The end result was a 99 for Day 2, putting me in last place for the tournament. Lesson learned, I hope. Perhaps I’ll discuss more about the tournament later – I have video from Day 2′s round – but for now I want to put it behind me and move on.

Although, I have to mention the highlight of the day. On the par-4 15th, with 153 yards to the pin, I knocked a 9-iron that hit a few feet from the pin, bounced once and rolled into the hole for an eagle. That just about made up for the entire weekend.

It was a tough day for me. I shot an 87 (+15) to end in last place for my flight after round 1. While I made a few short game mistakes and my putting left a lot to be desired, the biggest issue of the day was hitting my driver. I hit 5 tee shots into the water, which isn’t all that difficult on a course with water on every hole, and you can throw in a few more penalty strokes for the 3 or 4 OB’s I had. Take all those penalties away, and my day wasn’t that bad.

I felt like I was concentrating on the right swing thoughts, but my body just didn’t feel right or that it wanted me to execute. I felt tired from the very beginning, and the extreme heat and humidity didn’t help the situation. I’m looking at it as a really bad off day with the intent to get rest and come back feeling good tomorrow.

Mentally, I didn’t focus as well as I should, but after thinking about it post-round I don’t think I arrived at the course with a mental approach that works for me (intense focus every minute). I had mental lapses throughout the day, and I let a few bad shots get to me early on.

Perhaps next week after this is all over I can go through the round shot-by-shot. I have it all marked on my scorecard, and if not I can remember just about every shot anyway. There will definitely be some lessons to be learned.

Tomorrow we hit the Stadium course. My tee time is nice and early at 7:30am – first off the block, which is nice in some respects because we experienced some ridiculously slow play today. Regardless, it’ll be nice to set our own tempo.

I expect to play well tomorrow. I have some lessons from today that I will be addressing tomorrow, whether that’s the mental game or my pre-round preparation. The key, again, will be the tee shots. I don’t mind getting into trouble and trying to save par, but I need to minimize the bad tee shots. Straight and short is better than long and wrong.

I worked on my putting in the hotel room tonight, since I pushed a lot of my putts today. After working on the range, specifically with my driver and woods, I’ll be spending some quality time on the putting green before the round tomorrow.

Today is a rest day, although I will spend about 30 minutes working on putting and chipping.

Plus, since it’s somewhat unnatural for me right now to separate my shoulder and hip turn, it takes a lot of mental concentration to do it well and get the results I’m looking for.

Too little concentration and my hips turn with my shoulders, leading to my entire swing’s results being based on my swing rhythm and timing. Too much concentration and my body tightens up, I don’t pull my hip turn through on the downswing, and I either hook, slice, or top the ball.

It’s a difficult balance, and it will be a challenge to focus on making sure my body feels the appropriate tension in the backswing every shot for 36 holes, especially as I get tired. However, if I can maintain that focus then it should be a very good weekend.

Anyway, it’s a good sign. I have roughly 3 days to get ready for the TPC Sawgrass tournament, and I’m feeling good about my game.

After last night I decided to change up my practice plan a bit. Instead of banging around balls at the range, putting green, and short game area, I’m going to try to either work on the practice course or play a round today, play my round at Sawgrass tomorrow, then keep it light Friday. Yesterday’s 9 holes really helped me from a mental standpoint in terms of my course management and pre-shot routine, and I realized I need to get a little more comfortable being on the course with the latest changes to my swing and swing thoughts. So, “play, play, play” will be the game plan heading into the weekend.

I’m going through some intense practice sessions Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week. I’m focusing a lot on two key areas: working the club through the impact zone and separating my shoulder rotation from my hip rotation. My goal by Friday is to start making these feelings more of a habit in my swing, so when I get into the tournament I can focus more on shot execution than the mechanical movements of my swing.

I’m also working on my short game in the rough around the green. Sawgrass has some thick rough, and I’d hate to lose a stroke because I can’t get the ball out of thick rough and into a reasonable putting position on the green.

Putting doesn’t feel quite as comfortable as I’d like it to, but I know it ebbs and flows. Hopefully by the weekend I’ll start draining the putts again.

I’m also working on my driver and woods off the tee. Unless you’re a glutton for scrambling, accuracy off the tee is extremely important at Sawgrass, and based on my practice round I need to be able to hit my driver, 3-wood, and 5-wood equally well off the tee. I’ve put more attention on my pitching wedge, also, especially since #17 at Stadium is roughly a PW for me. Besides #17, I noticed during my practice round that I was pulling out the PW pretty often for my approach shots.

After the intense practice days, I’ll play another round at Stadium on Thursday before having a light practice on Friday and heading to Ponte Vedra that afternoon. Hopefully that will help my body recover by tournament time - between the heat and the hard work I’ve been putting my body through to improve, my body is screaming exhaustion.

Oh, and I have a story about bees. I’ll save that for next time.

There’s a lot I could say, but the TPC Sawgrass experience all sums up to one word: amazing. The practice facilities are top-notch, and the professional atmosphere makes you feel like you’re playing with the pros.

We had a forecaddie for the round. It was my first experience with a professional caddie, but I have to say I could get used to having one of those every round I play. While being catered to is nice, what I enjoyed most about having a forecaddie was having someone to help me pick targets and the best line for my putts. It’s amazing, albeit not surprising, how much better you can play when you focus on a target instead of worrying about what might go wrong.

As mentioned, the course had been recently aerated, so it wasn’t the best conditions for scoring. The greens were pretty slow and very bumpy. Putting was more luck than skill, and chips would barely roll across the green. Fairways were also aerated, which really made things difficult even if you had a good drive. I can count 5 times I hit a great drive into the fairway, only to find my ball resting in a pile of sand repairing the aerification. Basically, I was hitting out of a bunker in the fairway. Makes it kind of hard to get the ball close.

Even so, I didn’t play particularly well. Since returning from vacation I’ve been struggling with my driver and hooking more irons than usual. I think I know what’s going on, so I just need to work on it, but the erratic shots made for a difficult round. TPC Sawgrass isn’t exactly a course with a large margin of error.

While my score was pretty rough, I was happy with how I played given the conditions – at least until I got to 18, the 3rd most difficult hole on the PGA Tour. (I par’d 17) When we arrived at 18, our caddie said to aim for a certain tree way down the fairway, around where the dogleg left starts to bend. Instead of listening to the caddie and focusing on the target, I started thinking about everything but the target.

Specifically, I eliminated the thought of the water on the left from my mind completely and didn’t even consider it in play for my tee shot. That was good. But as I said, instead of focusing on the target I started thinking, “Hit it at the target, but don’t push it right”, with right being on a hill in rough or in trees. Sure enough, I hook my tee shot left into the water. Three times.

There’s something about the view from the tee box that puts these silly thoughts in your head. I noticed that a lot of the course is that way. I learned from attending THE PLAYERS that the course layout requires you to hit your targets, but what’s not as obvious until you play is that the view from the tee box creates illusions that try to distract your mind from the task at hand. I suppose that’s what the most difficult courses do, though, and it’s also why I’m starting to enjoy and appreciate the mental challenge some courses can provide.

This Friday I’m heading back to TPC Sawgrass to play the Valley course. I’ve looked at it on Google Maps, and it looks like there’s water on just about every hole, if not every hole. What was I just saying about the mental challenge?

As for tournament preparation, I’m continuing to focus on my shoulder turn, hitting all my woods off the tee, shoring up my putting, and getting comfortable again with my greenside short game, especially bunkers and rough with odd lies. I feel like I’m close to where I need to be. All I can do at this point is keep working every day until the tournament and try to put myself in tournament-like practice conditions. The goal by tournament time is to be able to focus on executing my strategy and not worry about mechanics or having other non-competitive thoughts.

That’s really my goal at this point: day-to-day consistency. I know I can play well. The problem is that depending on the day I can also play very bad. On the days I play well, my shot spread is very small (+/- 15 feet for a wedge). On the days I play poorly, that spread can be 3-4x’s larger, if not more. I also tend to see more pulls left on those bad days.

This weekend I’ve really focused on what I can do to get more day-to-day consistency. I pulled out the video camera and recorded some swings, and I’m starting to see a couple areas to work on after comparison with Tour player videos.

To start, I need to keep working on staying connected through the swing. I’ve made progress on this in the last two weeks, but it’s not quite where it needs to be yet. The benefit of staying connected has been less pull-hooks and more small draws. My misses are starting to trend back to slight pushes or small fades, which is what I want.

Next is the shoulder turn. Or perhaps I should call it “the coil”. When I compare my video to a Tour player’s video, it appears that my hips are turning way too much, Instead of a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of my shoulder turn to hip turn, it seems more like a 1.5:1 or in some cases even a 1:1 ratio.

Right off the bat, I know this means I’m losing power. I know that you leak out power if you don’t coil your body in the backswing. Basically, you want to get your shoulder turn to 90 degrees, but only turn your hips as much as is necessary to get your shoulders that far. From what I’ve read a 3:1 ratio is good (someone correct me if this is wrong).

A good example of the power I’m losing is some of the work I did today on the practice courses at LPGA. On the par 3 I was hitting from about 168 yards to the pin. I picked my 8-iron, which is usually around the 158-163 yard mark for me. I knew I hit the ball well, but I didn’t realize I overshot my target by about 10 yards until I got up to the green. So, by limiting my hip turn I hit my 8-iron somewhere around 170 yards instead of 160 yards.

While the added power is nice, I have another suspicion on the hip turn: consistency. I suspect that I’m over-swinging, partly due to my hip turn being greater than it needs to be (this also explains why I’m able to get my shoulder turn > 90 degrees). By over-swinging, I’m starting to believe that my entire swing has become dependent on timing.

Yes, timing is important in the golf swing, but having a timing-dependent swing can lead to pretty erratic results. Some days your timing will be good, other days it will be bad. And when the timing is bad… who knows where the ball is going to go.

As a result of this, I’ve also realized that I’ve started to keep my feet too close together at setup. Feet should be shoulder-width apart with a short-iron, and I’ve noticed on video that my feet are just inside shoulder-width apart. This would explain why I feel a little off-balance at times. I may video my putting stroke as well. I’m curious if getting a more stable base will translate into more consistent putts.

So, that’s what I’ll be working the next few days before going on vacation. I’ll be heading out of town for the 4th of July, and I won’t have golf course access so I’ll be working on drills and resting my body. The good thing is that the types of changes I’m trying to implement don’t require a golf ball, so by the time vacation is over I’ll be drilled-up and ready to go.

A little while back I  realized that I hadn’t focused much on my mental approach on the course and recognized that it was probably one of the weaker areas of my game. For starters, I was struggling with the mental game in tournaments – I was shooting 20-30 strokes higher than my scoring average as a result. I also started to realize that nobody else seemed to find themselves in the same sorts of bad lies or tough shots I tended to find myself and concluded it was a result of poor decisions.

So, I started doing research and some reflection on my own game. I played a few non-scoring rounds where I focused on nothing but my mental approach for each hole and each shot. I cared less about technique and more about hitting my target. For course management, I started outlining a strategy for my round prior to the course, including determining which clubs I would use for each shot. I focused on balancing aggressive play with conservative play and on only taking risks when I knew that failure to execute wasn’t going to seriously damage my chances of making par.

The result? My next tournament was my best score yet (the 83 at the state qualifier). Not too long after that I had another best tournament score at 74.

I’m playing smarter now. I’m taking into account the reality that I’m not going to strike the ball perfect every time, so I know I need to account for my tendencies and give myself the best chance for success every shot.

For instance, if I don’t hit it straight I have a tendency to push my driver. So, I’ve started to line up on the right side of the tee box with my target line being the left side of the fairway. That way if I push it right I’ll likely be on the right side of the fairway, and if I hit it straight I’ll be on the left side of the fairway. Either way, I’m on the fairway. It’s pretty amazing how a simple adjustment in your mental apprach can change your game. My fairway percentage has gone from averaging 50% to averaging 70%+.

I take similar approaches with other aspects of the game. Basically, for any situation, I pick my target based on the location that will give me the best chance to recover from an imperfect shot. For someone like me who likes to “go for it” and be aggressive, it’s counter-intuitive to my regular thought process, but it’s working.

As mentioned in my last post, earlier this month I competed in a qualifier for the state amateur championship. I shot an 83 and didn’t qualify, but I left the tournament feeling confident about my game. Despite a quadruple bogey on the 6th hole, I was only 4-over after the first 9 holes and was otherwise playing well. Unfortunately, my putting fell apart on the back 9 and I had a bogey on 7 of the last 9 holes to finish with my 83.  It wasn’t necessarily the result I was looking for, but it’s a lesson learned. I decided to take the positives with me to the next tournament and focus on strengthening my weaknesses.

Apparently that strategy worked pretty well because I just shot my best tournament score yet – a 1-over 74. I was actually 2-under and tied for 1st place heading into the 18th hole when I had difficulty making a club decision off the tee. Even though I hadn’t committed to my tee shot, I still swung and ended up topping the ball into a hazard. I tripley-bogeyed the hole to take 2nd place. Again, lesson learned. I left the place very excited and confident about my game. In fact, that may be the first time in my life I’ve been so happy about getting 2nd place. Finally, the results of hard work are starting to show. Perhaps the best part is that I didn’t even feel like I played close to my best – I felt like I played well, but I could have played much better.

This past week I’ve really been focused on keeping my arms and shoulders connected through my takeaway. Lately I’ve been getting more snap-hooks and strong draws, neither of which is my natural shot path. Also, my driver has been either a serious draw, snap-hook, or straight and low – none of which is particularly desirable off the tee.  So, obviously, something has been off with my swing.

A friend of mine noticed that I was hinging my wrists early, leading to my hands “manipulating the clubface”, as he called it. It only took one swing on video to confirm it. To correct the issue I’m focusing on the feel of only turning my shoulders, leaving my lower body quiet, while also keeping my hands in the same position as they were at address up until the club is parallel to the ground. Note that this is only feeling – what actually happens may be slightly different.

Also, I’ve incorporated a grip tension count in my pre-shot routine. Basically I start with a tension of 1 in my hands on the club, increase tension with each count up to 7, then decrease tension back to 2 or 3 before addressing the ball. This helps me reduce tension in my hands and wrists, allowing the club to move freely and build lag in the swing.

The end result is my shots are more straight, dispersion has been reduced, and I’ve gained the distance I had lost the last few months, especially with my drives. When I execute this properly, my drives reach the 290 yard range with little to no effort. In this past tournament, I even had drives over 300 yards and came within 10 yards of driving the green on a 340 yard par 4. Wedges and short-irons are also more consistent, and I’m able to translate the same swing thoughts to the other clubs. It’s good stuff.

I’m still deciding on my next tournament. I may play in one next weekend. If not, I’ll be taking a short vacation before I play in another one in about 3-4 weeks. This week I plan to (re)start my strength training program for golf to help in injury-prevention as well as to build strength for distance and consistency. For the golf game, I’m going to continue working on the “connectedness” in my swing and spend more time working on green-side bunkers and pitch shots less than 100 yards – both are areas that I struggled with the other day.