back with a birdie on the 17th hole. It’s unfortunate that I got tired because for this particular course the back 9 tends to be much easier than the front 9. I usually average 3-5 strokes less on the back compared to the front. Today was a reversal of that statistic.

I took two days off this week (Monday and Thursday), but I had a nice practice on Wednesday. I’ve learned to stop when my body starts feeling fatigued, and it’s interesting how well it bounces back with just one day off – not just in strength but also in muscle memory.

I may be playing one more round this weekend, but so far I’m having a great week with my scores. I have to credit the Tour Academy instruction I received for helping with the improvements. I’m just applying the information I learned, and it’s paying dividends already.

Physically, I’m still sort of recovering from the massive amount of golf I took in. Not only did I do a lot of drills and take a lot of swings each day, but temperatures were in the low to mid-90′s with a heat index around 110 degrees. I think I went through at least a dozen water bottles a day to stay hydrated.

I went into the academy with the mindset that I would only get out of it what I put into it, which I believe is generally true with anything involving education. We were allowed to get to the academy early to practice, so I took advantage of that. We were given a booklet of all the information we were learning, so I took notes. If I wasn’t sure about something, I asked questions. When playing on the course each day, instead of just “having fun”, I took the opportunity to practice the things I had learned. Besides, that was more fun for me anyway.

There’s a lot to say about the academy. I don’t really know where to start. For that reason I think I’m going to keep it simple for now and reference the academy over time.

So for now, I can say that I feel like my golf game is either much better or that I now have the building blocks to get much better. My swing is actually pretty messed up right now as I try to make a few changes, but with practice it will become more consistent again. The good thing is that I think my swing will be even better once I get that consistency back – I’m already noticing a 20-30 yard increase in distance for all my clubs, and when I strike the ball correctly my accuracy is excellent.

I now know how to practice more efficiently, which is important as I don’t have a lot of time to practice. My putting and short game are drastically improved – for instance, I have much more confidence in my chipping abilities, and pitching from 50-60 yards is no longer something of concern.

That’s probably the best thing I got out of this experience – my golf game confidence is much higher than it used to be. I feel like there isn’t a situation out on the course where I won’t be able to figure out a game plan. That’s a big difference from before where I wasn’t confident if I was doing the right thing half the time. It turns my game from one of guessing and then trying to execute with doubt to one of picking from options and executing the chosen option.

Despite a short vacation out of town without golf, I’ve already had two practice sessions since my time at the Academy was finished. And already I’m seeing huge improvement. My swing is starting to come around with the changes, and my short game is getting much better. It’s amazing the difference some good knowledge makes.

Tomorrow is Tuesday 9-hole golf, where I’ll get to try out some of what I’ve learned. I’m not necessarily expecting to play much better – particularly since I’m still figuring out my swing – but I do have a goal to shoot less than 45 for the 9 holes, which I think is reasonable at this stage. I’ll report how things go after the round is over.

Well yesterday I forgot to do that, and I played a round without my putter. I was able to use my playing partner’s putter, but the feel was much different than I’m used to. So I missed a few putts I should have made, and usually because I hit the ball too hard.

I called yesterday’s round a practice round. It didn’t affect my handicap, and I didn’t play within the rules the entire time. Part of the reason is that I wanted to try out some shots I might not normally try without thinking about my score. Another reason is that I forgot my putter.

So, I finished with a practice round 9-over par 81. You can see the scorecard by clicking here. The split was 44 on the front and 37 on the back – that’s right, +1 on the back. By hole 14 I realized I was -1 on the back, and of course that’s when I got two bogeys in a row to mess that up. I’m still starting off slow and finishing hot, but I can tell it’s getting better – instead of taking me 6 holes to start playing well, it’s only taking me 3 holes.

If I had been following the rules it would probably have been around an 84, so my practice score wasn’t terribly different from reality. Not bad, really, and I’m happy with my play for the most part. I just wish I had brought my own putter.

I did well hitting the fairways with a 64% hit rate, and I did better than usual with greens in regulation with 50%. Statistically, the back 9 was much better than the front nine.

Since it was a practice round, I used my driver much more than I usually would from the white tees. I can tell that something is way off with my swing when I use the driver. To hit it straight I have to do a few things I know I shouldn’t have to do. From looking at pictures I have some guesses on the problem, but hopefully the lessons at the Tour Academy will put me in the right direction.

Speaking of the Tour Academy, I’ll be driving my way there later today with my first lesson starting around 9:00am tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to taking a break from the daily grind. From a learning standpoint I’m going to try to absorb as much as I can, but besides that the next three days should be a fun golf vacation.