Field Club turned out to be a good spot to practice for the day. It was an interesting little putting green that reminded me of Broadmoor’s in that it was kind of built on one big slope. The grass was different than you see in Portland, but kind of similar to the bent grass that they have out at Heron Lakes, just a bit longer and somewhat more “laid over.” There were a lot of dead patches too, I guess it’s pretty tough to maintain the quality of greens in thus climate, where the ground’s covered with snow for a few months a year and then bakes in the sun for the summer.. Not quite the sod paradise that the pacific northwest is, for better or worse.

I practiced for four hours, not too bad for being out of my routine, but was hoping to get a bit more in. It got really muggy out, though, and I felt like it was best to take it easy because I couldn’t sleep well last night and with the time change got about five hours, mostly laying awake. Will sleep well tonight for sure.. Tomorrow I’m going to head back to Field Club for a bit and then go out and challenge my brother in a little 18 hole putting game. Last time we played was early June and I barely beat him after nine holes, I think it was by one stroke. This time I’ve got a lot more confidence in my game, so am ready to go all out!

The picture below is Marijke checking out the practice green and the clubhouse in the background. It was private, but nobody said anything and in fact gave me a free cup of decaf, so I figured all was well..

Guess Omaha saw me coming a mile away!

Just got to town today and already found a nice spot to practice starting tomorrow. It’s called Field Club and is right down the street from my brother’s house. Looks pretty nice, the sign says it’s been open since 1898, so bet there is some history there to find out tomorrow.

Going to go down in the morning and try to practice, it’s a private club so not sure if I’ll get kicked out or not, but will give it a shot!

It’s been a good week so far out here in Portland, but it’s time to hit the road for a bit and check out a bit more of the country’s golf courses.  Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to actually play the courses that I get to, but I will be able to check out different types of greens and get a feel for what a few more of the western cities in our country have to offer as far as public courses go.  Tomorrow, I’m flying into Omaha.  I’m heading there because my super generous brother is donating a car (with good MPG) to The Dan Plan before he and his family makes the move to NYC.  So, I’ll fly there and spend a few days with them and practice at a few courses in Nebraska and then head to Denver for a couple nights to see what they have, then Salt Lake City and Boise before the long drive back across Oregon to Portland.  I’m excited about the entire trip and think that it comes at a good time in the plan.  I’ve been working pretty hard for the past 3.5 months and feel like a bit of a break is what the doctor has ordered!

I will be blogging along the way (can update with my phone, gotta love technology for that!) but will not be able to update my “stopwatch” page, but will be able to catch up next week when I get home.

Speaking of hitting the road (kind of..) my concentration today was like a diesel engine.  It started cold and slow and puttered about for a second, but once I warmed up it was a great day out there.  I also went and saw Darren, the cognitive trainer, too and had a good meeting with him.  We went over the past weeks work and started in on a new exercise dealing with word recognition, focus and memorization which I am pretty excited about.  It’s been a lot of building block stuff to this point, but things are now getting very interesting and it looks like I’ll soon be doing things that four months ago I wouldn’t have come close to being able to do.  Sorry I can’t go into more detail about his program, I had to sign a confidentiality agreement so am just going to chat about the generalities for now..

So, it’s been a good, yet short, week so far.  I’m going to pack for my trip and then head out to Heron for a bit of evening putting before calling it a day to get ready for my trip tomorrow.

I officially logged in my 400th training hour this week and I’m pretty proud of the milestone.  It’s not a very big one, but still, I think it shows a lot in the arena of “intent of pursuing 10,000.”  Just a few months ago this was all a hypothetical conversation with a lot of “what ifs” and “is it possibles,” and although I’m nowhere near answering the latter, at least I’ve swallowed my medicine and am out there giving it my all on a daily basis (Well, perhaps not daily, I do take one day off to maintain certain levels of sanity..).

And, there’s no place I’d rather be.  Still.

Looking a bit down the road, I’m excited about crossing over 500 some time next month.  It will be a nice little milestone, 5% of my 10,000 hour goal, or 1/20th of the way there.  When I hit 100 and thought about  being 1% into the plan I was a bit daunted and almost discouraged about the journey ahead, but 5% is a real chunk.  This is not to say that I’m looking forward to finishing my 10,000 hours, by any means.  It’s more about realizing that the amount of work that is necessary to put in to really excel at something (again, I’ve yet to prove that, but that’s the theory we’re testing here) is not overwhelming, especially if you can break it down into chunks and have little goals to look forward to along the way.  I’m definitely going to celebrate my 500th hour, but when 1,000 hits, that’s going to be a time for a real party!

regardless of numbers, I had a perfect week by all means.  My putting felt good, my energy was up every day until Friday when I hit a bit of an end-of-the-week wall, and my morale was tops.  I’m going to have to look back and read my daily training thoughts notes when it’s the middle of the winter and remember that weeks like this one exist in the world!

I’ve taken today off to let my body rest a bit and then am heading out to see Christopher out at Pumpkin tomorrow for a lesson.  This coming week is going to be a bit unusual as far as training goes because I’m going to be visiting my brother and his family in Omaha, so will have to check out some of the greens out there for a few days.  Will let you know how that goes soon..

One more picture of Heron Lakes in the evening.

It doesn’t get much better than between 7PM and 9PM out at Heron.  For some reason, there is hardly anyone out there using the greens and the weather is near perfect.  Also, you can get a real good look at the bumps and nuances of the green as the low angle of the sun casts shadows from any imperfections of the grass.

All's quiet on the Heron front.

I’m not looking forward to the winter.

Not because of the cold or rain, although both of those are not exactly positives..  But, rather, because of the sunlight.  More like the lack of sunlight.

Today, I got out to Heron a bit before 8AM and left just past 8PM (I did break for lunch and dinner, I’m not completely crazy..) and there was still about an hour of sunlight left that I could have taken advantage of if my energy level had lasted.  In December, the sun sets here at about 4PM and doesn’t really rise (takes a bit longer with the constant cloud cover) until about 9AM, so even if I maxed out the complete day without a break I could get 7 hours in, but in a more realistic scenario, I’ll be limited to about 4 or 5 hours.  Hopefully, I will be able to train indoors on my swing somewhere, will just have to figure out where you can do that in Portland.

For now, I’m going to enjoy the next few months of long days by going out to Heron in the evenings more when there is never anyone on the putting green.

It was hard to tell what month it was out there today.  I wore the same clothes that I was wearing back in April (raincoat, long sleeves, pants, hat) and was quite chilly in the rain.  made me realize how nice the summer days actually are!

But, once it warmed up a bit it turned out to be a great day to golf.  I spent the morning down at Rose City and put in about 4.5 hours down there before hunger drew me away for a little lunch break.  Afterwords, put in 1.5 hours at Heron Lakes to round out a good start to what’s been a great week so far.

At Rose, my putting was on fire.  I got a new personal record on my 40′ putts, making 70 percent of them to my goal of a 3′ circle around the hole.  My ultimate goal on those is to get about 90% of my long lag putts to within the “success zone” of 3′.  Just a couple weeks ago, I was hard pressed to get 40% in the zone, so pushing that level up to 70 is a quick and good improvement!  So far, every day I’ve gotten a bit better at these, but am not holding my breath for tomorrow because 70% was pretty darn good and might be a bit tough to pull off twice in a row, but you never know..

On the shorter side of the putts, I sank 70% of my five-footers and got in 96% of my 3-footers, so looks like everything is progressing well.

I’ve also been playing some games with different people and finally have actually been winning a few, which is great for the morale!  Will hopefully have some new footage of these games and a couple new videos up soon.  I’ve been so focussed on training that I’ve neglected those types of things for a bit.  Speaking of that, if anyone knows a good editor or producer let me know!

Hello all!

I spent a nice Sunday afternoon out at Pumpkin Ridge seeing Christopher Smith for a lesson.  We didn’t really add too much to my routine or change things too terribly, but it was more of a checkup on my stance and progress thus far.  And, as it turns out, I was standing just a bit off of a neutral center for my putting, causing me to slightly pull the ball on longer putts.  It’s something that is a bit hard to realize myself, so having someone who knows what they are doing watch me putt every once in a while is crucial for my development.

Outside of that, we went over my pitching wedge progress (which is going fairly well for only getting about 3 hours of practice in so far..) and talked about the difference with hitting a ball on the fringe and hitting one in the rough.  For some reason, I feel like I’m going to be pretty good at chipping.  Not sure where this is coming from, but it feels very natural to me and I’m excited about getting to work more with that club.

For this week, I still have a lot of work to do with my putting and actually added in a new putting game where I use my wedge to hit the ball.  It’s a lot harder to get a solid hit with the pitching wedge than with my putter, so it should teach me how to be more accurate by being less forgiving.  It should be a great addition to my 20-plus other games on the greens and it also allows me to start putting from the fringe here and there as needed.

So.  all in all, was a great weekend and I’m excited to get started on a fresh new week.  It’s the last full week before my trip out to Omaha July 28 to visit my brother and his family and pick up a car he is very generously donating to the plan!

Time flies.  It really does.  Not always while you are in the moment, but when you look back at things it just seems like it’s slipped away.  Today was my three month Plan-iversary and in some ways it feels like I’ve been putting for three months but in others I still feel like I just started yesterday.  I’ve got so much to learn, but I’ve come a long way too!

Knowing that it has been one quarter of one year since I started, I thought a bit about my progress thus far and all-in-all I am both happy with where I am and excited about everything that I will learn over the next 45 months (I’m just going on four years as “The Plan” timeline, although it is already obvious to me that this is a life-long pursuit.).

Today I learned that there is no way to predict what type of day you are going to have out on the greens until you get there and start putting.  This morning I woke up a bit groggy and felt like it was going to be the fourth day in a row of poor putting and low morale.  But then, for no apparent reason, I ended up having the best day out there I’ve had in weeks.  Not sure why, but I’ll take it!  It was not that my putting was especially good or I was sinking a bunch of 40 footers in a row or anything, it was just that I felt really good out there and was perfectly content with where I was in my life and in the progress of the Plan so far.  The way I see it, there are four types of days.  You can feel good and play well, feel horrid and play poorly, feel good and shank everything or feel horrid yet actually play pretty well.  It seems like how you feel and your performance would go hand in hand, but judging by my stats it’s rarely the case.  Usually, when I feel the best my percentages are actually down from a day where I feel a bit under the weather and tired..  That said, playing well can definitely help perk up the attitude!

So today was a feel good but putt average kind of day.  After the past three days of low morale, it was just what the dr. ordered, regardless of my performance.  I just hope that I can keep the ball rolling tomorrow and finish the week strong.

A side note:  I chipped up and one putted seven balls in a row.  I only practice chipping about 20-30 minutes a day right now, but I can tell already that I’m going to love this part of the game.  There seems to be a lot of creativity involved with the pitching wedge..

My first ball in the cup from off the green!

Ok, so, I heard a buzz around the greens today about Tiger Woods finally switching putters after years of using his Scotty Cameron.  The strange thing is..  He picked the exact same putter that I’ve been using for the past three months.  I know that I’ve been tracking my stats with my Method putter, blogging about my successes with the club so far and talking up the club in general, but I never expected Tiger to switch clubs after reading my blog!  I’m definitely flattered.  But, for the record, I’ve got to let the world know that I did, indeed, have the club first..

Seriously, though, it comes as a bit of surprise to me that he finally made the switch to a new putter because of how much success he has had with his putting game in his career and how hard it must be to make a switch like that.  For someone like me, give me a new club and by the end of the day I’ll have adapted to the nuances of it and will be able to putt with it basically as well as I was putting with my old club.  For him, he must have had to practice ball striking for hundreds of hours over the past couple months in order to adjust his swing.  I’m not sure how the Scotty Cameron struck the ball, but I know that Method has a nice pop to it, so it will be interesting to see where his putts are landing this weekend at St. Andrews.

Now that the record is set straight, I can chat about my day today.  It’s been a strange one, I’m not going to lie about that.  Not sure what is up, but I’ve felt for a few days now that my brain has been a bit scrambled.  Seems my focus and eyesight are just a bit off and I’ve been getting a bit of vertigo while looking over the ball.  Darren (the cognitive trainer) says that my symptoms are similar to people who have jarred their spine somehow and that if I don’t see any improvements I should go see a chiropractor for an adjustment.  I’m just going to get a great night sleep and see if I start feeling better by tomorrow afternoon.  If nothing has changed by the weekend I’ll get a bit more concerned and seek out a solution.

On a happier note, my morale was good out there today!  My spirits are up and even though my putting was not the best it’s ever been, I feel like my lags are slowly improving and I’m slowly (but surely!) becoming money on anything within five feet.  I also holed my first chip!  I actually got one in from about ten feet off the putting green and I cannot tell you how much fun that was!  Yesterday, I actually saw a lady hit a hole in one on the tenth hole of the greenback, and from her reaction I think she was about as excited as I was hitting my chip in!  I even took a picture of mine..

What a great world we live in!