Starting 2021 With Hope

Written on 1-1-21.

        What another cool date in numbers.  Happy New Year!  Here I go again.  This year, I am thankful for the swing change that I’m undertaking; it has rejuvenated my game and me.  I am obsessed with it, and that is a better thing than being depressed.

It’s a New Year’s Day on a Friday this time, and I just remembered that I should go to church.  I’ll be right back.

It’s about an hour later now, and I just “attended” mass at the Archdiocese of Bombay on YouTube.  Beautiful mass.  It’s been a beautiful day here, also.  B and I had a celebratory brunch with eggs, pancakes, and bacon just before noon.  We took some time to send our Prezi out to everyone we could think to share it with after that, and then James helped us clean up all of the Christmas decorations. 

I am now watching Part 3 in the Winter Series that Todd Graves did last month.  I have one more to watch after that.  I am using the Catalyst App to record Todd’s swing.  I find that really helps when I watch those videos of his golf swing every day.  

I also watched the video where he talks about keeping his head still, and he says it is more a matter of body position.  If he gets the body position correct, his head won’t move until impact.  That brings up another thing he said.  After impact, the head does need to move forward and through the shot.  Yet one other thing I remembered was that his head does drop slightly when he bumps his lead hip forward as he begins his downswing.  I see my head moving down when I go into impact, too, but it goes down too far, and it also moves forward way too much.  I am hoping...

I can clean that up this winter.

I am watching Part 4, and Todd is saying that every round is a journey.  He hit some good shots, and he hit some not so good ones.  He got one par with four pretty bad shots, but he made a long putt.  He thought it was super when a golfer can do that.  That’s how tournaments are won.  He also hit a 7-iron that he felt was the best he could possibly hit it, and it’s shots like those that keep him coming back for more.    

Written on 1-2-21.

Happy Saturday!  James, B, Kody, and I just took a couple of laps around the reservoir behind our house, and then we took a couple of laps around the Ancient Trails development to check out the lots.  James might consider buying a home there someday and retiring there.  It’s always fun to dream, isn’t it?

It was frigid, though, so we didn’t stay there long, and now we are back, and everyone is doing their own thing.  James is playing League of Legends, B is getting her curling iron set up in the Alto, and because of that, Kody is watching the front door, and I am writing.

I watched a couple more of Todd Graves videos today, and I am now fascinated with the Biomech Putter.  Sigh.  I am such a sucker for common sense products, and Todd explains them very well.  I will possibly get one in the future.  If I end up using it, I will save the S7K for the putting green, and I could switch them out depending on which one is doing better.  

I just paid for my Durango Joe’s Mug Club Membership for the year.  I would compare that to buying a golf membership, because I take full advantage of those memberships. After it’s all done, I know they end up saving me money.

Written on 1-13-21.

I’ve just learned two new things, and I also relearned one thing with the single plane swing.  The first is that one way I can get in sync before a round is to do the what I will call the “replace the shoulder drill.”  It is similar to what Todd says we should do all the time without a golf club.  First, fold my arms across my chest, bend at the waist like I would when taking my stance, tilt into the correct position, and move into the backswing.  Then begin the transition by bumping my left hip forward, rotate through into a finish position, but focus on replacing my left shoulder with my right shoulder.  That should help get me into sync before a round if I feel out of sorts, or if I’m not hitting it well.

The second thing I learned was to look sideways after I hit it.  That is one of the characteristics I first noticed about the single plane swing, and Todd says that golfers need to hold their follow-through position, and that’s a major component of the follow-through, looking sideways down the fairway or toward the target.

The thing I relearned was the reason why I was topping it.  Once again, Todd has the reason why people are topping it or hitting it thin, and it’s partly because of an early release and a misunderstanding of how a club should strike a golf ball.  

I must get my golf shafts to lean forward at impact.  In order to do that, I need to get my upper body more rotated.  If my body is stopping too soon, I having a lack of upper body movement.  He suggests I do shorter swings to practice this feeling.  It’s an upper body rotational issue.  I want to get my lower body to be in the proper “stuck position,” and that will promote that upper body rotation.  

There’s a video of a young Todd being frustrated after a short on the range.  I noticed the date on that video was September 25, 1989.  I started my original golf diary on September 25, 1999.  Weird.

Enough for now.  I am headed to bed.  I hope to go to the range on this Friday, if the weather will be as good as it says it will be.