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.

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.

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.

I’m playing smarter now. I’m taking into account the reality that I’m not going to strike the ball perfect every time, so I know I need to account for my tendencies and give myself the best chance for success every shot.

For instance, if I don’t hit it straight I have a tendency to push my driver. So, I’ve started to line up on the right side of the tee box with my target line being the left side of the fairway. That way if I push it right I’ll likely be on the right side of the fairway, and if I hit it straight I’ll be on the left side of the fairway. Either way, I’m on the fairway. It’s pretty amazing how a simple adjustment in your mental apprach can change your game. My fairway percentage has gone from averaging 50% to averaging 70%+.

I take similar approaches with other aspects of the game. Basically, for any situation, I pick my target based on the location that will give me the best chance to recover from an imperfect shot. For someone like me who likes to “go for it” and be aggressive, it’s counter-intuitive to my regular thought process, but it’s working.

It’s been a busy 5 months, though. I’ve now played in 4 tournaments, won 1 one of them, and am getting ready for my 5th and 6th in the next week or so. I’ve learned a lot about myself and my golf game in the process, and while my scores aren’t necessarily reflective of it, I believe I’m a much better player now than I was 5 months ago.

My problem lately has been my driver off the tee. It’s erratic, and I never know what I’m going to get on a day-to-day basis. When it works - my mishits are still in reasonable locations – I can be on fire. For instance, recently over the course of 27 holes where my driver was working well I was 5-under par.

When it doesn’t work – as in my mishits get me in trouble with water, fairway bunkers, out of bounds, lateral hazards, or trees – then I have to scramble, usually to save bogey. On the positive side I’m getting better at scrambling. According to oobgolf my scramble percentage is 47.4%.

So, in tournaments, where nervousness exacerbates everything, my tee shots have been less than desirable. I’ve taken a lot of penalties off the tee, leading to scores running up quickly. My challenge right now is to control my mental state and focus on playing against the course, not other players.

I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my driver swing, trying to treat it as if I’m swinging a 7-iron. A old man at the range recently mentioned to me that I have excellent rhythm and footwork with all my irons, but as soon as I pulled out my driver all that went away as I started using my upper body more. So my focus now is to start using my lower body more for my driver.

I have had some success and won a tournament. While I didn’t play well, I played better than my competitors, so I got the win. Being focused on my mental state, now I’m interested in not just winning, but playing well in tournament play and constantly giving myself a chance to win.

So that’s where I’m at now. This coming Tuesday I’m in a qualifier for the state amateur championship. If I play well and maintain a good mental approach then I know I have a real chance at qualifying. I also need to play smart and not take unnecessary risks. Based on past history for this qualifier, if I can shoot par or possibly even 1-over, then I can qualify, so I don’t necessarily need to try to blow the field out of the water. Safe, par-golf will do, and taking advantage of birdies as they appear will serve me well.

We’ll see how it goes. I’d like to keep this updated more often. Turns out some other people in the world are going through similar journeys as mine, as they try to go from mid-to-high handicappers to scratch golfers. For instance, the most recent one I heard about is Kirsten Lewis in Oregon: http://www.kirstenlewis.com/.

Back to the grind.

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!

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.

It was a slow start, as usual. I was +4 after the first two holes. It didn’t really get better after that, though, as I was +9 after the first 9 holes.

The culprit was my 3-wood. At Turnbull Bay the 3-wood is the club I tee off with on almost every par-4 and a couple par-5′s. Usually my 3-wood is an easy club for me to hit where I want, perhaps with the occasional fade. 

For this round, however, my tee shots with the 3-wood were setting me up in a bad position from the start of every hole. If I wasn’t pulling the ball left, then I was slicing it right. It was a very strange day for one of my most consistent clubs.

And like usual, I started off the day pulling my irons. Not sure why I start off that way other than my timing not being right. It usually takes a few holes before I start hitting my irons where I want with the occasional push to the right.

The back 9 was better, but the only real difference from the front 9 was that I never made worse than a bogey. Now if I could only eliminate those bogeys…

I did make a birdie on a par 5 to end my 3 week birdie drought. Naturally it was on the most difficult hole on the course – featured hole 13 – which starts off with a tee shot that needs to carry about 200 yards to clear water before it reaches the fairway.

I started off the hole with my Driver, hitting the ball around 280 yards, which is about average for that club. It was one of my better tee shots of the day with a slight draw that sent the ball rolling up the fairway hill.

From this location SkyCaddie let me know I still had 250 yards to go to the green. It also let me know that the layup spot was around 160 yards. Lately I’ve been a little more conservative and would normally play the layup shot, but I’ve been learning how to hit my longer irons more consistently (the 3-iron and 4-iron), so I decided to “go for it” – I wanted a birdie.

I pull out the 3-iron, take a practice swing, address the ball, remind myself to “let the club do the work”, and swing. What a sight to see a 3-iron shot go straight for once. By the time we got up to the green I saw that I had been short of the green about 15 yards. I made a comment to one of the guys in my group that now I know I hit my 3-iron about 235 yards – it’s the first time I’ve ever hit it that well to know how far I hit it.

I concentrated a lot on the chip. This past week I’ve spent a lot of time on my chipping practice, focusing on the feel of the ball off the club while aiming for the ball to land on a certain spot on the green.

For this chip I aimed for a spot on the green that was a little lighter than the rest of the green. I needed the ball to run up the green since the hole was on the other side, so I started my swing and kept my hands ahead of the club-head the whole way through – next thing I know I have a great chip rolling slightly past the cup, settling around 7 feet from the hole.

So this was my birdie putt. If you recall, on Tuesday I missed a birdie putt in a similar situation where I had a short putt in the 6 to 8 foot range for birdie and missed it because I didn’t hit the ball well. That thought certainly crossed my mind as I prepared to putt for this birdie.

I read the green and noticed that it had a slight left-to-right slope, but it wasn’t much. I’ve had the most trouble reading these types of putts, and usually I’ll think there’s more break than there really is, so I’ll miss the cup entirely as the ball never breaks as I expect.

I decided to aim for the left edge of the cup, thinking that it’s going to break right, but not much, so worst case I won’t miss it left but if it breaks more than I think it will I’ll miss it slightly right. To help minimize the break I decide to putt a little more speed on the putt than I normally might.

After planning out my putt strategy for this birdie opportunity, I address the ball, swing back slightly, swing forward, and watch the ball go right to the center of the cup and fall in the hole for my first birdie in weeks. Finally. I think I even said “finally”.

Obviously that was the highlight of the round, perhaps because I stayed focused on every shot of the hole. I need to ratchet up my mental game. Just for this round alone I can count 6 or 7 shots where I know I didn’t concentrate like I should and it ended up costing me additional shots. If I think about it, those 6 or 7 shots are enough to put me in the 70′s.

So in addition to getting the consistency in my swing, the next big thrust in my golf journey is going to be the mental game. As I’ve preached before, I need to concentrate on every shot of every hole if I want to play better. At some point, especially at the professional level, the mental game becomes the limiting factor in performance.

Really, I should have had 40 or less today. I was playing that well, at least compared to the last two rounds I’ve played. There were a few problems of course. If there weren’t then the score would have been much better.

One problem was that I couldn’t make my 4 birdie putts, ranging from 5 to 15 feet. Four birdie opportunities out of nine from a short distance like that is pretty good, I think. But that kind of statistic isn’t worth much if you can’t capitalize on it.

Another problem was the mental game. I hit a lot of good shots today. I also hit a few bad shots. The bad shots cost me. I scrambled pretty well overall, but when you hit a ball out of bounds on one hole and in the water a few holes later you’re automatically down 3 strokes.

As mentioned, the problem was the mental game. I can go through the scorecard, remember each shot, and know exactly which shots I did not concentrate on well – the ones that got me in trouble. Take those away, and I’m looking at a near-par score for the 9 holes.

Having played another sport at a highly competitive level (baseball), I can attest to the concentration and focus required to excel at sport. I know better than to lose focus. When I played baseball I had to be able to focus on every pitch, every inning, of every game. It wasn’t easy – in fact intense games can be downright exhausting. 

From a mental game standpoint, my biggest challenge is going to be focusing on every shot of every hole throughout a round. I know I’m better at this since I started this journey a couple months ago, but this is an area that will always require improvement.

From a statistics standpoint, my GIR was 4 out of 9, although two of the misses were on the fringe and puttable. Similarly with fairways, I hit 4 out of 7, but all three misses were about a foot into the rough. The work I did last night at the range on my driver and 3-wood really helped.

Chipping and pitching were awesome. Because my shots off the tee were doing so well, I often found myself pitching onto the green from 50-90 yards out. Most of my chips and pitches were within 10 feet of the hole. Definitely can’t complain there.

But that’s why putting hurt. I had 16 putts for the 9-holes for a 1.78 average. Not bad, but it could have been better. As I already mentioned I had a number of birdie opportunities from short distances that I should have made (and barely missed).

Overall, it’s progress, and I’m happy about it. Still a long ways to go, but things are turning back around to progress.

In trying to figure this out, I started to consider the differences between Tuesday and every other day:

• I have little time to decompress between leaving work, changing, driving to the course, and setting up on the first tee. Most Tuesdays that time can be as little as 20 minutes.
• Every other day I warm up on the range and putting green. I’m lucky if I have a few minutes to get on the putting green on Tuesday and warming up on the range is just not happening.
• I have difficulty concentrating while playing on Tuesdays. It’s probably because of not having the opportunity to decompress and change my thought patterns.

If I want to start playing better on Tuesday, it looks like I need to work on my mental game a bit, and perhaps leave a little earlier to hit the range with a small bucket so I can get loose.

Despite the rain potential, we did play yesterday. I shot a 48, which I’m not happy about at all, but I struggled with my concentration and my swing (accuracy was off). My lack of concentration is somewhat expected, but I guess those 5 days off probably helped my body but didn’t help my golf swing. Putting was excellent, though, as I made a few 15+ footers and averaged 1.56 putts per hole.

Having said that, on my last shot I decided to put a little more body into the swing, and I ended up hitting my 7-iron about 190 yards, which was 25 yards past the center of the green I was aiming for. It was on target, though, so I was happy about that, but disappointed that I realized on my last fairway shot of the day that I had been using my arms too much and not enough body – plus I was perplexed by the 190 yd 7-iron that came out of nowhere (my 7-iron is usually 160-165 yds).

I was  hoping to get to the range tonight, but it’s raining. I need to figure out how to practice when it’s this wet out.