Keeping a Steady Head During All of This

Written on 7-19-2020.

        It’s another Sunday, and I am watching the Memorial Tournament again.  I am using my Chromecast, though, and I am sitting in the living room.  A weather delay has just been called, so they are showing the 2013 final round instead.  

I checked in on Kody in the front yard a few moments ago.  I washed off his muddy paws earlier, so I was letting him dry off and take a nap out there.  I asked him if he wanted to come inside, but he didn’t even get up.  He just lifted his head from his napping position in the cool grass,  considered what I had said and liked his current position in life, so I let him stay out there.

He had mud on his paws due to a walk with Belinda this morning.  A huge rainstorm caused our street to flood yesterday.  Our Anasazi Drive looked more like the Anasazi River.  The storm had some small hail mixed in, but it fortunately didn’t do any damage.

Jim Nantz just interviewed Jack, since they had some extra time during the weather delay.  He revealed that he and Barbara had the coronavirus from about mid-March to around late April.  Barbara had no symptoms, but Jack had a sore throat, he said.  They both turned 80 recently, so they were fortunate to survive it, although Jack said they were blessed.

I decided to spend some time on the range after we played at Riverview, and I learned a few things.  I used the Swing Catalyst app once more, and I chose to video all of my shots from the front view.  I used my 7-iron most of the time, and I teed most of my shots up tiny bit, too.  

The first thing I learned is...

as much as I feel like my head is holding still, it is not.  I can get it to hold still on my backswing mostly right up to the end of it, but when I move into the forward swing, it moves down and towards the target, and it looks more like a lunge at the ball.  By the end of my medium size bucket for $7.00, I managed to get my head to be more still, but it still moved.  I have watched Todd Grave’s slow motion swing on YouTube, and it doesn’t move at all.

Second, I thought that if I started lower and to the left, or more on my left side, my head wouldn’t have to move there.  That resulted in my starting my left leg in more of the impact position, that bended knee over my left foot that is supposed to be turned out at 20º.  It would move out of that impact position when I took my backswing, but I had the best contact when I did that, and my head was steadier than ever before.

Third, when I started leaning more to the left at address, it didn’t feel like I was was making a move behind the ball, but it was still working.  It felt like more of an “armsy" swing that way, but I thought, well, maybe it’s supposed to feel that way.  I am hinging and unhinging my arms, and I am releasing them, so maybe that is part of the way it is supposed to feel.  No matter what I am going to continue to attempt to match the model.

When I got home, I uploaded those swings and saved them with different titles.  When I was saving them, I decided to make my own steady head training device like I talked about above.  I will start using it later this week.

I think I may have earned enough pars from my four rounds to earn a decent best ball score.  Let me find out.  From Green River, I got three pars, all of them on par three holes.  At Pinon, I got four more, so that makes seven total.  At Civitan, I earned five more, and I was mostly focused on the process and not scoring, so that makes twelve pars.  Finally, at Riverview, I was able to get a birdie and two more pars, so that would be fifteen, and with the birdie I would be -1 after fifteen holes.  I can easily find three bogeys (darn it), so that would give me a best ball score after four rounds of +2.  That’s encouraging!  Isn’t it?

I know it’s a best ball score after four rounds, but I am considering that I am still just learning this swing, and I haven’t perfected it yet.  

The Memorial Tournament is coming to a close.  It’s 5:36 PM, but they did have a weather delay for 50 minutes, so that’s the reason it’s ending later in the day.  Looks like Rahm is going to be the winner even with a possible two stroke penalty on #16.  I am going to shut down the writing now and just enjoy the rest of the tournament.

Until next time…