Sunday, August 11, 2013

Lake Haviland, Anchor Update, and D.B.

Written on 7-22-13.

    I am sitting across the road from Lake Haviland.  My view is spectacular!  I can see the top of Engineer Mountain above the distant pines to my right, and I see the awesome cliffs across the highway with pines and aspen trees both above and below in the mountains that are just before Needles and then Durango Mountain Resort, also known as Purgatory.  It’s my first time to Lake Haviland.  Eric and Amanda have procured a camping site here for a few nights, and Belinda and I get to use their new camper here tonight. Ah, summer.
    A and B are kayaking together as I type away.  I can see their paddles going up and down in the distance in perfect synchronicity, and then they slowly lose their shared rhythm, and then suddenly they are synchronized again.  Sunlight is flashing off their paddles as they go up and down.
    On to golf...
    So, I do not...

anchor my putter anymore.  When I heard they were going to enforce that rule, I said to heck with it.  I use a split grip now with my left hand on top and my right hand low.  It has freed up my putting stroke.  I can release my putter head better now, but it does have a couple of drawbacks.  First, I have lost that perfect pendulum that I preferred so much.  That was the reason I switched to an anchored putter; I never switched to anchoring because of nerves.  It was because of something I saw online where it showed/proved that an anchored putter will always have a more consistent pendulum swing at the bottom.  It made sense to me (it still does), so I switched.  And, it helped, especially on putts from three to five feet. 
    The other drawback is that my eyes are no longer directly over the ball, and therefore not over the line of my putts either.  I am farther back from the ball with this new stance and technique.  It’s a better overall view of the putt, though, and it is similar to my newer open stance pitching and chipping style.  I can swing the putter head freely away from my body on the forward swing, and I have no problem seeing the lines of my putts with this new overhead view.
    In a complete tangent, two of the birds that hatched in the nest above our front entry survived until their first flight.  The mother or father, the one I coined D.B. (Dumb Bird or Dead Bird) would often perch and survey the area from on top of the green plastic hook of a hanging flowerpot that we set out on our little black round table.  The younglings would practice flying from table to nest and back again. 
    One bird was killed by Pikachu, but we could not tell for certain if it was one of those birds.  Now they are all gone; no sight of any of them for a month now.  I look forward to seeing if the nest will be used again next year, and it was good to see that it was used successfully this season.
   

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