weifert

Thank you both for the encouragement. I'll have to give this a try.

Haven't seen Evolvr, I'll have to check it out. This site has also been helpful. I'm not ready to concede that I stink just yet. I think that if I had regular instruction I could probably straighten most of this out. With having a family and working I basically get one evening a week to practice or play, so it seems like I'm fighting an uphill battle. I played basketball competitively in high school and made a college team. That required devoting several nights per week to becoming successful at that. I want to get good at golf but don't have that same amount of time. So either I can be okay with really minor progress given my time commitment or I can get totally frustrated that I haven't leaped forward. Overshare, I know, but this has been on my mind.

I totally agree with you. However, what I'm trying to do is less like analysis and more like trying to find reasons to keep playing. Prior to this summer, my forays into golf have gone this way: Play at a company outing, realize that I love this game Play a round or two by myself, resulting in total humiliation Decide it's not worth spending the money to play golf if I'm this bad Quit the game entirely Now at least this summer I took a lesson, which helped a little. But still things are coming along slowly, and frankly it's really expensive to keep taking lessons. So at this rate I'm just trying to focus on some small improvements. 100% agreement. Interesting to break the round down that way. I don't think the score reflects it, but my contact with the ball was actually better. I adopted an overlapping grip (from Ben Hogan's "Five Lessons,") and I think it helped me keep control. I did hit two or three total duffs, all with the sand wedge. In other cases, I was right with my irons and I think that came from simply not following through and finishing the swing. Could be wrong, but that's what it felt like. So I lost a lot of strokes just by going right. But at least I wasn't totally shanking it. Haha, definitely bad, my friend. I took 4 penalty strokes but only one of them went in the trees. They went more like this: I sliced my second shot on a par 5. I took a penalty because I couldn't find it. Honestly I think if I kept looking I would've found this one, but I didn't want to hold up play. Sliced my drive on a Par 3 into some super tall grass Blind shot ended up somehow wedged between the lip of the bunker and the sand itself, and I couldn't play it Hooked my tee shot into the trees

I've played two nine-hole rounds in the past two weeks, and scored 62 on both. Not a good score at all, but there was one major difference between the first round and the second. That difference was putting. I watched My Golf Sidekick's "How to Putt Like a Baus," and decided to stop assuming that my putting was good and winging it. I went to the practice green and worked on the basics. I visualized putts, talked myself through them, used a good tempo. Then I went out and played Fox Run at the Kenton County Golf Course. There are three courses out here, and I haven't played here since I was in high school. Most of the reviews for the course complained about the state of the greens, bunkers and cart paths. The last of these was no bother to me, as a veteran of driving on Michigan roads. The whole course needed some TLC, but there were only a couple of times when I thought, "Man, this hole needs help." A couple of the wholes featured great elevation changes, including this one: While I never reached the green in regulation, I two-putted most of the holes that I played. And a couple of those putts were an inch or two away from going in. Seems to me like putting a little bit better has greatly improved my confidence and the amount of fun I have playing the game.

This evening I tried playing with the ball forward in my stance, and I teed it up higher than usual. Still had a few issues, but on maybe 5/9 holes i drove it well. Thanks for the advice!

This seems like the most plausible explanation to me. I'm just wondering if/how the difference in weight throws off my swing and prevents me from striking the ball well. And if so, how to correct that.

It was nice. My wife commented that she could live there. We like the downtown and the big old houses. I'd be interested.

Welcome to that party, Greg! Good to see so many Ohio guys here. I'm on the Kentucky side of the river, but basically Cincinnati. Took a surprise tour of Troy this weekend because 75 was closed in both directions and I was trying to make it back from Michigan. It would be nice to get everybody together for a round sometime.

Thanks for the comment. Yeah, it was my first time playing there. My father-in-law and I are trying different courses around Midland when we go up to visit. Great course! Reminds me of Devou Park here in Kentucky because of all of the hills. I'm not too bummed out about it. Just thought I'd try to tell a good story of it. I think that most of my failing here was mental. After the first sign of trouble I crumbled. I use an interlocking grip, and after this round my pinky was sore, which tells me I was gripping the club hard, really tense for most of the round. From what I've read, tension=bad swings. Cheers! The one thing I've done that if you're bad at it, it only makes you want to do it more so you can change that. I was joking with my dad that the only thing consistent about my round was that I dropped an f-bomb on nearly every hole. Not great etiquette, but it happens! I'll be back out on the course Wednesday, hopefully with a looser swing!

No on the swing speed, and I think a fitting would give me that information.

The driver is a Titleist 983k driver with an "Ultralight" S shaft. A friend of mine gave it to me a couple of years ago. I've never been fitted for clubs, and I'm happy with the irons. I'll definitely consider getting fitted for a driver.

I'm a newbie. I've been trying to figure out why I can hit my irons well. But swinging the driver feels uncomfortable, and I never hit it well. I realized that while my iron shafts are steel extra stiff, the driver staff is graphite and flexible. Could a flexible shaft be causing problems in a golfer's swing?

It wasn't me, but I definitely saw that yesterday, especially with my wedges. I thought I had the SW figured out and was hitting a lot of fat shots. I read a bit about how tension causes a lot more problems than you might think, and thinking back I was probably strangling the club most of the day and trying to hit it. I'm down for that. Dayton's not far at all.

I have mentioned that my usual driver is a low hook. In a round this weekend I noticed something else begin happening. I was topping the ball. In a couple of cases, the ball actually left a divot just a couple of inches past the tee. Amy thought on how the two might be related?

I began the 18 holes at Snow Snake Ski & Golf carrying more confidence than I'd ever brought with me to a golf course. And by the time I finished them, all of it had evaporated like the dew. Over the three weeks prior I had spent several hours on the range and on Wednesday was striking nearly every ball well. Maybe a little left or right here, but struck well. Even without the use of my driver I thought I had a chance at a good round. We were running late to the course and had no time for a wamup, but through the first hole my hopes we're high. I was on the fringe in two, but three-putted for a 5. The par three second hole was a chance to try out my newly acquired sand wedge skills off the tee. I hit it into a bunker, but recovered for a bogey. After that, the strokes began to pile up quicky like the soamy snowflakes that turn this beautiful course into a ski slope during the winter. I topped or shanked a majority of shots from three to seven, making just enough contact to sputter towards the green for 7 or worse. And just as despair began to see in, we started down back-to-back par fives, one with a water hazard that which I found. As we made the turn the beer cart girl came into view, bringing relief after two hours of disappointment. The back nine was more of the same, and so the details aren't worth mention. I will say, however, that Snow Snake is a beautiful course. Tree-lined fairways give each hole a sense of intimacy, but also intimidation to the entry-level golfer or anybody who can't keep their drive in the fairway. The greens have little curvature and played fast. The mower we were playing catch-up with may have contributed. No matter how convinced he was that we could play around him, I didn't have the right sign language to explain that unless he's on another fairway his life might be in jeopardy. As we drove off the tee on 18 we spotted a dead chipmunk on the cart path. Could his last sight was my shanked tee shot screaming towards it through the trees. How do you proceed a meltdown like that? Well it must start between the ears. How else could a seemingly serviceable swing vanish in a moment. Some have said that even Tiger struggles with a disappearing range swing. Everything changes on the course. You're not confined to a mat. A bad shot means something. Maybe I avoided that anxiety after the first two holes, but my high expectations and one bad shot probably had me tense, whether I knew it or not. Back in high school basketball practice, a coach gave me one of the best pieces of advice I received. He said, "Everytime you go up for a lay up, go up there like you're going to slam dunk it. Every time. Even if you can't. If you go up there thinking, 'dont miss, don't miss' you're going to miss it. Go up there like you're going to dunk it and you'll make it." The same advice could apply to my golf game. Failure is often a self fulfilling prophecy. Whether I was totally aware of it, after one bad shot I was probably thinking, "just don't top it," or something similar for the rest of the round. Tense thoughts lead to tense body and that anxiety itself probably created more topping! Have any of you other golfers had experiences like this? How do you relieve anxiety once you're on a "stage"?