Finally, a lot practice feels like it pays off

[B-Con]

I got out and played my first 9 holes of the year today on an easy course (mainly drive then pitch / short iron), and although I didn't score anything special (carded a differential of about 22), I left the course very encouraged. First, I only flubbed one shot. - I hit a lot of bad shots, but I only completely flubbed one - my first iron of the day. After that, I made reasonable contact with every ball I swung at. It may not seem like a big deal, but when even the thin shots get off the ground well and travel about the right distance, and mishit shots are still going the right direction with a reasonable trajectory, it feels great. My consistency is definitely better, and the hitting fat problems that plagued me last year had definitely subsided. (Knock on wood.) But more importantly, my pitching and chipping, which for so long was the achilles heel of my game, came together beautifully. 1st hole: I chipped on with my GW from about 20 yards of the pin to within about 8 feet. The ball was pin-high, but I thought there was more break to the green. A better read would've easily gotten me to 4 feet. 2nd hole: I did almost the exact same thing. 3rd hole: I used a 3/4 swing on my PW from about 60 yards and landed the ball not 5 feet from the pin and the ball stopped about 15 feet from it. 4th hole: I got myself to the fringe about 4 inches from the green and about 15 feet from the pin. I figured I "should" use my putter, but I muttered to myself and said I'd just make the chip. I didn't make it, but I left it literally 1 inch short of the cup. 5th hole: Another GW from about 15 yards left me about 6 feet from the cup. Not great, but that was mostly because I misread the break and aimed way too high. 6th hole: My shot came up just short and left on a par 3, and I had about a 20 yard pitch to the pin. I executed the perfect pitch and put my GW to about five feet of the pin and the ball bounced off the flagstick, stopping about 6 inches from the cup. 7th: A great drive left me 20 yards short of the green and maybe 27 short of the pin. I put my GW to about 15 feet and made the birdie putt. 8th: I chipped uphill from 10 yards and left myself about 5 feet from the hole. 9th: I chipped uphill from 20 yards and left myself about 7 feet from the hole. Obviously since I was using my wedge to get onto every single green, my iron accuracy was not there (pull / pull-drawing most of my shots), but I left myself with a makeable 1-putt and dead-easy 2-putt every time I pulled my wedge. It wasn't a P-Mac performance, but I was happy that most of my close-up wedge work fell within a 10 foot radius and not one of them was a bad strike of the ball, my worst misses were all due to mis-reading the green. Definitely improvement, and definitely a confidence boost. Unfortunately, mediocre putting (the greens were so slow I just couldn't get used to them), pull / pull-draw irons (my typical iron miss these days), and inconsistent driving (haven't practiced with the driver very much at all, too focused on irons/wedges/hybrids) compensated for my good wedge work, but even still my misses all involved solid contact. My high score mainly came from two-putting almost everything, a costly two-stroke course management mistake when I got myself in trouble, and a terrible hook into the trees on the last hole that cost me about two strokes to get out of. When my first outing feels like a moderately bad shooting day (minus the wedges, of course) and I get a differential of 22, I'm encouraged that 2011 will be very different than 2010. Thank goodness. Can't wait to start evolvr.