It’s tough to restart

Last Friday I had a revelation about my putting that I thought was going to be the next big (and easy) step towards being a PGA Tour putter, but today I realized that although it might be a step in the right direction, that step is not going to be an easy or quick one..  After about thirty minutes of practice today I was very tempted to revert back to my old way of putting because I knew that I would be able to sink certain putts, but then I stopped myself because I won’t be able to get any better if I keep doing to same thing over and over.  There are many different levels of “good” in life and I think that over the past six months I have become a “good” putter, but that is not the goal of The Dan Plan, so now I have to make some drastic changes to what I am doing in order to change that “good” to a potentially possible “great”.

For a bit of clarity, I lowered my hands a good deal and choked up on the club, causing the head of the club to come out in the swing plane quite a bit and in turn making it so I can arc the putter during the swing instead of doing a figure eight with it as I had been.  The difficulty with this right now is that it has changed my line of site over the ball so I have a harder time seeing the line, causing me to miss some a number of shots I normally would be able to sink.

This was evident in a game that a friend and I played.  We played nine holes and the loser of every hole had to do two push-ups (we counted during the game and you had to do them all at the end).  The previous time we played I won our game pretty handily, but this time we incorporated chipping and with my new putting swing I knew I was in for trouble.  Needless to say, Matt won the game and I was on the ground doing some pre-gym pushups.  I was hoping that even with the new swing thoughts I would be able to share a few pushups, but he proved too strong an adversary and so I did all 18, plus about five for losing the total game..

I am not sure if what I am doing now will be how I putt in four years, but I think the important thing for me to learn/realize in this is that there is no room for stagnation and if I ever get too stuck in my ways (especially if those ways are settling for “good”) I will not be able to succeed in the plan.  You’ve got to roll with the punches in this game and it’s best not to worry about the big picture, but instead focus on the finer subtleties at hand.