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About this blog

As I have joined the PGA recently as an apprentice, I can play in local tournaments and other cool tournaments in the PNW as a pro. I'll just detail certain tournaments and/or what I do to prepare for them.  

Entries in this blog

WA Assistant's Championship

Played yesterday in the WA Assistant's Championship at Fircrest GC.  Weather ended up being perfect despite the tendency this time of year to rain. I ended up shooting even par 71 and T-4th. The round started off interesting, with a duck hook drive into the woods left. I punched it out to 100yds and stuck the 3rd to 8ft which I made to save par. My irons overall were good. The tough part about this time of year is getting distance dialed in as the air starts to cool, so needless to say I was

phillyk

phillyk

Is It Important to Have a Caddy on Tour?

This isn't apart of my normal road to championship stuff, but just something I thought about a lot in the Kuchar caddy payment thread. Part of the Kuchar issue is what role the caddy actually played, in his win.  But, it begs the larger question of what does a caddy really do for a Tour player? Besides the normal role of carrying a bag and raking bunkers, etc., a caddy is, imo, in essence a GPS for the player, a support person, and sometimes a coach.  Not that the player can't get the inf

phillyk

phillyk

WA Assistant's Championship

My last entry mentioned the Pro-Assistant, so I will start there.  We played Willamette Valley CC in Canby, OR for the two-day Best Ball event.  My boss and I played better than last year.  We had a couple blemishes, but had several birdies drop to finish T-10th (out of 54 teams) at -8.  Winning team was at -16 and won by 4 strokes.  I struggled to hit the ball straight Day 1, but once I got my stance aligned correctly, I hit the ball good.  My stance had been closed by quite a bit and I was hit

phillyk

phillyk

Another Season Started

March always marks the beginning of the golf season in WA.  We have pro-ams starting up, the temperature starts to get back into the 50's, and the winter rains start to lessen and go away.  So, it's time to start getting back into some serious practice and see how low we can go this year.  In the beginning of February, I decided to get over it and make a change to my swing that it needed.  It was flat, loopy, flippy, bizarre, and too many things needed to happen correctly to make it work.  I man

phillyk

phillyk

The Zone

Well winter has really set in, here in Western Washington, with snow a week ago and now blustery rainy days that won't end until April.  I've done a lot of reflection after the Newport Cup because of how well I played that final day.  It was a good way to end my season.  I knew that my swing had been coming around and that there were only a few swing thoughts I wanted to keep track of.  I had a good warm-up that day, not doing anything special.  Just getting finding the rhythm and the way the ba

phillyk

phillyk

Recent Hot Streak Part 2

Now to the Newport Cup. I've been so pumped for this event ever since I was selected to play in it.  But, it's nerve wrecking, for me, because you're meeting people you've known for a couple years over the forum, but want to impress them I guess?  I don't know how to explain it other than because I'm a +1 cap, how can I prove that I play well?  Not many people can say they're a scratch golfer and when we see new people come on the forum and say this and that, we are all skeptical until prov

phillyk

phillyk

Recent Hot Streak Part 1

I haven't really written a lot about my golf this season, so I'll talk about recent tournament rounds, that I can remember, including some in the Newport Cup. Part 1 will cover before Cup events.  Part 2 will be Cup stuff.  Just separating my thoughts a bit. I don't remember when I first started the swing thoughts I have now, but I've been working with them for a few months now and it really seems to make my game consistently better and better.  In my pre-shot routine, I start with my

phillyk

phillyk

Teaching Seminar

I recently came back from my PGA education seminar in Florida.  The instructor, Joe Plecker, is a PGA Master Professional in instruction and GOLF Magazines top-100 instructor .  Gosh, he made it look so easy.  I just wanted to share some things he told us about. It started by having a girl in the class stand up and get into a golf posture then take an imaginary swing.  Her hip turn tried to turn around her right leg and the inside of her right foot came off the ground.  He mentioned her kne

phillyk

phillyk

Love/Hate relationship with scramble formats

Yesterday was the annual Ball Buster at my course.  This is where you tip out the course, if not longer, and put pins on the middle of a slope and/or the edges of the greens.  Course played tough, but was even harder because of the weather.  The first 9 holes were played in a windy, rain storm.  After 9, the rain stopped and the wind picked up even more.  Greens rolled well, but fairways are soggy.  Every winter, the fairways go to soggy messes.   Scrambles are always fun to play in.  I enj

phillyk

phillyk

My Golf Journey

Well, I've hit 1,000 posts here. Woohoo! Took me long enough (almost 6yrs).  So I thought I'd do the whole journey of golf thing like other posters have done, although I'll abbreviate it as much as I can so this doesn't get too long.  Just fyi, I'm a terrible story teller. Ufta, it is a little long, but enjoy!  Child, born in 1990, to 15yrs old  I started before I knew what I was doing.  My parents got me the blue plastic, double-sided iron and putter with wiffle balls that I could smack a

phillyk

phillyk

Friend who swings at 144mph

Working at a golf course, you meet all sorts of golfers with different goals and aspirations.  Jay started out by working as a cart kid and played golf a little bit.  A taller fellow who just wanted to rip it.  It was always funny looking at his clubs.  It was a bunch of different club makers and irons and wedges, because he kept braking everything quickly from swinging hard and hitting turf or sand or something.  He also went through drivers super fast.  One day working he got injured and tore

phillyk

phillyk

Putting it together

I had a pro am tourney today and shot a (-2) 70.  It's hard to quantify the round versus how the round would have gone with my driver.  As my last blog post said, my driver broke on Friday.  So today I played with no driver.  I do have an older SLDR S, but I just don't feel comfortable with it and the misses with it are really bad.  So, I thought it best to leave it at home.  Luckily, this course isn't the longest so I really didn't need more than 3 wood. Some stats for the round: 8/14FW and

phillyk

phillyk

Broken Driver, again!

UGH!!! So, earlier this summer I had noticed that my driver, Ping G30 LS TEC, had a crack on the face, toe side.  The biggest thing I noticed was the sound.  It seemed really dead.  So I sent it in and picked a new G30 LS TEC off the rack.  Same shaft, same driver.  But, it felt better as in the weight throughout the shaft felt heavier in my hand than towards the head of the driver.  I liked it and hit it better immediately and the sound was much better.  THEN, today I hit a few drives with the

phillyk

phillyk

PGA Assistants Championship Qualifier

Yesterday was our section's PGA Assistants Championship Qualifier at Fairwood G&CC (full results found at https://2016secassistant.golfgenius.com/pages/593656).  This tournament is a 36 hole qualifier, shotgun format.  First round was at 7:45 and next at 12:45.  3 spots were available to move on to Florida for the championship rounds in October.  Weird thing, I thought, was that you could ride for this event.  I assumed we had to walk so I took my push cart I recently got from TST and walked

phillyk

phillyk

Pro-Am tourney

After coming off of my men's league 31, I was excited to go to this championship course (Tumble Creek Golf Club) to see if I can continue the streak of good play.  As we were driving into the course, the first thing to notice was high winds.  It was very windy.  One of my guys had his ball roll away on the green before he set up.  The ball was almost always oscillating when on the green when the gust came through.  So, on the range, my plan was to practice some lower flighted shots to play for t

phillyk

phillyk

Playing with an old Pro

A week ago or so, I finally met a local PGA Pro who I had heard a lot about and plays here and there on the senior PGA circuit and co-runs a golf academy.  Our local golf pro's play in a match play event in spring that brings all of us together and have a double elimination match play over the course of a few months.  It's a lot of fun, and for me being relatively new, it gives me a chance to really meet all the other pros in my area. I won't use his name, but he played a few years on the PGA

phillyk

phillyk

Finding the rhythm again

Played in an event yesterday at Tacoma C&GC.  My overall conclusion on how I played was pretty good, but I still have to work out how to hit tee shots.  Finished with a 77, so moving in the right direction in actual events.  Practice rounds at my home course are still around even par or under.  Not the same I know, but it tells me that I can play.  I just have to get comfortable playing in real events and just play my game. The course was in great shape even with all the rain we've had th

phillyk

phillyk

Can talk the talk, but can't walk the walk

It sucks to admit, but I can't perform when it comes to tournament play.  I over-estimated my ability by a lot at Sahalee.  Was it my swing, my plan, or simply I haven't had enough tournament experience yet to be comfortable?   I'd say a combination of everything. Sahalee is not a course you can walk onto the first time and expect to make a great score, which I thought I could do.  Its tree-lined right off the fairway.  But more than that, it forces very specific shots from the tee box.  One

phillyk

phillyk

Quick Round at Home

During the day today, I was thinking about what I could do to improve the swing, particularly the long clubs.  I thought about recent videos and that I feel a little crunched at impact.  I know i need better extension at impact.  So, I tried putting the ball further away from me with my longer clubs, with exception to the 3W.  I wanted to not stretch for the ball, but feel further away than before.  My mid irons I didn't move quite as much and the low irons and wedges I didn't move at all. I de

phillyk

phillyk

Game Plan - Sahalee

Warning- This is a long post! As my last blog post stated, my game plan / course management for Oakbrook did not exist, so I'm going to do a little brain storming for Sahalee.  There are 3 different 9's, North, East, and South.  I don't know which nines are played each day, so I'll do all three, and I'm not 100% sure of the tee set, so I'm going to do the blue tee boxes.  I very highly doubt they'll play the tips, and I think it'll be a mix of white and blue tee boxes, but better to plan for a l

phillyk

phillyk

Pro-am at Oakbrook GC

I played at RMG at Oakbrook on the 5th of October.  Most Pro-ams play at the tees around 6500yds, with pin locations set to moderate difficulty. Up to this point, the strongest part of my game has been short irons and wedges.  The weak part of my game has been driver and long irons.  I believe this has been due to a poor rotation around my spine and maintaining that angle through impact, both of which have been getting much better.  I have a tendency to pull up a bit and mishit the longer clubs

phillyk

phillyk



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    • FINALLY hit some balls this weekend. I did a short range session Saturday.  Hit only 20 balls.  10 with 8 Iron & 10 with Driver.  Overall the foot felt good during the session but I did notice I was not fully turning and was rather flat footed on the last couple of shots.  In the past that usually happened as the pain in my ankle kicked up but this time I did not feel pain...AT THAT TIME.  About 30 minutes after the range session pain clearly kicked in and I had to ice that evening.  I
    • While both of these are true, of the two I'd peg beer as the greater of two evils. It turns out the problem, maybe the greater problem with alcohol isn't just the empty calories, but alcohol also raises your cortisol level. Increased cortisol encourages your body to save/add fat. Chocolate, conversely, particularly dark chocolate, can actually help lower cortisol. I've all but given up alcoholic beverages. This coming from a man with an enviable stock in spirits (particularly Bourbon,
    • I agree with all comments 100%.  I did speak about it with PT today and they felt I should be able to swing and asked if my not doing it was due to pain or due to lack of confidence.  Right notwI would say maybe both.  I've not even tried a normal speed swing.  Just now I finished a short walk after lunch and the foot is hurting so I am thinking a true swing could cause some pain, or at a minimum discomfort.  Either way, discomfort or pain would inhibit a successful Stack session. The frust
    • Yes, this. Stack is not rehab. And you don't want to train yourself to swing slowly.
    • Make sure you are really confident with swinging fast before you start Stack. Stack is going to ask you to swing as hard as you can 20+ times during a session. If you're still a little tentative, I would be worried about injuring yourself and not getting as much out of it as you could.  And repeating what others have said, don't beat yourself up about having chocolate and beer. If your diet is to eliminate those things entirely, it's going to be harder to be successful with it. Much better
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