First full swing lesson
It’s been a long time, for me. I think this is the longest I have gone without blogging in the past 12 months. It’s been about 11 days, 10 if you include a list of putting drills as a blog, but I’m not sure that that counts, so we’ll call it 11. I took a few days off of golfing too and just as in golf practice, I feel a bit rusty on my words at the moment. But, similar to practice, it just takes a few nice shots/words and you’re back where you left off.
I feel like a lot has happened since February 21, although it is hard to pinpoint any specifics outside of the fact that I departed sunny Florida for my hometown in the Pacific Northwest. That was a bit of a shocker, though. The day I left it was 80 in Florida and had been for about a week, and when I landed in Portland it was 32 and snowing.. The weather stayed awful for a few days, too, making it relatively impossible to get back to work (the greens were closed due to frost), so I took a few days off to acclimatize and get together a game plan for the coming few wintry months.
The time off was good for my morale too. I know that I risk sounding like a spoiled brat and most people say that they would kill to be able to train at golf on a daily basis, but I was reaching a burnout point and needed a few days away to get my head screwed back on straight. I think that the time off helps you process everything that you’ve learned (or tried to learn) too and it’s just as important to step back and analyze your progress as it is to engage in the learning process. So I took a few days away.
I went back out to Heron for the first time in a month (was in Florida since January 28) yesterday and played 36 holes on the Great Blue course. I played from 75 yards for the first time and it felt great to get back out and hit some solid shots. All in all, I shot 15 over for the 36, definitely not my best performance ever, but it was the first time I had tried to hit the ball 75 yards and after a week off and… after not having played Bent grass greens in a month. Lot’s of excuses and I don’t like excuses, but thought I should preface my thinking that 15 over for 36 holes was good. And I do think it was a good score, am proud of it, actually. Everything was a bit on and a bit off, but nothing was really off and that’s what made it a good round. I played without a single warmup shot and made consistently decent shots, played it safe so to speak. Just to test myself, I also played 3 holes from 50 yards and shot even par for those, so I would be inclined to say that the extra 25 yards added a significant amount of difficulty to my game.
Speaking of 75 yards (and hopefully more like 100+ soon), I went out for a lesson at Pumpkin Ridge with Christopher today and we started hitting full swings for the first time. Man it felt great to really hit a ball! I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to take a full swing at that little white lump of hardened twine (one day long ago golf balls actually were made of hardened twine). Not to toot my own horn, but I was striking the ball really well for my first time taking a full swing. I’m truly excited about getting out to a driving range and doing some target practice. Yesterday was the first time I hit a ball more than 50 yards. Today, I must have hit them at least 100 yards, and it was into the wind and with range balls using a pitching wedge, so who knows how far I’ll be hitting it once summer hits.
After he tweaked my swing some, Christopher and I played a pitching game. The basis of the game was that you called your shot and whoever got closest in the air to the decided target got a point. We played to 5 and he won 5-1, but I wasn’t terribly far off, so using this number it will be fun to judge my progress each time I go out and have a lesson with him. I have a lot of chances for improvement, but he does too (he was playing with a broken toe today so couldn’t put much weight on his leading foot..).
If anyone else is in the middle of a long project, please remember that it is okay, and even healthy, to step back every now and then to get a breath of air. It’s easy to lose sight of your target if you forget to blink.
Sorry for the long break in blogs, I promise to keep them more regular now and appreciate all of the emails/messages about me not posting, it’s great to know people are reading!
Can’t wait to get out there and hit some “long” balls.