Travtex

It's been a fun month of trying to learn how to hit a little ball with a stick. At times, I've been rather uncertain why I got it into my head to try this. Some sort of early onset of dementia, perhaps. I'm particularly frustrated... yet at the same time encouraged... when I skull one five feet while the 90-something year old guy across from me smooths one 150 yards down the fairway with what seems to be a 35mph swing. Aside: I've noticed one problem with being a lefty. 99% of the time at the range, you're face-to-face with someone. So, if you're like me and look like a dilwad every couple of hacks or so, you get to see them smirk right at you rather than at your back. Luckily, I've had the kind of life that forces one to develop a rather vivid sense of humor about oneself. So, although it took the first two weeks of said first month until I could actually make contact with the stupid ball, I did finally start to do so. I've had a primer lesson and a follow-up clinic along with the encouraging mockery of my newfound golf buddy to work with. I'm slowly creeping my way up the bag, and starting to develop some sort of consistency. It's to the point where I can actually hit the par 3 course and have some idea of what club I can hit how far and what I'm likely to do with it when I pull one of my spastic ferret moves and "Mishit". Just making this post in hopes that the consistency of my screw-ups might shed a bit of light on my problems. I found a Pro I like, and I'm working to schedule a couple lessons... but it will be a few weeks before our schedules coincide. Hoping to grasp a tip or two to work with in the meantime. * Hitting my full PW a pretty consistent 100 yards. Some problems with delofting it and overshooting. * 9 iron, 115 yards. 8 iron, 130 yards. Seems to be 'So far so good'. I don't care that I don't have "long hitter" distance, I just want to know where the pellet is going. When I err, I tend to pull or hook it. * 7 iron, things break down. I skull or fat the 7, 6, and 5 irons. * 4 hybrid is fast becoming my best friend. I can carry 170 relatively consistently with it. 3 hybrid is not as helpful. * 3 wood. I am not a friend of my 3 wood. Both it and the Driver I either slice wickedly or smack 180-yard worm burners. However, I make solid contact with the long woods more consistently than the middle irons. Pretty good blast, just about 50 yards of distance is going into the slice. Estimate about 230 on the drive if it went straight. * I can punch-shot from the wilderness with so much consistent accuracy I'm half-tempted to punch ALL of my damn shots. Buried in the tree roots 60 yards out while I'm hopping on one foot to keep the fire ants from carrying me away? No problem, it's on the green. Can't understand why I'm so solid with a shot I don't ever want to have to use. ------- So. Pulling my short irons and slicing my woods while whiffing my middle irons altogether. I've been settling into a sort of modified one-plane swing (Actually, I've hit surprisingly well when I tried a bit of a Mike Weir stack-and-tilt swing, but I can't seem to get my hips through with it and it just feels odd. Like watching Weir because he's a good body type match and fellow lefty.) Any obvious problem areas leap out from these tendencies?

San Antonio, here. Yah, it gets downright brutal. Not as humid as it has been in recent years, as we're in the middle of Power Drought. My grass is long dead. I tell myself that I'm just reseeding for next year when I go out and hack at the dust with my wedges and plastic balls. I'm a Dutch-Irish night shift worker, so I don't tend to tan so much as burst into flames. Luckily, I've gained enough color from golfing to partially conceal the obnoxious allergy shiners I carry around from living in south Texas. Mornings and evenings I can stand pretty well -- 95 degrees or so, 70% humidity. No problem. Get me out there for a few hours in the mid to late afternoon, though, and I feel like I'm going to barf, pass out, or pass out barfing. (I walk and carry, which probably doesn't help.)

No. I escaped getting stung on the face by Evil Death Wasp. In retrospect, it was quite worth leaping from a moving motorcycle while throwing my helmet from my head.

This. I'm sure it's a bit of a phobia, if for no other reason than that I'm generally fearless about most other things. Stick me in a room with a wasp and I'm insta-wuss. Our biggest problem is with paper wasps. However, I have stuck in my memory an Event of Horror that still gives me the shivers. Once, while riding a dirt bike down a ditchbank with my helmet visor open... In flew a Tarantula Hawk. For those not in the know, this is a 2" long black wasp with bright orange wings. (While they're not particularly aggressive, they apparently lie near the top of 'Schmidt's Pain Index' for hymenopteran stings.) So, basically, this giant wasp goes THWACK into my face at around 40mph. I hear this angry BZZZZZ!!!! inside my helmet. I immediately lay the bike down, and have the helmet flung from my head before I stop skidding. Luckily, I managed to not kill myself.

Doc gave me a crapload of vicodin and a rib belt -- Neither of which I have much use for. The belt helps a -bit-, but as an asthmatic AND a respiratory therapist, I'm not very strongly in favor of their use. Already take handsfuls of NSAIDs for various other issues, so... s'good enough. Been meaning to focus on some chips, pitches, 'n putts, anyway. *heh* (Meanwhile, I'm also suffering from Interlock Pinkie. Horrors!)

Anyone had these problems? A couple weeks ago, I tweaked a rib while in the first Learning Stages of trying to hit the stupid little white ball. A week later, it was still hurting and my girlfriend noticed that I had a small distorted bulge poking out of my rib cage on that side. X-Ray looked fine, so the doc poked and prodded around and decided that I'd torn a rib free from some cartilage. Being bullheaded and unhelpfully oblivious to pain, I took a couple days off before going to a couple of swing clinics. Now the thing pops when I take a deep breath. I don't think it really hurts a great deal so much as surprises/annoys me when it slides around. Anyone have a similar injury from swinging? In my experience, rib injuries NEVER really heal right (I separated a couple on the other side some ten years ago and they STILL get sore and feel a little deformed)... but what's a good benchmark for taking it easy 'til you're not just destroying your body by continuing to hack away? I've been getting in 8-10 hours/week between practice and play (Mostly practice). Can I safely transfer all of that into chips and putts without too much of a 'make things worse' setback? Obviously, the Doc says 'Do Nothing', but he also thought I should be taking handfuls of vicodin for what I'm thinking of as 'Kinda Sore'... so I sort of feel he's gearing for a more... sensitive ... demographic (My Inner Texan has SO many less flattering ways to phrase that, heh).

Various reasons: Right-eye dominant. Random nagging injuries make a righty swing less comfortable. I'm iconoclastic like that. Trying to swing righty makes me feel all sorts of uncoordinated. ------------- I'm another ambidextrous sort. Switch hit when I was playing baseball. I fought southpaw. I write with my right hand. I threw right-handed when I was playing actual league baseball, but seem to throw with my left more often these days (If I just pick something up and toss it, I use my left hand more often than my right without thinking about it). I can't put my watch on with my right hand without fumbling it. I play guitar righty. Guess there's no solid answer other than, "I'm a bit weird." It's all kinds of hideous to watch me try to hack with righty clubs, though.

Got to the range this morning and hit some actual balls. Wow. While I haven't figured out my long clubs just yet (The club pro actually stopped to watch me for a bit and filled me in on a couple quirky things I was doing with them), I hit my irons solidly... For pretty much the first time, ever. Only had a 7i, PW, and SW for steel irons in my bag. In stark contrast to my former ball-striking phenomenon of every club in the bag having the same distance, there were consistent and crisp differences in loft and carry of each club. (About 120, 90, and 70 respectively.) Huge thanks to Harvey Penick. I had been trying to follow the 'Do it this way' guidance of some more... compact...individuals. Swing felt 100% smoother when I let my gangly spider monkey arms just do their gangly spider monkey arm thing so long as I drive my rear elbow down on the downswing. This of course has only fueled an addiction.

Mine's only funny because of the background. I'm nursing a chest wall strain (Tore some cartilidge in my ribcage -- Was ignoring it for a while when my girlfriend discovered I had a misshapen lump sticking out of my ribs). Not exactly sure when I did it, but it was after a trip to the range... Probably from whacking the club fat into the ground 100 times. BUT, I took up golf because we'd decided I had reached an age where it wasn't prudent to continue with MMA training, spending more time injured than training. Almost had a -real- nasty one the other morning. I'd gotten off work and was tinking some balls around in my dead grass heat wave drought yard. Stepped on this wood shard that punched straight through my shoe and sock, only managing to bruise the sole of my foot. --------------- This isn't 'injury', but it's kind of stupid: I have a tiny townhome style yard, so I'm hitting my airflows up against the wall. I've found the right range to stand so that I know I've hit certain irons clean when the ball bounces back and hits me in the face.

Heh! There are shades of how I ended up, there. (Particularly with the front knee twisting in and the relatively slow and straight-back sweep of the early backswing before a shoulder turn...) In the end, I don't care how Furyk-ish my swing might look... If I make contact and it's relatively straight, I'm happy. (I guess 'Happy' isn't hard. I've shanked shots off into the wilderness and been happy: "Hahaha! I'm a dumba$$!" Then cheerfully go punch it out of Deep Dark Africa.) That reminds me of one shot I -can- hit consistently well... and I hope it's only rarely useful in the future: Put my ball in the deep rough thicket forest, I can chop-punch it to a good position. (I punched one through the trees onto the green with taunting golf-bud shouting 'Good luck from over there in Jumanji, ha ha!'.) Made similar shots four times in nine holes... which tells you how bad every other swing is. Another problem I have is follow-through. It's entirely mental. Stupid plastic ball, no problem. On the range/course, I seem to hold up my club right at 90 degrees vertical.

Think I had one of those Random Breakthroughs. So, I went and played 9 on a nearby PnP par 3 with the New Golf Buddy. He's a bogey golfer, and was far more helpful than my actual Golf Lesson Person was. However, my main problem remained: I could not make consistent contact. While nearly everything I hit goes straight -- I was hitting it fat 75% of the time, and thin 20% of the time with the remaining 5% belonging in 'Who the hell knows what's going to happen' territory. He was encouraging me to keep my front heel down on the backswing -- And it DID seem to help me with more consistent contact, but felt awkward and uncontrolled. Also, it gave me a tendency to not shifting my weight and just flinging my arms at the ball with mixedly bad results. Anyway, last night on a slow work day I read Harvey Penick's Little Red Book. I focused on a few points -- To paraphrase; what works for one doesn't work for another, naturally lifting the heel isn't a bad thing, and the key point of dropping the rear elbow with a weight shift to the front leg. I came home this morning and, being an idiot, brazenly ignored my doctor's orders about taking two weeks off... (I tore some rib cartilage. Being in the medical profession, I am a lousy patient.) I was only hitting my plastic air-flows up against the wall -- But the difference was astoundingly apparent even with those stupid little things. Suddenly, the ball had loft! And I was, bizarrely enough, HITTING it -- All while letting my heel come off the ground as much as it damn well pleased. Promising. Anyway, some questions: What are your thoughts on the front heel leaving the ground on the backswing? When I -don't- do it, I feel awkward and off-balance. When I just freely and comfortably backswing, the heel comes up QUITE a bit, and my front knee actually angles inward. This a bad habit, or just how my body works? The rear elbow. My friend and my former Golf Lesson Person were insistent that it be tucked down into my side/hip at the top of my backswing... while keeping my front arm straight (I'm using relative terms as I'm a lefty and it gets confusing to say right/left). Now... I'm pretty flexible, but I have long gangly arms (5'9" with a 74" reach)... this is a physical impossibility. Not worrying about it and dropping my elbow into the hip with the forward weight shift seems to have great results, but is there some way/should I focus on controlling that flying elbow tendency? Even though I'm off the range for at least a few days (Doc says two weeks. Augh.), the airflow results are -so- dramatic that I'm hopeful that I've started to grasp a way to make solid consistent contact. Can't wait to get back to my regular practice routine (1-2hr, 5-6x/week. I'm... obsessive a bit.)

I finally tracked down a potential golf partner, and we're going to play on Saturday. I'm a touch nervous to finally hit an actual course after the past month's work of range + pitch 'n putt only. I'm a bit more nervous about it now than I would have been a week ago. A week ago, I had crappy contact and no distance, but I DID hit the ball straight. Some swing "improvements" now have me not hitting that stupid little ball at all. (Heh, one day at the range I kept hitting divot turf up into my FACE. If nothing else, I was keeping my head down... but the reward was dirt in the eyes.) In any case, I'm a bit perturbed that I can't even hit the ball on the range, now. Feel a bit like I went from zero skill to negative skill. That's probably an exaggeration brought about by perception of course -- I can hit my SW further than I hit my 3w when I first started swinging, but... Don't trust my swing at all, basically. When I hit solid, it seems like an accident and I don't yet comprehend why it happened. Basically I just don't want to frustrate the one golf partner I've found. Is there some protocol for horrific suck golfers playing with bogey golfers to keep from ruining their day? Set a max stroke count, maybe? If so, what's a reasonable count? I'd ask for swing advice, but that's a tad unrealistic -- Pretty sure some random dude isn't going to intuit my swing problems online and hand me a magic pill to remove the suck. Just wondering what the best protocol is in this situation to assure my partner isn't exasperated by the experience.

Obviously, lessons are going to continue, but I'm continuing to experiment around with finding #2; What does good impact position look and/or feel like? At this point I do hit the ball straight BUT rarely solid -- It's increasing in frequency but still feels like an accident. I had some success correcting my outside-in tendencies by working some of the wrist tilt/hip shift/head behind ball mechanics from the 'Four Magic' series, though I haven't gotten a chance to test it on the range just yet. The swing sans ball looks and feels more consistent, if nothing else. It also seems to help move back from an overcompensatory strong grip to a more neutral one. (Is this swing style a worthwhile avenue to investigate for a noob?)

Just an update with some insights and inquiries. 1.) It's kind of bizarre being the only lefty on the range. 2.) I took a beginner lesson to get some initial things to work on. It was night and day from my earlier blind hacking. I've been hitting about 150 balls a day at the range, and I'm starting to hit a rut -- Time for another lesson. (In short, just a shout out to other noobs: Lessons. Yes, you need them.) 3.) I took most of the clubs out of my bag. I don't get them until I can hit them. My starter set for the first couple weeks was Putter, PW, 7i, 4h. I'm playing a round this weekend, those are the only clubs I get. 4.) I don't have a slice. This was probably the single most surprising thing about my Early Golf Development, as I assumed every beginner would have to go through a slice phase. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing -- My problems are more often with loft. I hit the ball straight most of the time, but loft inconsistency makes judging club distance near impossible. When I err, it's on the side of a hook. 5.) My most consistent club is actually my longest. My "driver", the 4 hybrid. It's the only club I've hit clean and pretty well blasted on successive swings. Unfortunately, I don't know -why- I hit it well. When I'm hitting the 4 solidly, I'm feeling it the most on the backswing -- Just raring back and letting it rip. It's the cleanest when I feel the tension coiled up in my backswing and keep my hands high (That's a problem, I tend to pull them in too close to my head), and then lead with my hips. 6.) My chipping is surprisingly decent. My putting is surprisingly horrific. ---------------------------- So... My biggest problem is proper loft, I think. I've hit a few liners with a sand wedge (Which I've added to my bag, bringing me up to -5- clubs, oooOOoo.) That, and today I was having a problem chunking into the ground. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I was doing it. Trying to correct just had me skulling a grounder. At least it was still a straight grounder. I guess elevation upon impact is the key issue? Club face seems to be square, as I hit straight down my target line the majority of the time. It's just that hit fat or thin and don't know how to correct for proper consistency. (Amusing Aside: I tagged a bird, today. Had I -drilled- the thing, I would've felt bad because I'm a treehugger sap like that, but I hit a clean sand wedge and the ball came down directly on what looked like the dude's tail. Long loft, a squawk and poof of feathers, an angry bird flying away to complain to management.)

So I jumped on board the 60/month thing. I think I already made back my money on day one. Two large buckets: $18. Walk 18 holes: $10. Free clinic: $17. Well, close to it. Considering that I've been hitting the range close to every day, I'm sure I'll come out ahead on that deal. Meanwhile, I'm quite amazed by the actual clinic/lesson combo. I went from hitting at best half of the balls I swung at 50-70 yards at random angles to regularly lofting my 9 iron 120 right down the middle. Logical brain is screaming that there's no possible way the backswing makes THAT much of a difference, but results cry otherwise. :D Once I took that better-educated setup and swing to my hybrid from a tee -- Crap! I was addicted.

Picked up the Slazengers after some extensive shop-scouting. Really like the hybrids. Starting to progress from the 'Can't Hit the Ball' stage to the 'Wicked Scary Slice' stage of driving range demonstrations of abyssmal hacking. *hah* Think I'm going to hop on to my nearest driving range's 'Player Development Program'. 60/month for unlimited range balls, unlimited par 3 fees, free weekly clinics, and discounts at the nearby municipal course -- Considering I've been going close to every day at 7 bucks a pop, that should save a good chunk of money.

Also spotted a set of Cobra 3100I/H at Edwin Watts for $100. They looked pretty dinged up to me -- Someone of roughly my own skill level had apparently been at them for a while, but I'm wondering if I can dicker.

Yeah, I realized it was a tome after I posted it. *hah* (I spent some time as a weekly columnist. It's ALL about the word count.) So, with that in mind -- Would the Slazengers for 125 be a deal? (I'd probably be tempted to regrip them, but that'd still keep me in that budget.)

I'm 35, and started playing at... 35.

Yet another new guy from Texas, here. I'm a Native Texan who's only lived in Texas for about 9/35th of my life. Born in Richardson, stuck in Albuquerque, San Angelo for 3, currently San Antonio for two. Anyone come down south to play/visit/both?

Hello, all. I am a profoundly ignorant newb from Texas. At the moment, I am an entire week into the game -- Matter of fact, I'm up far past my bedtime thanks to a quick scouting trip of a nearby pitch and putt turn into two hours of practice followed by an equal span of jawing with a guy I met there. As a night-shifter, four hours in the San Antonio Sun is going to result in a pretty profound sunburn, but it was worth it. *hah* I'm coming at the game a bit strangely. Prior to this shift, my main source of athletic activity was MMA. Having recently hit 35 and recovered from my latest broken bone, I decided it might be time to focus on something with a bit more longevity and smaller medical bills. At the same time, I love competition (I'm a gracious loser, I just thrive on the -pursuit- of improvement with active challenge)... and like doing things that can take a lifetime to master. Somewhat ironically, my girlfriend suggested and encouraged golf. (Is it a bad sign that she WANTS me to spend hours on the golf course? *laugh*) I've been researching for a little while, and I'm getting a great deal of contradictory information -- thought I'd throw my philosophy by y'all and see where opinions end up. My first and enduring notion is to track myself down some semi-decent used clubs... and basically obsess about my short game for about a year. I'm thinking, say, 7i, 9i, PW, Putter to start. Get whatever lessons I can afford, hit the pitch 'n putt par 3's and ranges, and not even THINK about fiddling with a driver until I know what I'm doing with my swing. Maybe try an executive course or two in three or four months with rentals, suck it up with a wood or hybrid on the Par 5, and pretend drivers don't exist. I am not Tiger Woods. Meanwhile, most of the people I talk to on the course and at local shops seem to think I'm out of my mind. The overwhelming majority say I should just get a starter kit of cheapos and start playing. I'm thinking that trying to get overzealous is a good way to create bad habits, and I have more modest goals -- Say a 25 handicap from the girlie tees in a year or so? After only three trips to the range in my life, I've been rather surprised at my consistency. My first trip ever through the Par 3 PnP I shaved 12 strokes off the second run through the 9. Amusingly, the last few holes fell apart because I found a smoother swing and abruptly added about thirty yards to my PW with no idea how to compensate for the distance. Instant three strokes added, har: LAUNCH, chip chip putt. (I did sink a 30 footer that had me all excited until I muffed a 5 footer on the next hole.) In any case, I'm not committed to any particular route at the moment, as I'm aware of just how little I know. But, I am a bit excited to find a hobby I find so enjoyable and I'd like to get started the right way. I'm a bit lucky-unlucky in terms of club selection as I'm profoundly average in size (Though my arms are a bit long), making standards a good fit -- But I shoot lefty, making the hunt for used clubs more difficult. I'm keeping myself under pretty tight budget constraints, as my GF and I are house-hunting and she's in a graduation/job-hunt phase in a lousy job market. I'm game for cheapos, because I figure my swing will change as I start learning some fundamentals (I've been eyeballing gigagolf). I'm 5'9", and I'm not sure about my wrist-to-ground yet -- I think it's close to dead-on 50% of my height, but not measured (I fought with 73.5" reach measurement). My swing is dreadfully slow, but a surprising number of my shots are straight (My 7i speed at the Golf Galaxy tester camera was a consistent 48mph. *laugh*). I obviously haven't grasped the fundamentals of various clubs as I tended to hit 80-100 yards no matter WHAT I was swinging. PW: 80 yards. 3 wood: 80 yards. Far as suggestions go, I'm pretty much ego-free so any suggestions/comments on the polite side of, "I think you're a raging jerk" are appreciated. (Hell, if I need to tote hot pink ladies flex clubs 'til I get my swing speed up, I won't be embarassed.) On the range, I've had some promising things and some potentially discouraging things. On one hand, I had an Old-Timer comment on my natural head-start advantages as a lifelong athlete and his amazement that I 'released my hip' naturally (I don't know what that means, but he was impressed, and a really fun guy so it stuck). On the other, I had a 48mph club speed. *hah* I'm a Kia Rio among Dodge Vipers. Thanks for reading this far, take care. EDIT: The Golf Galaxy dudes were quite enthusiastically pointing me in the direction of the El-Cheapo full sets. I'd think this a sales tactic, but I walked in saying I was willing to put down more money for fewer clubs. They had one newb set for 70$ (17pc!!!), but had sold out of lefty sets. They still have one set left of Slazenger Wrath 17pc (Hybrid) on clearance for $125. Would this be a way to go? (I didn't like the grips, but the clubs hit well for my piddly swing.)

Got to jump on board with Tiger... Though I'm a newcomer, so that's the one I know at least a small something about. It's a bit moot, though. I'm a lefty fanboy.

I wouldn't say I have a home course just yet, I'm a pitch 'n putter and probably going to stay that way for a few months. I split time between: Alamo Golf and... San Pedro After which I'm hoping to check out... This Group of Courses

I'm a pediatric respiratory therapist. Far as adults go... I know the number for 911.