I walked and played 9 holes this past Tuesday and shot a 40. I made 2 birdies and some pars. Had I eliminated a double-bogey I'd have shot in the 30's! I played again yesterday and shot a 41 because I didn't putt quite as well. I've gotta tell you, I'm thrilled. I am a bogey golfer at best and have now played 3 times in a row and hit the ball pretty well. I've been trying to go a couple of times a week at around 5PM and walk 9 holes for a little exercise. In my last blog post I said that I had made a swing discovery.

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Ok, I played golf today and didn't score great but I think I've made a swing discovery as it relates to lining up your shot. First of all, I've always heard these one-liner rules about what you have to do to work the ball - to draw the ball, close the club-face, or aim in the opposite direction and point the club-face toward the target, or swing more inside-out, yada, yada...

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Spring is a great time to play golf but in the South it rains a good bit during April. You know, April showers bring May flowers. (Ok, I'm really not a pansy, I just remember that from my youth.) If you want to take advantage of the beautiful Spring temperatures you've go to take the bitter with the sweet and hit the ball off a muddy fairway every so often.

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I played this past Saturday morning and really believe things are starting to come together. I had an ok front 9, shooting a 45. Bogey golf, which is really par for me. If I bogey a hole, I don't get too upset. See my blog titled, "Are You Expecting Too Much?" for why I think it's crazy for a weekend golfer to expect to hit great shots most of the time. I shot a 42 on the back 9 but I hit more than 50% of the greens on the back in regulation! I think I might have discovered one of the secrets to consistent golf!

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I played golf on Labor Day as a last minute thing. I was minding my own business working and my daughter stopped by the house. She asked if I was going to play golf. When I told her that I didn't think I was going to get to (my wife had just an hour prior asked if I would stay home with her the rest of the day) she said the reason she was asking was that her fiancée was wanting to play. My ticket! I said, "Well...." My wife said, "Why don't you give him a call?" She figured it was a good thing since she's convinced that I've not done a very good job of building that relationship. So my daughter called him and the plan was on.

My home course was in the middle of a big tournament and we only had about 4 1/2 hours to go, play and get back because we were expected at some friends house that evening. So, we went to a public course right down the road that had been redone in the last year. It's a little 9-hole course so to play 18 you simply play from the white tees the first time around and the blue tees the second time. I've driven by the course several times and it looked a lot better than it has in the past. It's been years since I've played it. In fact, my game has improved by probably 10 strokes since I last played the course so I was looking forward to playing it again. It's a shorter golf course than the somewhat difficult course I normally play. Boy was I in for a surprise.

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I played with a great bunch of guys Friday. I've only recently started playing with them because my Saturday group hasn't been able to play for several reasons lately. This friday group of guys is made up of an old friend and neighbour whom I've always enjoyed being around and some friends of his that have played together on Fridays for years. My friend is a pretty good golfer. Better than me most of the time. He shoots in the low 80's consistently striking the golf ball well. Nice clean divot well out in front of the golf ball. He strikes the ball first. It's that unmistakably nice, crisp sound the golf club makes when you hit down on it striking the ball first. Enough of that. I'm a little jealous but I'll figure it out eventually. Continued...

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I played pretty good today. Well, ok, I played pretty good half of the time today. Well, almost half of the time. I just entered my golf stats in the free stats deally. I'm looking it over and one glaringly obvious thing to me is this - I could have saved 6 strokes today had I turned my 2 triple-bogeys and 2 double-bogeys into bogeys. So, instead of shooting an 89 I could have shot an 83.

Of course, I had two 3-putts. Had those become 2-putts I could have dropped it another 2 strokes to 81. All of a sudden I've moved from right around 90, bogey-golf to almost down in the 70's! Just by eliminating my double and triple bogeys and 3-putts.

So why don't I do that? Why do I keep having disaster holes like that? I used to have a partner in business who is a scratch golfer and better. I asked him that question one time.His response was, "You're not mentally prepared to play at that level." In other words, when I start playing better than my normal score, my mind somehow takes over and pulls me back into old habits. Somewhere deep in the recesses of the gray matter I've gotten myself convinced that I can't sustain a score at that level. You won't believe what happened a few weeks ago.

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Why I Play Golf

I didn't get to play golf today. Too much work to do. But I thought I could at least take a minute to collect my thoughts here on why I play golf. My work requires me to live almost constantly in problem solving mode. I do web programming which means I've learned (and am still learning) several programming languages that are used mainly on the Internet by a web server telling it what to send to your browser.

There's always a challenge of some kind or always something that has to be learned. So, there's never a mental break. I've been living like this for several years now too. It's easy to get overwhelmed to the point of mental paralysis. On the one hand, I love the challenge and the creative side of what I do but on the other hand, sometimes I just need a mental break. So, I play golf.

What? Did I hear you question my sanity? You need a mental break so you play golf!? Exactly! Here's why.

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The Dreaded Golf Gorilla

Somewhere inside of me is a golf gorilla. I don't summons him into action, he just shows up right at the last second and takes over my swing. He ruins everything. The golf gorilla is polite during my practice swing. That nice easy swing I seem to be able to execute flawlessly anywhere but on the ball! There's no sign of him anywhere. He doesn't even seem to be present until I get almost at the top of my golf swing. I say, almost because that's when he shows up.

He jumps into the scene, takes over my body and doesn't even allow me to finish my backswing. Starts the downswing way too early and makes me swing way to fast and way out of control. Sometimes he causes me to top the golf ball as a result of a wierd little standing up on my toes thing I do in the middle of a brute force swing.

I swear I'm not doing any of this on purpose. It's the golf gorilla, I'm telling you. You gotta believe me.

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Golf Emotions

Control Your Swing? Control Your Temper!

Today I thought to myself, "I think I'll stay home and spend some time with the wife. After all, she's heading out of town tomorrow and I can play golf on another day in the late afternoon while she's gone." Well, I found out that she was not going out of town and that she and my daughter were taking a trip to look at wedding stuff all morning since my daughter is getting married in a few months! Arggg! I lost the chance to play with my normal group!

So, I thought, hmmmm, I'll go out there anyway. They'll put me with someone or I'll see somebody I know that needs a 4th, etc. As soon as I walked in to the pro-shop I saw a guy I had met and played with once before. What I remembered about him was his temper. He would hit a bad shot, which he did quite regularly, and proceed to verily beat himself up about it so loudly and so dramatically that it made me and the rest of our group a little uncomfortable. That day, I tried to be extremely positive. I thought it might be a good example to him since I wasn't hitting a lot of great shots myself. Didn't work.

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