A week in Georgia: one lesson, three great courses and two learning experiences.
This past week in Georgia flew by. A lot was learned in a short period of time and I am heading back to Portland now with a shopping list of golf aspects to work on, from mechanics to mental game. Also, I have some good ideas of ways to train for tournaments when playing in tourneys is not an option.
I made a rookie travel-golf mistake by beginning the week with a full swing lesson on the first day and then following that with three rounds on some of the best courses in the Atlanta area. As anyone who’s ever had a lesson knows, it can throw you for a loop when it comes to swing thoughts on the course for a few days to a week. What Scott showed me in my swing is great and I know what I need to do mechanics wise, but it didn’t help to have my mind full of new thoughts the day before a course I’ve never seen.
In retrospect, I should have arranged the rounds first and then finished the week with a full-day lesson. The problem is that no matter how much you try to focus on playing the day after a lesson, your mind is full of everything you heard the previous day and doubt creeps into your routine and swing. While standing over the ball I was thinking: “don’t sway the hips and slide my left pocket towards the target, keep my wrists from cupping too much, don’t swing past parallel, keep the head behind the ball, stand up taller at address…” just mentally a mess.
On top of that, the first course was the Atlanta Athletic Club (AAC) where back in 2011 I went to watch the PGA Championship and since have wondered how I would fare on such a track. I finally got my shot and thoroughly enjoyed it despite mentally stabbing myself in the foot with a convoluted head on the front 9.
AAC is an amazing and tough course. Bunkers everywhere your tee shot might possibly land and it has super fast tournament bermuda grass unlike anything I’ve played before. I hit my first tee shot through the fairway long into a bunker, made it on the green from 140 and two putted for par. From there it went downhill quickly. My second tee shot went OB right with a big hook and I started thinking about everything I learned the day before. The golf course is not the place to work on something, save that for the range. I had so much going through my head, though, that I could not figure out what I needed to feel swinging the club. It was as though I had reverted 18 months to a point where the full swing was brand new. I scraped through the first 8 holes at 9 over, hitting two balls OB and one in the water, each of those holes making a double bogey. My tempo was off, grip was tight, body tense and everything was simply off. It felt like tournament golf even though it was just a friendly round on a Saturday afternoon.
Some of that was self-inflicted pressure along with the lesson thoughts that was making my head swim. I was invited to play the course by three perfectly wonderful gentlemen, but they were strangers to me and I wanted to perform well as they were excited to play with The Dan Plan (as I was excited to play a round with them). When you walk on a golf course and tee it with strangers there are no expectations of performance. When you are invited to play a round because someone has read a story about a man who is dedicating his life to practicing golf there are certain expectations that are brought. The round instantly turns into something that feels very similar to tournament golf. Mix in uncertainty in your golf swing and you are in trouble.
Starting on the 9th hole I realized what was going on and began to quiet down. I had been tensing up and over-complicating my swing process by trying to work on too many aspects at once. I decided to temporarily drop the new swing thoughts (save them for the range when I get back to Portland) and went back to what I knew before the lesson. Whether my “old” swing is optimal down the road or not is besides the point as what I needed to do in that specific situation was play golf.
I parred 9 and then hit my approach over the green on 10, something I had done four times by that point. I didn’t know why all of my shots were going a club longer than usual until someone pointed out that AAC was at an elevation of roughly 1,300 feet whereas my home course in Portland is about 100 feet above see level. Apparently, that altitude can add about 7 yards to the irons. Once I adjusted for that I knocked my approach pin high on 11 and made a birdie, pin high on 12 to lip out a bird, pushed it but landed pin high on 13 to three-putt downhill for a bogey and a good approach on 14 left me with an easy par. I had figured out how to play golf again and was one over for those 6 holes.
By that time it was getting late in the day and a big storm with lightening warnings blew in forcing us off the course. I got to see the other holes but unfortunately not play them. I’ll have to come back for a full 18 this spring and for a bit of a rematch with those first 8.
Being 10 over par for 14 holes is nothing to blog about, but when I visited in August, 2011 I had never even swung a fairway wood or driver and my golf was still from about 150 yards. To go from that to shooting mid-80s on a course rated 73.9 141 is pretty exciting, despite the rough start.
I learned two important things during this round. One was a reinforced lesson that you need to leave practice for the practice range and solidify your approach prior to teeing off. If you just took a lesson and are not 100 percent sure of the new mechanics, leave it for later. When you are playing a round, just play golf. Nothing extra, nothing special.
The other learning point was that I need to play as many new courses with as many strangers who know of me as possible. It is the closest thing to playing tournament golf without it actually being tournament golf. When someone invites me out, they are actively interested in the state of my game and are a gallery in a sense. Playing an unfamiliar course with expectations of success is a great way to grow as well as a window into how my game is standing up to pressure. And, this is way different than when people invite me out to play at familiar courses in Portland because there is a comfort zone built in when playing in your own backyard.
I’m going to take these lessons on the road in a couple weeks. Heading to Southern California on February 20 to meet with Titleist and play some golf while in town. If anyone down there would like to play I have February 22, 23 and 24 open. Come play some golf and put the pressure on me!
Speaking of pressure and mental game, I teed it with an interesting psychologist yesterday at the Manor Golf Club who had some very exciting sports psychology mantras to work on. I’m going to save this for a future blog entry or perhaps a guest blog from the psychologist himself.
On the plane. Ready to get back to work this afternoon!