A slight delay of a film crew in town
There is a film crew here that has been shooting for the past two days (downstairs setting up for an interview as I type). Their goal is to sum up the past three years of my life in 22 minutes, a task that I do not envy. It is an odd experience to allow strangers into your life for 48 hours and give them access to your thoughts and friends/colleagues. It wasn’t a bad thing, just odd.
One part was pretty funny. They set up behind the flag on a practice green and the producer says: “ok, no just hit it in the hole.” I kind of chuckled knowing she didn’t even know the difference between the putter and driver and innocently thought that it would make a good shot and that I should easily be able to hit a sand shot in from 30 yards after so much practice. It wasn’t jarred on the first attempt, but eventually the ball found the hole:
I got to give a shout-out to Vokey for that one.
The one thing that I realized was that I was very at ease hitting in front of the camera the entire time. I never once got nervous or was worried about hitting the camera man as he set up right in front of me on the range. I knew I can hit it well and just let it happen. Two years ago, and even last summer, when a crew was here to film I got visibly nervous and struggled to get into a groove. I suppose, in a way, that having some eyes on the project along the route is a good thing to help my mental game adjust to the eventual setting of tournament golf in front of tv cameras.
Although I didn’t get to practice much over the past two days, I did have that realization and some different experience of performing under pressure. It’s all moving it the right direction even if it’s not a structured practice.
We also filmed with coach Bruce this morning and the two of us got to have a real lesson for about 1.5 hours while they filmed. Bruce says my current goal is to get my full swing shorter (still, I’ve been working on that for a while now) and to get the face open in the takeaway. The reason that I’ve been drawing the ball too much is that I take it back closed and the face never has a chance to open. He also wants me to keep my arms closer to my body throughout the swing. My lead arm tends to push away which forces the club behind my body. Good things to work on my schedule returns to normal tomorrow.
I am being summoned. One more shoot then I can hopefully make it to the range with a bit of sunlight left to work on this week’s homework…