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 headed to the golf course this afternoon for some quality time with putting and chipping, but the Minneapolis weather was anything but quality.  The wind was blowing so hard it nearly moved me during my setup — the balls I hit into the wind went nowhere!  And then it started to rain.  I got in one round of practice chip shots using my newly acquired Golftec chipping techniques and one round of putts.  Call me a fair weather golfer, but staying out there in the rain just wouldn’t have been productive.  Oh well, I gave it a try.  Tomorrow is supposed to be back up in the 60s, much better than today’s 46 degrees/ “feels like 38″ with 35 mph gusts.  I’ll head back to the range for practice under more conducive conditions.

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.

Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve suddenly gotten worse at something you could do decently at one point? My putting has totally fallen apart. What used to be a somewhat smooth stroke has become a choppy, stop-start motion and I can’t seem to aim anymore. On the last hole of 9 this morning, I found a clue about what the problem is when I accidentally touched my ball on my practice swing.  (Yikes.)  It seems I’ve been setting up too close to the ball. This has been crowding my arms and not allowing for that pendulum-like motion I was trying for.  I’ll have to get out on the course tomorrow to see if my initial assessment proves correct.  And a putting lesson might help.