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About this blog

A documentation of my journey both as a golfer and through the PGA PGM Program.

Entries in this blog

Week 10: Titleist

Another week down, and we’re nearing the end of the semester. Here’s what happened this week: Wed. (10/19): Wednesday afternoon I had a putting lesson, specifically lag putts, in response to poor putting at The Cardinal. Here are two key points that I took away: •Match the follow through with the backswing. I never realized that my backswing and follow through on my putts didn’t match, so this one was big. •Look at the hole during the practice strokes. This, he said, was to train

Weeks 8 & 9: Catchup

Hey guys! I unfortunately forgot to post here for week 8 but I’m back to report on my last two weeks to catch up!   WEEK 8 (Oct 3-9) Tues. (10/4): I turned Tuesday of this week into a practice session. I decided to hone my short game, and I essentially did everything I did in the previous week’s short game session, except I hit shots from multiple spots around the green. I came away from the practice session very confident about the Monarch Tour event that I was playing in th

What To Do Here?

As I just posted in “What’d You Shoot Today?”, my brother played his first full eighteen in a while. Well, I say full eighteen, but he didn’t exactly play the entire round. He quit on a few holes and didn’t play the last hole. He dropped at my ball when he lost a ball. As I’ve mentioned several times, he wants to be on the team. Keep those details in mind. The reason why I mention this: he was texting with our grandpa after the round (our grandpa loves to hear about our rounds), and when he

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My Senior Golf Season: What I Know

Hey guys! Finally found a good time to write my first blog post of the 2022 golf season! I don’t really have anything specific to write about, so for the opening post I’ll stick to the state of my game currently and what I know (not much) about the golf season itself. MY GOLF GAME My last two 18-hole rounds were about two weeks ago (the 12th and 13th) and I shot an 82 at Greensboro National and an 86 at Umstead, both rounds from the whites. In Greensboro and on the front nine at U

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And So It Begins…

Over the past two weeks or so, I’ve been listening to a podcast on iTunes called Chasing Scratch. Two guys started in August 2017 with 11 handicaps, and they gave themselves about fifteen months (end of November 2018) to get to scratch. Short story: they didn’t (I think the lowest either of them got was a 5.6), but it inspired me. In the past week or so, I’ve decided to start my OWN quest, but it’s not to get to scratch. My goal: to get a single-digit handicap by next golf season (which wil

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Match Day #2

There is honestly a lot to say about our match today. As you’ll see later, we made a really good run today! Now to the round. I hit range balls beforehand, and from my very first shot (a striped 8I), I could tell today was going to be a good day. Good shot after good shot on the range, and I was building confidence with each one. After putting for about 20 minutes, and hitting some really good putts, I was ready. I’ll do a hole by hole analysis. Yardages from the tees we played, but the fou

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Slipping Up Just a Bit

I managed to get in three rounds this week, improving my score each time: a 97 on Monday (44-53), a 96 on Wednesday (48-48) and a 94 on Thursday (50-44). Chipping/pitching was rock solid this week, which I was pleased to see. I hit a lot of my <50-yard chips/pitches inside ten feet, and a handful of those inside five, including a chip in. Easily the best part of my game as of right now. I feel a little less confident about tee shots. I did have some really good ones, but there was a

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Brother and the Team

Here’s a new blog post that I’m hoping to keep going. As some of you may know, I have a younger brother (he’s 14 now) who’s shown an increasing amount of interest in golf. He didn’t come to the course much with me in the summer, which I think is mainly because of the heat. He doesn’t like being in the heat for a ton of time or sweating a lot, which I tried to explain to him several times that if he ends up making the team, our coach is gonna want him playing tournaments over the summer.But now t

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Match Day!!

Hey y’all! Been a long time since I’ve posted in this blog in my quest to get into single digits, but I have made some good progress: my handicap is currently 11.3 and everything feels good right now. However, something has cropped up: a coworker and I are going to play an 18-hole match Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what we were thinking: •We play Croasdaile, the course where we both work. After a fair bit of discussion, we decided to play the blue/white hybrid tees (6241 yds, 70.8/133). 

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Week 1: The Beginning

Hey guys! As promised, here is my first post documenting my journey to becoming a member of the PGA of America! In this blog I will focus primarily on my golf game, but I will also go a little bit of what we went over in class when I feel it’s appropriate. For example, the Qualifying Level test is scheduled for October 6, and when I get my results I will post here. For this first week and a half or so (Aug 12-21) I will only go through highlights on the golf course. In class it was mainly j

Week 12: Monarch Cup

Four weeks left. It’s hard to believe that my first semester of college is only a month away from being over. Anyway, here’s what happened this week: Tuesday and Sunday: Stayed at the range for about an hour both days and focused primarily on strengthening my grip as recommended by @iacas. Thursday: After seeing me play last weekend and talking a bit, my dad suggested I hit more 4- and 5-irons on the range so I could become more comfortable with them. And on this day, that’s exactly wh

And We’re Off!

Here’s the first real post in this newly edited blog. As I’ve mentioned, my brother wants to be on the team with me next semester. He’s taken the initiative to want to practice, and he went by himself yesterday and hit a bucket of balls. From what I’ve heard, he didn’t hit them great, but I’m glad he’s starting to practice. We’ve got a new practice plan that revolves around our school schedule. On days when we’re meeting with teachers via Zoom (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday), we’re going to

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Match Day Revived

A bit of good news: the match that I was supposed to have with a coworker a few weeks ago is happening tomorrow. However, he only has time for nine holes (unless he tells me differently), so instead of the $60 wager we made (lunch and balls) we are just playing for lunch at the turn (meal, a side and a drink comes out to be around $10). Oh, and I have a bit of home field advantage: we are going to be playing Umstead Pines, my home course. He’s never played there before. My plan, just like d

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Week 5: The Struggle Continues

Hey guys! Here’s what happened in week 5 of the semester: Tuesday: I decided to head to the course after lunch so I’d be done in time for my 3:30 class. I pretty much just worked on what I’ve been working on the past few weeks, and I’m looking to get another lesson in the next couple of weeks as well. Wednesday: Two things happened Wednesday: •We worked on chipping in player development, and it went really well. We were given a couple of tips on chipping and pitching, and those al

Catch Up

FINALLY! I’m finally posting this entry to catch up on what has happened since my last post (November 7 I believe it was). And honestly, not a lot has happened. The rest of the semester was a blur as far as golf goes, and I haven’t played or practiced a ton this winter either. Here are a few highlights: 11/12: My second lowest round on Downback. Wasn’t the greatest start: +6 through five holes. I parred six through eight then bogeyed the ninth to make the turn in 43. My only bad hole on the

Journey to Sub-90 Land

Today rounds off a solid week of golf, with scores of 95-90-92. I’m getting so close to consistent scores under 90, but I need to figure out what I need to work on. Today, I’ll evaluate my game over the last three playing days, and give each category (Woods/Hybrids, Irons, Short Game, Putting) a letter grade. Woods/Hybrids: B. The driver is bringing the overall grade down. I’m slowly but surely getting rid of the slice, but it continues to haunt me every now and then, and when it fade, it s

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Week Two

I’ve been practicing quite a bit (mainly chipping and putting) over the past week, but unfortunately I’ve only gotten to play once, which was today. For the most part, I’m very pleased with how it worked out. Here’s the scorecard:      PAR: 4-4-3-5-4-4-3-4-5—36 SCORE: 4-4-3-6-4-5-4-5-5—40 As I mentioned on What’d You Shoot Today, conditions got tough starting on hole 4. We had at least a one-club wind, maybe two. I think I handled it well under those conditions (started on hole 4,

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First Match

Alright y’all! The 2021 golf season has already begun, but the first match is on Tuesday. Here’s how it works this year: •There are six teams in our conference, and either one or two teams will advance to regionals. That much is still unclear. •Last year, six players from each team played in matches. This year, only five are playing. I’m playing the 4th seed in our team. My brother unfortunately did not make the starting lineup. It was close, but he missed. •I still don’t know how

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Thursday’s Match

Time to update! Today I’ll be updating y’all on the match that took place last Thursday at Chapel Ridge. Surprisingly (and we didn’t even know this until halfway to the course), we were going to be doing tee times, opposed to the shotgun start we normally do. I ended up playing with one of my teammates, and after a good range session, we were off. I’ll go hole by hole here. No. 1: Par (E). Not a bad tee shot but it ran through the fairway and I had tree trouble. A great punch left me a

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Wrapping Up the Season/What’s Next?

Hey guys! Sorry to leave y’all in the dark about the last portion of the golf season, but here I am to catch y’all up!  April 19: This was the last non conference match of the season. Honestly I don’t remember much about this one, but I shot a 44 and went +6 in my last four holes. April 25: The conference tournament at Hillandale was on April 25. It was hot on this day, so I went easy on my warm up session and sat in the coach’s cart the last 10 minutes or so until my tee time. I

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Week 2: PAT

Time for my second post! This one will be solely focusing on my PAT from this weekend, because I was sick all week (wasn’t completely cleared until Friday) and wasn’t able to get to the course. I wasn’t sure if I was gonna have the energy to walk 18 on back to back days, but I couldn’t get a doctors note because they said “we’ve already cleared you”, so I didn’t have much of a choice. And I knew going in it wasn’t going to be easy. Sat.: Not much to say about this round. Front nine was cons

Week 11: Starting Again

I’m proud of how much work I was able to put in this week. I went for at least an hour every day Tuesday through Saturday. I won’t go day-by-day this week because all of my range days I worked on solidifying the grip @iacas talked about in the video, but I will go through some highlights. Wednesday: I went to the course after my 1:00 class and warmed up for my 3:20 Monarch Tour tee time. The format was a Tombstone, where we all got 33 shots and we put a flag where our 33rd shot ended up. 

Turning It Around!

Sorry I wasn’t able to post in this blog the past two weeks, but I wasn’t really able to do too much due to the weather being crappy here in Durham. But I’m keeping it going this week with some good news. I think I’m turning my game around. My ballstriking and chipping have been excellent this week, leading to scores of 90, 46 (nine holes), and a 94 today (with a 42 on the difficult back nine). I’ve hit several good shots from 130+ yards, including a dart I hit yesterday and a 7I to six fee

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Match Day #1

The first match was yesterday, and we all felt good about our games. So we pulled up to The Preserve at Jordan Lake with high hopes. After a good range session and a solid 15 minutes of putting, we began. It was shotgun start, and the seed you played determined the hole you started on. Because I played No. 4 on our team, I’d start on the fourth hole. We played the white tees, scorecard below: Actually a pretty solid start, although I did three-putt the fourth green. After a par on the

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Big Week Ahead

We’ve got a big week ahead of us. I believe there are only three matchesT left this season (two 18-hole matches), and two of them are this week. We’ve got a home match on Tuesday, and an 18-hole away match at Kerr Lake on Thursday.  As I said in my last entry, the top two teams go to regionals. We are now 4th in the standings (by how much, no idea), so we’ve got some work to do. Our plan for this week until Thursday: Weekend: Hit some balls into my net at home. Haven’t been able to get

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    • I continued icing the knee upon which I had surgery for at least a week after I stopped feeling any pain. Maybe longer. Anytime I worked that knee as part of my recovery therapy it got iced afterwards.
    • Not a bad idea.  Thx
    • I would suggest to ice as soon as you get home and don’t wait for pain. I did this through all my knee recovery.
    • 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,
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