It’s chippin’ time!

I went out to meet Christopher (CS) at the Nike facility yesterday to meet the man who built my putter.  He is also building the rest of my clubs, including the pitching wedge, nine and eight irons, which he had ready for us at their office.  Quite the talented club makers they were, and interesting guys!  We got to hang out and see where they work for about an hour and then headed over to Pumpkin to give the new clubs a try.

At pumpkin, CS showed me the basics (very basic, we have a lot more time scheduled in the upcoming weeks to really get down to the details about swinging an iron) about how to hold and make a small stroke with the pitching wedge.  We’re going to “shelve” the other two clubs for the time being and really just use the pitching wedge during my mid morning breaks from putting.  I’ll still be focussing on putting 90% of the time for now, but it’s fun to have a bit of variety for the days where I need to spice it up a bit.  So, he showed me how to swing (as a lefty for my sake) and I gave it a few wacks.  One thing that I immediately thought was odd was that you are supposed to hit the ball either on the downswing or at the very bottom of the swing.  Having never taken a lesson before and having just hit with my brother here and there, I never really thought about the mechanics and physics of a golf swing, but it makes sense that you would want to strike the ball with the club moving down so that the club face picks the ball up and launches it through the swing..  Long story short, he had me swinging in a way I never had imagined swinging/standing and I actually made some good contact with the ball.  Who would’ve known, taking a lesson can actually make you better!

Went out today and gave it a go with the same results.  After a few errant shots, I managed to strike the ball fairly decently a number of times.  Didn’t do too much, but it was fun and I’m excited about the future possibilities with my new clubs!  My putting was pretty good too.  There’s a lot of room to improve, but I’m to the point where if I don’t two-putt a hole on the green I’m disappointed, which is worlds away from where I started (I would have been lucky to leave a ball within 15 feet of a hole three months ago..)

Here’s to new possibilities as well as to the continual march towards putting excellence!