The result has been some of the best ball striking, short game, and putting I’ve had yet. Even the notoriously inconsistent driver seems to be settling into a groove.

I still focus on some basic mechanical areas, but when it comes time to execute I am trying to focus on nothing more than executing the shot that will hit my target. It was a difficult adjustment to let go of mechanical thoughts during my swing, and it’s still difficult at times, but it’s amazing how freeing your mind of those thoughts also frees your body to execute.

I suppose I should have known better. A lot of the mental and physical connections I’ve been making lately remind me of when I was a college baseball pitcher. Executing a golf shot and executing a pitch are alike in many ways: to execute successfully, both require the mind to focus on a small target while trusting the body to physically execute the action so that the ball reaches the intended target.

The amazing thing for me has been how similar the two activities are for the mind, despite the obvious physical differences.

In some ways it’s funny to me that it took me so long to realize the correlation. Before now, when I thought about the mental game of golf, I thought about it in terms of controlling nervousness, staying relaxed, and so on. It turns out, as in other sports, none of this is as important as mental concentration and physical relaxation.

I sort of wish I had studied the mental game of golf earlier in my journey, but it is what it is at this point. Perhaps more importantly is that I’m getting more enjoyment out of the game as I’ve changed my perspective on how best to play.

The last few practice sessions I’ve put much more emphasis on feeling the clubhead through the swing and tension in my body and recognizing how the different “feels” give me different results in my shots and putts.

In some ways it’s been liberating to not think about mechanics, even during practice. Obviously mechanics are important, but I think I started to overemphasize mechanics to the point of being robotic and losing fluidity in my swing movements.

It’s only been a few practice sessions since I started the “feel” approach, but I’ve noticed that while I don’t hit every shot perfect, the dispersion in my shots is decreasing and the consistency in both distance and direction is increasing. It’s especially noticeable with my driver swing, which has been falling victim to dropkicks lately.

I’m also seeing improvements in chipping and putting as well. It’s almost as if focusing on the feeling of my movements and becoming more body-aware has made it easier for me to both concentrate and actually perform the movements with fluidity. It’ll be interesting to see where this takes my game.

I’ve also restarted my workouts. My body feels better overall when I workout, and from a golf standpoint I feel as if I have more control over my body. While I think the workouts will help my performance, I’m also doing them for injury prevention purposes.

And finally, I am recognizing that my poor performance in tournaments are caused by my mental game, or lack thereof. I’ve realized I put too high of expectations on myself, and when the results don’t match expectations, I tend to start trying too hard. This leads to tension, a lack of focus, and in the end poor shots and missed putts.

I also tend to get very technical on the course at these tournaments, where I’m relying more on mechanics than feel of the swing. The mechanical focus only leads to more tension and less positive results.

So from a mental standpoint, I’ll be focusing on the feel of the swing and shot execution. One thing I think I’m getting better at is not paying attention to my score through the round, but I’d like to reach a point where I truly have no idea until after the 18th hole is complete.

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.