Changing Seasons

The leaves have begun their annual transformation around the Portland area.  Just yesterday, the idea of Fall had not begun to cross my mind but while running errands today I started to notice that there was a lot more color in the sky.  Summer is beginning to fade and with it departs the busiest season of The Dan Plan to date.

To say I played a lot of golf this summer is a gross understatement.  According to the USGA, the 26 million golfers in the United States play an average of 21 round per year.  In a way that is a lot of golf, especially seeing as it’s the average for 26 million and a lot of golfers play in areas where you can’t play through the winter.  It’s quite a few rounds, but I have played a bit more.  Since June 21, I have played 53 full rounds of golf.  That’s 2.5x what the average golfer plays in a year and there are, technically, 11 days of summer remaining.  I will definitely be playing a round each of the next few days as I’m playing in the PNGA Mid-Am beginning tomorrow so the number of rounds will creep up to about 60 by the end of the summer.  That’s a lot for a guy who never played a single 18-hole round in the first 30 years of his life..

The reason that I have played so many rounds this summer is two-fold.  It was to gain experience on the course and to gather data to see what I need to focus on this winter as far as swing mechanics and scoring goes.

I have learned a ton about how to play golf this Summer.  Before this year began, I had still never really played a full round with a full bag of clubs.  Now, I have roughly 100 rounds under my belt and understand a bit of the mental game and the different ways to approach a round.  This coming Fall/Winter will be about fine tuning the swing and getting into the right physical shape to take the game to the next level next year.

In the meantime, there are a lot of exciting things coming up.  Over the next couple of months I am scheduled for a handful of tournaments, a speaking engagement during the Chicago Ideas Week alongside Notre Dame football player Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, a round of golf with Freakonomics’ author Steven Levitt, a website facelift, another appearance on Golf Channel’s Golf in America, as well as a number of other exciting new opportunities in The Dan Plan.  This is going to be a great Fall and Winter and I hope everyone stays tuned for a bunch of new episodes coming soon on The Dan Plan’s landing page.  We are in production right now, so there won’t be a new episode for a couple more weeks, but when they come back we will have some awesome new ones!

There is new content up, though.  I posted the first 12 episodes back onto The Dan Plan site.  They haven’t been up for four months, so if you missed the beginning of the story, check them out.  You can view all 42 episodes here:  http://thedanplan.com/video.php  I apologize if it takes a few seconds to load, there is a lot of content on that page.

Ok, it’s time for me to eat a nutritiously delicious meal and turn in before tomorrow’s tournament.  It’s the first one that I have ever played that has an actual cut.  The top 60 of 111 entrants will get to play a round on Thursday for the win.  I’m extra excited because they did the tee times by handicap and there are only 2 people who start after me; so I get to be the ultimate underdog going in.  I love it!