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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

We had a forecaddie for the round. It was my first experience with a professional caddie, but I have to say I could get used to having one of those every round I play. While being catered to is nice, what I enjoyed most about having a forecaddie was having someone to help me pick targets and the best line for my putts. It’s amazing, albeit not surprising, how much better you can play when you focus on a target instead of worrying about what might go wrong.

As mentioned, the course had been recently aerated, so it wasn’t the best conditions for scoring. The greens were pretty slow and very bumpy. Putting was more luck than skill, and chips would barely roll across the green. Fairways were also aerated, which really made things difficult even if you had a good drive. I can count 5 times I hit a great drive into the fairway, only to find my ball resting in a pile of sand repairing the aerification. Basically, I was hitting out of a bunker in the fairway. Makes it kind of hard to get the ball close.

Even so, I didn’t play particularly well. Since returning from vacation I’ve been struggling with my driver and hooking more irons than usual. I think I know what’s going on, so I just need to work on it, but the erratic shots made for a difficult round. TPC Sawgrass isn’t exactly a course with a large margin of error.

While my score was pretty rough, I was happy with how I played given the conditions – at least until I got to 18, the 3rd most difficult hole on the PGA Tour. (I par’d 17) When we arrived at 18, our caddie said to aim for a certain tree way down the fairway, around where the dogleg left starts to bend. Instead of listening to the caddie and focusing on the target, I started thinking about everything but the target.

Specifically, I eliminated the thought of the water on the left from my mind completely and didn’t even consider it in play for my tee shot. That was good. But as I said, instead of focusing on the target I started thinking, “Hit it at the target, but don’t push it right”, with right being on a hill in rough or in trees. Sure enough, I hook my tee shot left into the water. Three times.

There’s something about the view from the tee box that puts these silly thoughts in your head. I noticed that a lot of the course is that way. I learned from attending THE PLAYERS that the course layout requires you to hit your targets, but what’s not as obvious until you play is that the view from the tee box creates illusions that try to distract your mind from the task at hand. I suppose that’s what the most difficult courses do, though, and it’s also why I’m starting to enjoy and appreciate the mental challenge some courses can provide.

This Friday I’m heading back to TPC Sawgrass to play the Valley course. I’ve looked at it on Google Maps, and it looks like there’s water on just about every hole, if not every hole. What was I just saying about the mental challenge?

As for tournament preparation, I’m continuing to focus on my shoulder turn, hitting all my woods off the tee, shoring up my putting, and getting comfortable again with my greenside short game, especially bunkers and rough with odd lies. I feel like I’m close to where I need to be. All I can do at this point is keep working every day until the tournament and try to put myself in tournament-like practice conditions. The goal by tournament time is to be able to focus on executing my strategy and not worry about mechanics or having other non-competitive thoughts.

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.

This past week I’ve really been focused on keeping my arms and shoulders connected through my takeaway. Lately I’ve been getting more snap-hooks and strong draws, neither of which is my natural shot path. Also, my driver has been either a serious draw, snap-hook, or straight and low – none of which is particularly desirable off the tee.  So, obviously, something has been off with my swing.

A friend of mine noticed that I was hinging my wrists early, leading to my hands “manipulating the clubface”, as he called it. It only took one swing on video to confirm it. To correct the issue I’m focusing on the feel of only turning my shoulders, leaving my lower body quiet, while also keeping my hands in the same position as they were at address up until the club is parallel to the ground. Note that this is only feeling – what actually happens may be slightly different.

Also, I’ve incorporated a grip tension count in my pre-shot routine. Basically I start with a tension of 1 in my hands on the club, increase tension with each count up to 7, then decrease tension back to 2 or 3 before addressing the ball. This helps me reduce tension in my hands and wrists, allowing the club to move freely and build lag in the swing.

The end result is my shots are more straight, dispersion has been reduced, and I’ve gained the distance I had lost the last few months, especially with my drives. When I execute this properly, my drives reach the 290 yard range with little to no effort. In this past tournament, I even had drives over 300 yards and came within 10 yards of driving the green on a 340 yard par 4. Wedges and short-irons are also more consistent, and I’m able to translate the same swing thoughts to the other clubs. It’s good stuff.

I’m still deciding on my next tournament. I may play in one next weekend. If not, I’ll be taking a short vacation before I play in another one in about 3-4 weeks. This week I plan to (re)start my strength training program for golf to help in injury-prevention as well as to build strength for distance and consistency. For the golf game, I’m going to continue working on the “connectedness” in my swing and spend more time working on green-side bunkers and pitch shots less than 100 yards – both are areas that I struggled with the other day.

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!

 The next day I participated in another scramble tournament, and while tournament rules had us winning 1st place there with a tiebreaker, we decided to play a sudden death playoff and ended up losing on the 2nd hole. So, that was sort of a win, but not with satisfaction.

When practicing the last two weeks I’ve been focusing on a number of complicated things during my swing:

1. Keep the clubhead outside my hands during the takeaway
2. While doing #1, keep my hands moving straight back until it’s time to start the shoulder turn
3. Hinge my wrists in a manner that keeps my left wrist straight such that my left forearm and top of my left hand are in sync
4. Turn my shoulders and bring my arms up such that my left wrist stays flat through the back swing
5. Downswing with the feeling of the shaft moving through my right bicep and right forearm before coming through to impact
6. At impact, keeping my hands in the proper position in front of the ball
7. Releasing the clubhead out and allowing my hands to rotate freely through the end of the swing

It’s a lot to think about, and while many would advise to not think about these things when you swing, I’ve learned that if I focus on keeping my backswing slow and smooth, then I can not only think about these steps but also execute them and get awesome results.

I still have a lot of work to do, but my swing is starting to pick up some good consistency with results. For example, today I played a full 18, shot a 75, and my GIR percentage was the highest yet – 61.1%. This is the type of stat I need in order to score low. I could have had a great day if I didn’t mess up some putts, but getting on the green in regulation is a great way to have the opportunity for lower scores. See the full stats on the scorecard at oobgolf. I’ve already setup a tee time for tomorrow at my nemesis course – LPGA Legends – it will be my last round of play for at least two weeks..

This week we’re travelling to NYC for my sister’s wedding, so I’ll have about 5 days of physical rest from golf. That can only be a good thing as I’ve been going pretty much full speed ahead the last month. Hopefully the weekend after we get back I’ll have another lesson, and then the following week I have another two scramble tournaments to participate in.