slowin’ it down a bit.
Not the best photo by any means, but you can see that Pumpkin is transforming for the LPGA even this week.
I met with Christopher (CS) today out at Pumpkin and it was good to see him, but kind of a zoo out there.. They were getting ready for the annual Safeway LPGA event and so there were tons of vendors and construction workers putting together grandstands and other viewing apparatus. The good news, I got to watch a few of the ladies practice and they were doing almost the exact same drills that I’ve worked on for the past four month. The bad news, they seemed much more consistent in their swinging. Along those line, CS and I worked on tempo and ways for me to maintain a consistent stroke through all of the distances I putt.
Basically, what he showed me was that no matter which club you use or how far you plan on hitting the ball, you can use a metronome and have the exact same time through all of your swings. Whether it’s the driver or a two-foot putt, the same amount of time passes between your address and striking the ball.
I had been swinging very quickly and unevenly (I had never really thought about a swing “tempo” until today) so when he turned the metronome on it took a while for me to hit the ball on the beeps, I had to concentrate on slowing down, which is seemingly counterintuitive for me… And, he had it set on 62 beats per minute, which is a bit on the faster side of the average PGA swing. My job this week is to first find a metronome and then play around with different tempos from 55 to 65 to see where my swing fits best. I have a feeling that, based on my quicker general pace of life, I will be swinging towards the faster end of the scale, but will give them all a fair shot.
The question now is, can I find a Iphone metronome app? That would by far be the easiest solution to needing one and with headphones it would be much less distracting to all the other golfers out there!
Seeing all of the preparations for the tournament got me excited about the possible future. I caught myself wondering if I would be nervous playing in front of a crowd and in all honesty I’m not sure how I will react. The only way to know is to do it and find out! Regardless, I’ve come a long way in the past four months and 500 training hours, but still have a long way to go before I can really start thinking about competition nerves..