Rookie on the Green

Today was my first day ever to play in a golf league.  I had a great time but played a horrible round.  The ladies I was paired with were all very experienced golfers and were very gracious about my struggling, and gave me lots of good pointers.  For some reason, my drives, usually the strongest part of my game, were way off both in terms of direction and power.  But for a change, I made almost every short putt I attempted — that was a huge improvement.  The key was to focus on just barely tapping the ball as opposed to crushing it like I usually do (this is why my husband calls me Golfzilla when I putt).  Maybe I’m finally getting a feel for toning down the overenthusiastic putts.  I think this league play will improve my game a lot over the summer (and there’s a lot of room for improvement), so I’m glad I went for it.

I’m a very patient, laid-back person, but the guy we got paired with for 18 holes today got on even my nerves.  To set the stage, my husband and I were walking the course and this guy and his friend had a cart.

Things started off badly when on the first hole, the guy drove his cart right in front of us on the fairway as we were setting up to hit our second shots.  No amount of yelling could dissuade him, so we went for it and had to yell fore because he was sitting in the path of the ball in the cart.  It was pretty hard to understand why someone would do this, and he did it on just about every hole.  He was just oblivious, when common courtesy (and common sense) is not to stand in front of or park your cart in front of someone who’s hitting a shot.

The problem got worse and worse the more beer the guy drank (and he was the only one drinking). He also got slower and slower on his shots to the point that even though he had the cart and we were walking, we always ended up waiting on him — it got to the point he was really holding up the pace of play.

The most unfortunate side effect of all the beer was that the guy felt the need to relieve himself behind every tree (and on a fence, and even on the sidewalk next to a tee box).  It seemed like every time I looked up, he was doing it again.  Ay caramba!  That was downright disgusting.  I did everything in my power not to shake his hand at the end of the round, but somehow I was forced into it!  At least I gave him my glove hand…blechhh!!!  To top it all off, he kept on calling me “hon” and “honey” in a really obnoxious way throughout the round.

One kind of funny thing did happen, though.  I think even the guy’s friend was (FINALLY) starting to notice that the guy was really out of it.  On about my 5th shot on a par 4, I happened to land the ball in the hole from about 50 yards out (yes!).  The guy was convinced it was a hole in one and that if he signed the witness card I could get my name in the paper.  His friend had to yell at him for him to believe that this was not actually a hole in one.

Bottom line:  we would have had a much better outing without all the frustrations this guy brought on — it just wasn’t a pleasant time.  It was hard to focus and was just constantly aggravating.  Maybe we should have just let him and his friend play ahead of us to wash our hands of the bad apple.  The moral of the story:  please, please, please don’t be THAT GUY!

Putting, Before and After

Well, this picture of my horrid “before” putting stance and much-improved “after” says it all. Nothing like seeing a picture of how badly you’re doing to knock some sense into you.

You can see in the “before” that my back is hunched over, my legs are bent too much, and my hands are nearly against my thighs.  Here’s what my instructor taught me to lead to the new, improved “after” photo:

1.  Hips over heels.  This fixed a lot of things, including having my hands too close to my legs and having bent legs and a hunched back.

2.  Eyes over ball.  With hips over heels, you bend at the waist instead of the knees to get your eyes directly above the ball.

3.  Ball forward of center in the stance.

4.  Knees not too bent.  Again, a function of hips over heels.

5.  Change grip to have left hand on the bottom for now. This kept my wrists from breaking through the putt, gave my wrists more stability and aligned my forearms closer to parallel with the club instead of at a sharper angle.  The left-hand-on-bottom grip was also simpler and felt more natural than the modified claw grip I’d tried out last fall.

Here are a couple of the GolfTec drills my instructor gave me to practice what I learned:

-Ladder drill.  Put a line of six golf balls going out from the hole in one-foot increments.  Take a practice swing before hitting each ball.  You can’t move on until you get the balls in consecutively.  For instance, if you get the first ball in, you can move to the second.  You can’t go to the third unless you get in the first and second on the first try, and so on.  Do the drill until you can go through five rotations, making every putt.

-Lag drill.  This drill helps you learn distance control for lag putts (long putts you don’t expect to make but hope to get close to the hole).  Put a club on the ground three feet behind the hole, perpendicular to the line of the putt, such that the club will stop the ball if you hit it too far.  Practice putting five balls each from 20, 30 and 40 feet.  You get no points if the ball hits the club or stops short of the hole.  You get one point if the ball goes into the hole or stops between the hole and the club.  Do the drill until you’re getting at least 12 of 15.

I went to the driving range today and the wind was just howling.  To make matters worse it was coming directly into the range so every ball I hit had to battle straight into the wind.  Not good for the ol’ self esteem.  The ball even blew way off course on the putting green.  I did find one simple putting drill that seemed to redeem my visit.  The putting green has a little hole just bigger than the golf ball with a sign for the “little hole drill” just like this one.  Basically, you start at one foot away and don’t progress to two feet until you’ve made two putts in a row, and so on.  I got stuck at four feet for quite a while.  This drill really increased my focus and it felt like I honed in on where to aim in a way I hadn’t managed to do with the regular-sized holes.  The regular holes seemed like huge targets when I moved back to them.  This is such a simple drill, but I think it could have a big impact if done consistently.

My first putting lesson resulted in a totally new grip. I had been using a conventional grip with my left index finger and right pinkie interlaced. I was struggling to keep my wrists stable and had way too much wiggle in my stroke. My instructor tried out various grips with me and settled on a modified “claw” grip. My left hand goes in the club as usual, but the right hand comes in from behind the club so that the club rests in the “V” between the thumb and index finger, with the thumb and fingers all extended forward. Some claw grips have the thumb and fingers pointing towards the hole (see this Sports Illustrated story), or coming from behind but wrapped around the grip. The modification my instructor gave me seemed to provide the most stable movement for me. My instructor had me adjust my stance so that the ball was closer to my front foot, rather than in the center of my stance. He also had me get closer to the ball so that when I looked down at it, my head was basically over the ball. I have seen improvements from the increased stability of this grip. On the long road ahead, at least this is a start.