Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been busy with life and haven’t touched a club in 3 weeks 😦 I will be out of town for a week starting next weekend at a work conference so I won’t have a chance to pick up a club until Halloween weekend, which might be fitting since my swing will probably be pretty scary.
On a happy note, I haven’t played because my I was busy with my older daughter’s wedding last weekend. Joy!
Well, I thought I had made friends with my new swing and that when I went to the course tonight, my new friend would be there for me. Like so many friends, it seems like my swing is only there when its convenient for it. The swing showed up inconsistently. Seriously WTF?!?!
I admit, I was over-swinging the first few holes and after about the 4th hole had a few really good ball strikes. Thank God I was putting like a fiend….except for the first hole where I 3-putted and the sixth hole where I 4-putted. But I also had 5 2-putts, 2 1-putts, sank a 25-footer and put some 20-30 foot putts within 3 feet of the hole.
I need to try to get the swing back so I can have some distance again. I did hit my 4H 184 yards. Just wish I could do that consistently.
Here’s the card…
And this is what it did to my percent bogey/par measure. At least its moving in the right direction.
I really want to play this weekend. I’ll go out by myself if I have to.
Went to the range tonight to continue working on this swing adjustment Keith is trying to get me to make. The two main things are an inside out swing path and eliminating my drift to the left as I start my downswing and move to impact.
Its been tough going so far. Didn’t feel natural, hardly any decent ball strikes, just bad all over. I sent Keith a text a few days ago saying,”I’m not a big fan of this new swing, FYI.” He told me to stay the course, as usual, and that it would get better. While the lesson went ok and I could execute it somewhat while he was around, I struggled mightily trying to do it by myself.
But, I played on Sunday and went to the range Tuesday and tonight. I got progressively better with each swing on Tuesday and ended up hitting some really solid shots…including three really solid 3W that went straight, good trajectory and about 200 yards. I’ll take it.
I went to the range tonight and just hit my 9, 7 and 5H. Some inconsistency but the swing started feeling more and more natural. Best thing was the ball flight. I was started to see the draw that Keith is so obsessed with.
I decided to play the little par 3 course at the range to work on my short game. 4 pars, one birdie, four bogeys. Not too bad. Ball flight was good, still don’t know which club to hit from 80, 90 or 100 yards because of the inconsistency in the ball strike. But I chipped, pitched and putted well. Sank 3 or 4 10-15 ft putts. That felt good.
I’m playing tomorrow at Rolling Meadows…or as some call it, Rolling Ghettos. The course is not known for having pristine conditions. But, I get to play with some of the folks from the golf league so that will be fun, Lets hope my game doesn’t dampen the fun.
You’ll hear about it either way.
Well, today I did the dangerous combination of a lesson followed by a round of golf. Lesson was great. Really felt like I made a lot of progress with using my body and physics to power the club, not my arms as I’ve been doing. Felt really smooth and natural. Of course, since I had about things Keith had me working on, to use the Statistical Process Control definition, the process of my swing was totally out of control. Like 18 sigma for you statistical nerds out there. I knew I had about 2 weeks of letting this new swing “cure” with time on the range and in the back yard before it would be productive.
I sent Keith a text after the lesson and told him I was playing a new course with a slope rating of 141. He told me to just play golf, try to keep the tension out of my arms and have only one swing thought. Well, that’s easy for him to say but when he tells me something…or things….I chew on them like a dog with a bone and find it hard to let them go.
So, I went out on this new course and had zero solid ball strikes. Just too much going on. But I scrambled through and shot a 55. My putting saved me. Yes, I 4-putted the first hole but then 2-putted every other hole except the hole that I 1-putted. The only holes I got par or bogey were the two par 3’s.
Here’s the card….
And this is what its done to my progress metric. Its really leveling off. Need to increase the angle on that line.
I was proud of one shot on hole #3. I was about 60 yards from the green that required a shot over a creek and sand trap and onto a green elevated about 20 feet above. It looked like this but it doesn’t do it justice.
I pitched up hoping to bounce it off the hill just beyond the trap and have it roll down into the hole…hey, a girl can dream can’t she?!?!. Well, I got it up to the hill just beyond the trap and it got caught in the grass. Chip and 2-putt from there. Bummer.
But, it was a beautiful course on a beautiful afternoon. And once I can get some of the work from the lesson fully integrated into my swing, I’m hopeful for a big jump. Hope is what keeps me going.
I was reading a blog post in the Harvard Business Review that I saw on LinkedIn that talks about how to continuously improve and keep discouragement at bay. This part made a lot of sense to me in the context of my attempt to learn to play golf…
When systems behave linearly and react immediately, we tend to be fairly accurate with our forecasts. This is why toddlers love discovering light switches: cause and effect are immediate. The child flips the switch, and on goes the light. But our predictive power plummets when there is a time delay or non-linearity, as in the case of a CEO who delivers better-than-expected earnings only to wonder at a drop in the stock price.
That’s the problem with my swing. I can never predict what changes or effort will bring results. Was it the new thing I started last week or was it that I finally got competent at something I’ve been working on since the beginning?
In complex systems like a business (or a brain), cause and effect may not always be as clear as the relationship between the light switch and the light bulb. There are time-delayed and time-dependent relationships in which huge effort may yield little in the near-term, or in which high output today may be the result of actions taken a long time ago.
The writer also talks about Dan McLaughlin a commercial photographer who quit his job at the age of 30 with the goal of spending 10,000 hours of deliberate practice so he could become a professional golfer. He’s a third of the way into his 10,000 hours, 27 months of training and has a 5.9 handicap. If only I can get somewhere near a single digit handicap.
Here’s a chart from the blog post about moving toward mastery.
As we look to develop competence within a new domain of expertise, moving up a personal learning curve, initially progress is slow. But through deliberate practice, we gain traction, entering into a virtuous cycle that propels us into a sweet spot of accelerating competence and confidence. Then, as we approach mastery, the vicious cycle commences: the more habitual what we are doing becomes, the less we enjoy the “feel good” effects of learning: these two cycles constitute the S-curve.
I have never felt like my golf game has achieved the period of hypergrowth depicted on the chart.
And the results from my progress chart don’t show it either. Unless those cycles only last 2 weeks and I end up not too much ahead of where I started.
I’ll keep plugging away and continue my quest for competence….and follow Dan to see what “all in” looks like.
I had a lesson on Thursday and Keith was working with me to have a more inside-out swing path, starting my hip turn sooner and eliminating a “slide” or what looks on video like a push of my shoulders rather than a rotation on the downswing. So, I took that out to the course today without having any time to hit balls after the lesson to work through some of the mechanics. Although I have been doing a “loop drill” he taught me and working with his swing trainer.
The front nine was good but I really fell apart on the back–50 on the front, 59 on the back. I wasn’t physically tired. Maybe mentally tired trying to figure out how to incorporate the new dynamics. My short game even fell apart and that’s the more consistent part of my game. The 1-putts on the card are a bit deceptive because those usually came after a miss on the short game and I could pitch or chip from the fringe. I only had one tee shot over 175 yards (190) and I usually have 4 or 5 over 175.
Need to spend more time working on the swing and getting on the course. Would love to play tomorrow. I’ll see if I can find someone to go out. If not, maybe I’ll go by myself.
I played my last night of league tonight. No competition, just out for fun. When I told my husband that this morning he said something about “No competition.” I said, “If we’re keeping score there’s competition, its just only with myself.” Whether its applied to golf or life in general, I love this quote by Ernest Hemingway, “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” That’s my goal with golf.
I was hitting the ball really well off the tee tonight even though I still haven’t had the guts to hit a wood since my last meltdown. But, my 4H is serving me pretty well. I had tee shots of 220, 192, 172, 171, 168 and 163. Now, I guess a 60-yard difference in one club may be a problem in the future but for now, I’m happy with the distance and solid shots. Can’t wait until I learn to hit a driver!!
Plus I only had 3 3-putts and I had 3 1-putts. Of course, the 1-putts weren’t always the best. Sometimes they came after a flubbed chip where I putted from the fringe and then only had 1 “official” putt.
Here’s the card…
And this is what my progress chart looks like….
All in all, a good night. I worked all day, played 9 holes of golf, did a P90X Shoulders & Arms and AbRipper workouts and now I have about an hour of work to do. But, I wanted to get the post done because I was happy with it. Except for the 6th hole when I went into the water TWICE…or the 5th hole where I had a great drive, flubbed second shot, decent third shot but then went in the thick grass left of the green, pitched into the trap, barely got out, pitched well and then 1 putted.
Pretty satisfied but lots of room for improvement.
As I tried to assess what happened to my swing from my progress (and optimism) on 8/5 and 8/7 to my meltdown on 8/9 I remembered that my shoulder starting bothering me the morning of the 8th. A year ago May, I broke my arm in a cycling crash in the last 25 miles of a 200- mile bike ride. You can read about that here, which led to 3 months of physical therapy, 8 electrostim acupuncture treatments and another 2 months of physical therapy to deal with the frozen shoulder.
I emailed my sports medicine doc (which bothers me that I have what I consider my personal sports medicine doc) and she thinks there may be some “impingement” from a bigger shoulder. Said I should come in for an appointment and bring a 7 or 8-iron. She played golf in college…maybe she can give me some pointers while I’m there. 🙂
Went out this morning and played with my neighbor. We went to a course I’ve never played before that he plays a lot because its not crowded and not expensive, Rolling Meadows. The course has a slope rating of 119 compared to the course I usually play for league, Golf Club of Dublin that has a slope of 128. Not really sure how that would equate to changes in score but I did OK today, more solid ball strikes on target and waaaaaay fewer 3 putts. The putting was a real challenge for me because the greens at GCOD are really fast, like pool table fast and the greens here were much slower but I adjusted well and averaged 2.22 putts per hole and only 3-putted 3 times. Here’s the card
And here’s what a 50% bogey or better ratio did to my progress chart.
Maybe my success is due to the course being easier but I’ll continue to be happy (and ignorant) until someone points out that a 10-point slope difference equates to a 10 stroke difference and then I’ll be depressed again….but satisfied because I will have punched that person as hard as I can and as much as I work out (thanks Tony Horton for the KenpoX workout) I’m hoping that’s pretty hard!
Well, the family all went in other directions tonight–my husband went to work and my daughter was going out with a friend–so I decided to play golf. I called my league course on the way home to see if they had a tee time available for 9 holes that evening. They said they could pair me with a threesome at 6:06. I’ve only played with people I don’t know once….when my partner who shall remain nameless was a no-show. I was worried I’d be paired with some uber-good golfers or some assholes.
Well, I got paired with two very nice ladies who were right on my level. So it was a nice, stress-free round. I went in thinking that I should not try so hard and just get the club into position and let my body and the physics do the rest. I improved my score from last night and got it closer to where I had been scoring.
The chart is looking better.
And here’s the scorecard…
Love.Hate.Golf 