billchao

Birdied #15 at Fox Hollow Country Club today. Par 5, hit the best drive I hit all day (very few drivers on this course) and hybrid just left of the green. Up and down for birdie.

@Hardspoon I second this. Anything would have had minor complaints about had nothing to do with you (starter at Cranberry Highlands, range being closed). I felt the outing was well organized, we had a clear game that was easy to understand and well explained, and the courses selected were great. Excellent work by you and @iacas who I’m sure helped. It was a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to the next one.

I felt really bad at the time because I made a judgement error and passed up two net pars fairly early on for the Red team that ended up costing us 5 strokes, but we ended up losing by 6. @dennyjones and I both played fairly well out of the gate and I felt we were going to catch a few net birdies that just didn’t happen and as a result I ended up having to count a quad on a hole for an unrelated mental lapse. I got a net skin on Saturday. Can’t tell you what hole or what it looked like 😃

I was joking with @dennyjones I hope that guy doesn’t have an aneurysm. He was all worked up for no reason. For the record, I don’t think it’s a bad hole. I think it’s quirky, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In five years it will be the only hole I remember from the course.

Reserve Run is a decent course. It kind of got a little quirky at times (#7, I’m looking at you) but it was a lot more forgiving than it appeared. There was usually an opportunity to play out from the trees between holes. I hit a bunch of shots to places I thought were dead only to find out the hole was wider than it appeared to be. I’d probably give it 6/10 - slightly above average course I’d be willing to play regularly. I’ve played Cranberry Highlands a couple of times before so I knew I liked the course going in. It’s almost completely different from Reserve Run in that all the trouble was right in front of you. You can see where you shouldn’t hit the ball, good luck not hitting it there. Definitely more penal on offline shots because the hay is almost impossible to hit out of at times (and believe me, I tried). I don’t really have anything bad to say about the course other than the starter who was complaining our group took too long to tee off and telling us we were backing up the first tee when everyone waiting was part of our outing. I’d say this course is a solid 7.5/10, worth going to if you’re in the area. @StuM and I were talking about the two courses after the round on Sunday and I told him I didn’t feel like I played worse at Cranberry but my score was much higher simply because it’s a harder course. Misses were much more punishing.

Arms go down. Let forearms turn. That is all. Nothing new, I feel like I have all the pieces I need to be good at this game and I just need to execute.

It was a lot of fun, thanks @Hardspoon and @iacas for putting this together. It was a lot of fun to play with old friends and new. Looking forward to the next one.

We’re going to see who is worse? Wait, we’re on the same team…

Your group is mixed tees, don’t be a wimp and make a decision already 😜

Black and Green for me.

What a coincidence, that’s what we say about your swing. Is it Saturday yet?

I don’t understand why this concept is hard for people. If the ball is lost, it is lost. It doesn’t matter where they think it should be, or whether they feel like it should be lost. The bottom line is they don’t have a ball in play. I play with some people that will just drop with one stroke (if they even take a stroke at all). Frankly, I don’t care since it’s not a competition, but if they go bragging at the bar later that they shot “85” because I will call them out on it every time.

You have my sincerest condolences. I didn't think it was possible but I am somehow worse at golf than the last time we met.

This is my take on it, as well. You don’t top the ball because you didn’t think hard enough, but screwing up the following shot because you’re angry about the last one and didn’t give it enough effort can certainly be partially attributed to lack of mental fortitude. Honestly I think most people like to say that golf is mostly mental because they want to tell themselves they’re better than they actually are.

To be fair, that’s not a standard I would go by. Most people I know hit their shots too low.

Birdied #13 yesterday which is new and #8 today which is not.

I just shot 38/50 today. Man I’m good at this game.

Nope. 50/39 is the best that I can recall from recent memory. Though I’m an 18.3 so I feel like that counts for bonus points 😃

I have no comments on your swing, but my wrists hurt just from looking at your mat setup @GolfLug 😜

Just to add to this, bulge and roll is a factor, too. A shallower face will have more effective loft at the sole than a taller one. It’s just easier to hit off the deck in general.

That is absolutely insane. I’ve never played a 6 hour round before. Once I played a round that took 3:00 for the front nine and I walked off. I was kind of salty about that at the time because the guy in the shop said if I wait 10 minutes to check in, I’d get twilight rates, but what he failed to mention were the three other groups lined up ahead of me doing the exact same thing. Totally not worth the $20 I saved. I played a course once that was kind of the opposite. Despite being built in the 90’s, the contours on the greens were ridiculous and they had to keep the greens fairly long to compensate. It was an awful experience.

I've written and deleted a response to this topic a couple of times now and I still feel like I can't come up with anything coherent. I'm more disciplined than the average golfer. I'm also motivated to be disciplined. Does that make any sense? Because it kind of does in my head. I suppose if I was the kind of person who expected instant gratification I would have stopped trying to get better years ago. I'm also the kind of person that is always trying to improve at the things I'm interested in. Even if it's say, cooking egg fried rice, which I've done countless times, I'm always trying to see what I did well, where I could do better, etc. Golf works the same way for me. It's an activity I am interested in and part of my expression of interest is the pursuit of improvement. I can't just go out and play two rounds on the weekend and then not do anything golf related until the following week. It's just not how I'm wired.

Swing check time. It's been either rainy or windy lately and I haven't actually been hitting balls in a while but I've been practicing in other ways. Weather is nice today and I had the time so I set up my net to film some swings. Current swing: I said I'd make some changes to focus on contact and I made good on that. I eliminated some excess lateral movement off the ball away from and towards the target and as a result I actually had to move my ball position back from the way too far forward position I've become accustomed to playing for years. Changes were primarily standing a bit more upright and my right hip feels like it turns more up than around. I'm actually pretty happy with those because I'm hitting the ball much better lately, but since the camera is out, I know I can do better, right? I added the slightest bit of laying off just to help keep the club from going across the line. Emphasis on slight so I don't overdo it. Downswing change is an interesting one. I feel like I'm swinging slower, like I'm just bringing the club down to the ball in a controlled and slow manner. Kind of like how when I do a practice swing feel I bring the club back to the ball and stop, only I keep going and hit the ball. Same rhythm, same pace. Feels slow but it's clearly not seeing as how I've completely wrapped the club around my head in the follow through and I'm hitting the ball farther on the course. I don't really know how to describe it, to be perfectly honest, other than it's smoother? It's a feel I used a long time ago with the driver when I was really struggling and I brought it back the other day because I was also struggling, which resulted in some of the most ridiculously long and straight driver shots I've ever hit. So I figured why not see what it actually looks like on video? Contact was stupid good, like everything was center of the face. I should probably stick with that feel for a bit, maybe forever. I'm sure there's an actual reason for why feeling like I'm swinging slower with less effort actually results in better contact and longer, more accurate shots, like I'm sequencing better or something. I don't actually care these days, to be honest. I don't need to know or understand why. I just need to know it works, which it seems to.

Birdied #17 at Quail Brook today, drained a 20 footer from the fringe. Lipped out a birdie putt on 18 though.

Not that you need to hear it from me, but take it slow. I’m sure you’ll be back out on the course in no time. I actually found that the silver lining when being injured is that I was able to prioritize working on the setup stuff without being distracted by making actual swings. I spent two weeks last month doing nothing but focusing on that because I really do anything else and I think it’s starting to pay dividends.