Written on 2-20-22.
I have decided to do excerpts from my earlier diary/journal posts again, since I don't have a lot going on as far as golf is concerned. I did catch up all of my golf diary parts and collected them into one, and I called it My Golf Diary-The Whole Enchilada.
In this excerpt, I write about three birdies, and I play golf with Adam when he visited. I realize golf is very expensive, and I spent a deal of time on the range at Pinon Hills. Amazing how history repeats itself.
At the end of this writing, I use the impact bag with Mike Stark, and I break it.
Written on 7-23-02.
I wrote this at Ziems Ford Corners while waiting for the truck to have its transmission checked out. It’s been squeaking between second and third gears. They couldn’t find anything, though. Figures. They were nice enough to shuttle me up to Pinon Hills to practice when I found out it was going to take several hours. It was nice to write in the old journal for a change. Here’s what I wrote…
I have three birdies to write about. I have now met my goal of doubling the number of birdies I had last year! Here they are…
Country Club-Hole 11
This hole is usually Eric’s lucky hole. He has birdied this hole twice. One time he birdied it from one hundred yards away! I hit my 3-wood off the tee aiming over the tree on the left side of the fairway. It looked like...
I had hit the top of it. Craig didn’t think it had made it through. I was playing with Craig, Dori, and Eric. Luckily, it had made it through to the open area behind the tree. From there I hit 8-iron onto the green, but only barely. It was below the hole, to the left, and about twenty feet away. This entire green is mostly flat, but it slopes dramatically toward the fairway. Eric once hit a downhill putt here that continued to roll so slowly that he actually walked along beside it and coaxed it eventually into the hole! This was his other birdie there. I aimed well above the hole and the ball arched up like a rainbow, across the green, and then down into the hole. That was the biggest breaking long putt I’ve ever made.
Written on 7-25-02.
Civitan-Hole #1
When Adam came to visit this summer, I played a lot of golf with him. It was an expensive few days. We played Pagosa, nine holes, with a cart so James and Danielle could ride along. That cost $33.00, but I was expecting to pay $51.00 just so the kids could ride along for $9.00 each! They either gave me a deal or forgot to charge for the kids. Then Eric was nice enough to invite us to play at the Country Club with Dori one day. I paid for Adam, so that cost $47.00 for eighteen holes with a cart for the two of us. Civitan was a nice break from spending big bucks on golf. Golf is expensive! It doesn’t help the guilt that I have when I go play sometimes. Luckily, my clubs are at least paid for now, and I get a great deal when I play with Eric at the Country Club, or for free every time I go play at Troy’s golf course. Thank you Eric and Troy.
Anyway, I digress. When Adam and I played at Civitan, I hit my Thomas sand wedge, not my Cleveland, to about two feet from the hole. Then I made the putt. That was birdie #20!
Country Club-Hole #1
I took a mulligan on my drive. What a nasty habit! I have tried to stop doing it. Eric and I have done it just about every round we play. It is always only one mulligan per round, but it just doesn’t seem right. On the first tee, when we’ve had no warm-up, we’ve hit a second tee shot. It’s okay considering we both do it so that it’s fair. It’s okay considering we tee off immediately sometimes and don’t get a chance to warm up at all. It’s even okay considering we’re amateurs just learning to play better and have fun.
It’s not okay if I expect to get a mulligan if I make a bad shot off the first tee every time. It’s not okay considering we are turning in scores for a handicap. I wonder how many other players turning in scores take liberties like that. It’s not okay in the middle of a round when you’re warmed up and everything is flowing. Eric and I have done that too if we’ve both hit two consecutive terrible shots. First him, then me, or vice-versa. Once again, it’s only always one per round, and we both take only one, but…
So, I took a mulligan to start this round and this hole. I hit my first shot off the toe of my driver. It went toward the practice area. Thankfully, it didn’t hit anyone. Eric pulled his tee shot out of bounds. My mulligan was a long drive with my 3-wood. It was low and the fairway is downhill, so it ran quite a ways. I was only forty or so yards from the 150 marker, so I went for the green in two with my Bob Toski Utility Club. I hit another smooth shot that ran through the bunker in the front and all the way to the fringe on the back. I made an aggressive stroke with my putter to about four feet. From there, I sunk the putt for birdie #21. I’m counting it even though I took a mulligan. I won’t do that for counting birdies anymore, though.
There, I am caught up with birdies. Jeff is having another scramble, but I won’t be able to attend. It’s at the beginning of the school year, and I will be teaching first grade for the first time, so I will need all the prep time I can get. Bummer! I am playing this weekend in the Pinon Hills Classic 2002, though. It’s the first stroke play tournament I have ever played in. There are five flights, and my handicap has placed me in the fifth/last flight. I am both excited and nervous to play. I played in the Settin’ in the Sun volleyball tournament this past weekend. I didn’t even know it was going on until I talked to some people at Lisa Ingeman’s wedding the weekend before the tournament. Glen Christiansen was there, so we talked about playing, and then we did. It was fun. Body for Life helped make it possible and survivable. I felt at some points in the tournament like I had never left. I miss volleyball. I’m good at it. I’m sure that if Glen and I practiced, we could win. We didn’t win, though. We didn’t even break pool. We lost all three matches in pool play. I can only say that we made a good showing and didn’t embarrass ourselves. I was even asked to play on a AA team indoors this upcoming season. I felt that this was a real transition for me, though, kind of like the end of one book and the beginning of a new chapter in a brand new book. I’ve even told some people that I feel like I did when Guy and I first started playing volleyball in B tournaments up in Lakewood. You have to start somewhere. I look forward to competing in this new sport, and this weekend will be the first tournament of many.
I’ve worked hard to prepare for it. This past week I have hit more golf balls at Pinon Hills than ever before. I pay for a large bucket, then hang around and pick up the dregs of players who have left to go play or who have just plain left. I probably got about seven free large buckets in three practice sessions, including one a guy in the pro shop gave me just because the credit card machine was down when I tried to use my debit card.
My practices have been good. For my first practice session, I worked hard on tucking in my right elbow and planting my left foot on the downswing at the same time. That’s Harvey Pennick’s “magic” move. It was fairly effective as a swing thought. It made my swing feel more upright. I have also worked on the toe up, toe up drill as a warm-up. Then I work on tempo. This is one of the best drills I have used. I tee up four or five balls in a line, and then I hit them consecutively with no routine. I hit them mostly straight and solidly with this drill, and I feel my tempo is very good. I also hit some uphill shots to help keep the casting away. My last practice session, before my lesson with Mike yesterday, I concentrated on waiting until the ball was gone, (keeping my head behind the ball at impact) and shaking hands on the forward swing on a more outside path. I hit them very consistently that way.
My lesson with Mike was encouraging. I just wanted him to look at my swing to see if any bad habits had crept in since I had last seen him. He noticed that I still hit the ball pretty low. I have worked very hard at being able to hit a draw, so he said it was a “credit to the hard work I had done”, but now I needed to be able to hit it higher. I also wanted him to look at my 3-wood and driver swings.
Three things were focused on during this lesson with Mike, which I will work on after the tournament. I guess there is one tip I can incorporate easily right away this weekend, though. That tip was to take a wider stance. By narrowing my stance, I wasn’t able to shift my weight to my right side as well as I could. That’s why I sometimes leave my right foot on the ground well after impact, too. Also, move the ball forward in my stance a little more to help increase trajectory.
One of the other of the three things he noticed was that I was a little stooped, but not too bad. On the video, he drew an angle at exactly 90 degrees for my stance with the club, which is ideal, but he still felt I should stand a little taller.
The last tip was hands ahead, chest behind. He really likes the use of an impact bag now. It was something we had never used before in our entire year of lessons, but he brought it out for this lesson and had me hit into it several times. I even broke the darn thing. It looked like it had been used many times before I broke it, though. I just tore it at the seam on the bottom. I am sure it was because my swing is so powerful, though (wink)!
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