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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

It’s been about six weeks since the last blog and the season is winding down. The year has been disappointing but I hope a very useful learning experience. My handicap rose from 3.6 in the spring to  5.2 with the handicapping season officially over on October 31st. My play was erratic all year and my tournament play with some brief exceptions, horrendous. The blog is back to the title of searching for the answer, instead of trying to execute the answer. Fortunately or unfortunately I did not execute the author either. So, what happened?

This time last year I thought I had found the answer, which was finding your that day golf swing. It was to approach each round with an open mind and try to feel your golf swing, and let your ball flight patterns dictate how you would swing for that day. Another way I put it was to abandoned that swing thought before it abandoned you. In the beginning this seemed to work out well and I thought I was really on to something for the 428th time. But as the year went on things began to go in the wrong direction. The way I was trying to compensate did not work as well on some golf courses and really did not work for tournament pressure. I wrote last spring that I thought the best way to get in the groove on the day that you played was to do opposite of the bad shot, rather than trying to allow for the bad shot. In other words if your first tee shot of the day was a high right shot, rather than aiming more left and trying to play that shot, I felt it would be better to aim right and draw the ball which would correct the problem of the first swing. There is not enough space in this blog to write about why this did not work, but it had to do many times with the way certain courses are designed and really trying to play a shot that was not the right shot for the situation. Needless to say this year went by too fast and did not go the way I envisioned it. I did manage to play 100+ rounds for the fourth consecutive year and I am still counting as there is still a little golf season left in the Burgh.

So the quest will go on, with a little different strategy. Now we all know that great ball striking does not always mean great scoring. Without great ball striking, however, you will not have great scoring. Yes, with a great short game and putting, you can always salvage a round where you are not hitting the ball very well, and maybe even pull out a round close to par. But that is still not great scoring.  The way to go about getting consistent ball striking every time you play  will be a major goal, in the coming year. It will boil down to finding a way to control your body and using particular muscles to control the way the golf swing is performed. I will discuss this hopefully with some positive answers in future blogs.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

The blog is back and it is coming from sunny and warm San Diego. I am taking a much needed break from golf and really enjoying those three grand kids. Needless to say this has been a very disappointing golf year, which has seen my golf game go all over the place, and trying to execute the answer has proved fruitless. The golf year has essentially zoomed by, and it is hard to believe it is October 1. I did have another even par round since the last blog and my performance in the South Park senior championship was not to bad.  I finished tied for third, only one shot from the lead in my age group, and finished about 10th in a field of 55, shooting a 4 over 76. Other than that, my play has been mediocre at best, and my tournament play has been horrendous. My handicap has bounced around like in no other year. I started at a 3.5 index and slowly but steadily climbed to a 5.4 and then got back to 3.6 but then in just 30 days jumped back up to my current 4.6. Did I learn anything during this depressing journey? Well I hope so and I did surprise myself in one area.

Let’s discuss the surprise first. I felt going into this season that I would be able to execute the answer and had very high hopes with some very good scores at the end of last season. I felt if I was not executing the answer by mid season, around June or July, that I would be ready to hang them up, or at least play only at a recreational level. Well a couple of things happened that changed my mind. One of them was the old age game. That my problems were age related, was one of the traps I was beginning to fall into. So in order to disprove that, I must go on. When things don’t go well, it is an easy thing to fall prey to. I don’t see any decline in my game that I can attribute to age. My distance is still the same and I putt the same, streaky. I am as dumb as I have always been on the golf course, so that hasn’t changed.   It was also something I learned or think I learned, that may be the main reason that I am going on, at least for another year.

One of my edicts in golf is that 85% of all bad shots are caused  before you take your swing. In other words the swing is not the thing. It is problems at the address position, which I have discussed in the past, that leads to bad swings and thus bad shots. Now I am revising that to 95% for anyone with a single digit handicap. For as much as we stress and stew over our swings, its what you do before you start your swing that leads to disaster. I have also read about how the body is suppose to move, which as led me to believe that many of the fundamentals of the address position in golf are wrong. As I embark on this new way to stand up to a golf ball, only time will tell if I am just seeing another flock of birds. I will be in San Diego until October 6th, and then it will be  back to trying to find and execute the answer to this goofy game. In the Burgh, if we are lucky, the golf season should last until right around Thanksgiving. I have played 93 rounds this year, so I should make the 100 round mark for the 4th consecutive year. I will only be blogging when the spirit moves me or if my address position theories look like they have some merit. Keep plugging away.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

It’s been a little over  a month since I last blogged. Usually that means that my golf game is not doing all that great, but this time it just means that I have been really busy, and the game has had it’s ups and downs. I am not any closer to executing the answer. The highlight of the month was that I shot my first even par round in about 2 years, and the low light of the month has been my horrible tournament play. I will discuss my golf game in more depth in future blogs. This blog is about two new courses I played within ninety minutes of my house. Its been a long time since I have blogged a course and I forgot two things that I usually do, stimp the greens and eat a hot dog at the turn. This will mark the 93rd and 94th course that I have played within the 90 minute parameter.

The first course is Tom’s Run, in Blairsville which is about a one hour drive from my house. This is a course I have played before, but have not played it since I started doing the blog, in August of 2010. It is part of a 36 hole facility with the other course being Chestnut Ridge. The course plays about 6800 yards from the tips and I played it that day from the white tees which were about 6200 yards. The course has a lot of interesting holes and was in decent shape with the greens being very smooth and the fairways and roughs not too bad. This course would be worth the trip if it were not for two things. Their rates are above average and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th holes are weird and just plan awful. I am not going into great detail here, but they are just not very pleasing to the eye. The rest of the golf course is fine, and I have played Chestnut Ridge which they renovated when Tom’s Run was built, and they did a really nice job. This is another course which I have played but have not blogged. The place is in a little financial bind I hear, and this does not surprise me since they have really never cut their rates.

The next course is the The Club at Shadow Lakes in Aliquippa Pa. which is about a 30 minute drive.  This is a course that use to be private, but again because of financial difficulties went public. Unfortunately they never lost their country club attitude. Their rates have always been above average. I did go play it about 2 weeks ago and I must admit, I was pleasantly surprised. The course has lots of water and many tree lined holes. The course plays about 6500 yards from the tips and that is the tees we played. It was in very good shape and the greens were fast enough and very smooth. The fairways were good and the rough did not have many if any bare spots. The golf course was relatively flat which is another bonus here in Western Pa. The customer service was not that great but overall this was very enjoyable course to play.  If someone would really take this course over and cut the rates and be a little more consumer savvy, this golf course could really make some loot.

I will try to get back into the swing of things, no pun intended or maybe I did, with the blog. As I wrote in the beginning of the blog the game is in a stat of flux, more like re-flux. Only time will tell if I can come up with anything to make the game better on the day we play.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

It’s been two weeks since the last blog, with the first week being a week of grand kid fun. There was the celebration of my daughter’s birthday who happens to be born on 7-7-77. I should remember that even in my old senile days. One of the days we all went bowling and that was an interesting experience. I haven’t bowled in about 25 years or more and bowling uses an entirely different set of muscles. I had a hard time finding a ball that would fit my thumb. Now, I don’t have that unusual  size of thumb but even with a 16 pound ball there were some thumb holes that were too small. I had to use one that was too big and in trying to hold on to the ball I got a cramp in my hand that lasted 3 days. It was a good thing golf was on the back burner for awhile, because I don’t think I could have played anyway. Then, the two older grand kids six and eight stayed overnight and I got introduced to mindcraft a game that they love, and I still really don’t know what the hell is going on. I will be going to San Diego at the end of September and you better believe I will figure it out. It was a great 8 day visit.

This week it was back to golf, where my slow but sure comeback is continuing. The rounds this week were 77, 75, 76, 80, and 76. The 80 was yesterday at Fort Cherry where par is 70 and it was by far the worse round of the week.   This round was caused more by poor thinking and some off putting, but the ball striking was not much worse than in the better rounds. My 76 today was again marred by some bad thinking as I had 4 birdies, but 2 double bogies kind of crushed the possibility of this being a really good round. I am back to the shoulder control swing with some modification, and this re-learning of this swing has delayed progress on finding your that day golf game or swing. I have had my best putting stretch in a long time and that does help the score to say the least. As the physical side of my game gets more comfortable I expect to apply this to helping me find my “that day golf swing. I felt I had to get back to something, as bad as I was playing and scoring. The last two weeks have felt that I am back on track. The weather here in Pittsburgh has not helped much either, as this has been one of the wettest summers on record and the golf courses are paying the price. It has been a challenge to keep the courses playable. I have one more week of regular golf and then I will be hitting the tournament trail in full force. Beginning in August and to the end of September I will be playing in about 10 tournaments. So the answer will be executed or it will be my golf game that will go to a watery grave.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

A little better news to report this week concerning the golf game. After many weeks of el stinko golf I played the last 12 holes of the week even par. It was solid golf with 8 pars 2 birdies and 2 bogies.  Have I found something? Who knows. It may be that I brought all the things I have been talking about over the last 5 years together to shoot a decent stretch of holes. Or this may be just one of those goofy stretch of holes that anybody mired in a slump has once in awhile. This week I would like to discuss a couple aspects of golf that I just find interesting and wonder how if any it affects our own golf games.

The highest level of golf, the PGA tour, always makes golfers at all levels wonder how the pros are able to shoot such great numbers. Now what I am about to write about, does not mean that I think that this is  the only reason that the pros shoot such good numbers but I wonder what would happen if they were made to do just one thing. HIT THE DAMN SHOT. For every shot, there is a big discussion between the player and the caddy. There are numerous practice swings and even more thought and swings, for shots around the greens. Then when they get on the green, they read putts from behind, the side and in front of the ball. I would like to see a tournament that had a shot clock. It would be 45 seconds for every full shots and long pitches. Thirty seconds for shots around the green and putts. The clock would start as soon as the bag came off the caddy’s shoulder for longer shots and as soon as the ball was placed in front of the mark for putts.  Despite all the call for speedy play in golf, do you think if the low handicapper took this much time to figure out each shot and putt would his game improve. By the same token, if the pros were made to speed up via a shot clock would their scores go up. I  really don’t have any opinion on the answer, but I would love to see that PGA event with the shot clock to see what would happen.

Then there is the swing thought. The swing thought has been around for 100 years. Bobby Jones writes about in his books on Golf written in the 1930’s. My point is, golfers have made no progress on the swing thought in 85 years. It is something that is just excepted in golf. Your find some kind of swing thought. It may range from starting back low and slow, slow the transition, shift the weight to left side, to make a full back swing. There are too many to mention, including address position adjustments. The one thing that all these swing thoughts have in common is that eventually they do not work. We as golfers, just accept this, as that’s just the way golf is. Part of my trying to execute the answer mantra, is to abandon that swing thought before it abandons you. But why does this happen? Is it because this swing thought even though it helps us temporarily, causes another fault in the golf swing. There are many golf mental guru’s who advocate no swing thought. Maybe they are right but I don’t know. Maybe instead of having a swing thought we should have a swing feel. Maybe the way a swing feels will stay with us and won’t abandon us. I don’t know, we’ll see.

It might be a little bit of time of we’ll seeing, because the grand kids are in town and golf will be on the back burner, but I might be able to squeeze in a couple of rounds. We’ll see.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

Trying to execute the answer has proven to be much more difficult than I anticipated to say the least. The weeks scores continue to be horrible ranging from 76 to a wonderful 89 but I think I may have discovered the folly of my ways.

When I first came up with the answer, which is finding your “that day golf swing” as quickly as possible, it was at the end of the golfing season last year. I came up with a method of accomplishing that goal which I discussed in previous blogs. The main principal of that method was to start each round with an open mind about your swing and feed off the results of the shots and make adjustments. Because it was at the end of the golfing season I played most of my golf at Scenic Valley, but it would not have made any difference what golf course I was playing, it was the fact that I was playing the same golf course. Obviously when you play the same golf course the opening tee shot is exactly the same. Once I started this process of trying to execute the answer my scores were very good and ball striking improved dramatically.  One of the few times I did not play well is when I went to Lindenwood and my ball striking was not as good for 8 holes, until I started to draw all my shots and I played the last 10 holes 1 over par. This should have been a tip off right there but I am a slow learner. I did go out to San Diego and shoot a very good round, but its opening tee shot has similar characteristics of the opener at Scenic Valley. Because the opening tee shot was the same all the time, I don’t think I was being as open minded about my golf swing as I thought I was. Now, I don’t think this is even the way to go about finding you “that day golf swing”. The opening tee shot of a round is very important. It’s not to say it is round maker or breaker, but it is important non the less. I have hit great opening tee balls and have had bad rounds, and on the other side of the coin, had a very bad opening drive and shot one of the best rounds of my life. But because of playing the same opening tee shot, I think this led me astray on how to execute the answer. I still feel you should abandon that swing thought before it abandons you, but I think there is a different way to go about doing it.

The way I felt going into this season is, that if I was playing as bad as I am playing right now, I would be getting ready to shut everything down including the blog. I have a little more than half the season to go, and with this new direction to take, I am going to continue to plod along and see what happens. With golf it is easy to see if you are going in the right direction, all you have to do is look at the number.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

It’s a Wednesday blog as I have been really busy or it may be that it just takes me longer to do the same amount of work, I don’t know. The game is about the same and I will write about that on Sunday. But today I want to discuss two subjects the U. S. Open and the fall of Tiger Woods.

I think the U.S.G.A. may need to be investigated like F.I.F.A.  Where do you think the 2022 Open might be held, Death Valley Municipal Golf Course where soft ice cream is served after every round. Forget the fact that this was goofy golf. Forget the fact that you heard more than once a player exclaim “Oh no” and then see his ball wind up about 4 feet from the hole. Forget the fact that the greens were almost unputtable. This was not a very tough test of golf. If the Open comes back there ever again, and lets hope not, maybe they could just aerate the greens a week before the championship to really protect the course. Yes, I think kick-backs and bribes are a definite possibility here. The only thing that managed to save this Open was the finish and that  Jordan Spieth won. If the putting surfaces would have been as good as a good public course the winning score would have been easily 260 to 265 which would have crushed the Open scoring record. Even with the horrible conditions Louis Oosthuizen managed to shoot 66, 66, and 67 in the last three rounds, the best last 3 rounds in Open history. Rory may have shot 60 on Sunday, if he would have gotten the right bounce on many of his putts. Dustin Johnson would have won by 5 or 6 shots if his putts would have rolled true.  How about all the injuries that occurred from people and caddies just trying to maneuver around the place. This whole venue was a disgrace to our National Championship. Bring on Death Valley.

Tiger Woods has taken the biggest fall of any professional golfer in history. I know that David Duval was no 1 in the world and disappeared, Ian Baker Finch shot a 92 in the British Open and was gone and the list goes on and on of players who have had success, even won majors and then their games have vanished. But now, we are talking about a golfer who dominated professional golf from 1997 through 2006 like no other golfer has in history. Everybody can argue about who is the greatest of all time Nicklaus or Woods but the fact of matter remains nobody did what Tiger Woods did in those 10 seasons. He won majors by 9 12 and 15, yes 15 strokes.  He broke the cut record and  his win percentage was the best of all time. Even just 2 years back he was no 1 in the world. Now, he can only shoot better that 3 people who played in the US Open. He flat out just looks like a good low handicapper. He will go through a stretch of holes where he looks pretty good and then just seems to lose it. He mishits as many chips as he hits well.  I have always thought Tiger would go on to win 19 to 20 majors and seal the deal as the greatest of all time. If he does anything like that now, it would be the biggest comeback in sports history.  I would not be shocked if he did something like that, but sadly I think he is done. When golfers seem to get in this big of funk and this is the biggest funk of all time, they rarely recover. If this is the case, this is one die hard golfer who is really going to miss Tiger Woods.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

It’s been two weeks since the last blog and not to much positive has happened. The golf has been mediocre at best, with score ranging from mid 70’s to the mid 80’s with no end in sight. It appears executing the answer is going to be just as difficult as finding the answer. I am going to discuss one interesting thing that I am doing with some positive results.

In some areas of the country, this is not a concern, but in Western Pennsylvania playing from uneven lies is an every day problem. The basic lies are uphill, downhill, ball below your feet and ball above the feet. The general advice has been to play the slope. If the ball is above your feet you are suppose to aim to the right of the target and allow the ball to draw, right to left. If the ball is below your feet then you are to aim to the left and allow the ball to go from left to right. A  lie that is downhill will go from left to right and an uphill lie will have a tendency to be pulled, so you aim a little right.  Now there are all kinds of address position adjustments that you make for each lie and any instruction book will go through them and many of you already know this. What I have been doing the last two months with some pretty good results is trying to fight the slope. If the ball is below my feet I will aim a little right of the target and try to hit a draw. With the ball above my feet I will aim a little left of the target and hit a fade. The result is a shot that travels pretty straight or does draw or fade a little bit. This move has been particularly effective when the ball is below my feet. The shot flies a little lower but is very straight and carries much farther than the typical way you play a shot that is below your feet. This has also worked well for the ball above your feet trying to hit a fade, and trying to draw the ball off a downhill lie. Where it has been a little less effective is on the uphill lie and trying to hit the fade, but it’s not been bad. So try this, you may like it, remember fight the slope.

Needless to say the last 3 to 4 weeks have been pretty frustrating and discouraging but trying to find your that day golf swing will continue. I have one 36 hole tournament this week and another 18 hole tournament later in the week. I am not brimming with confidence right now but you never know. That’s why I call this game goofy.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

Well it has been an interesting two weeks, even though it has been a very non productive two weeks. Let’s get the mess over with, here are the scores: 78,81,77,76,76,76,84,87,76,79, and 82. Eleven rounds of golf in about 19 days and needless to say I am not close to executing the answer. The highlight of the period was when my partner Pete, in the 2-man scramble at South Park, holed an 80 yard wedge shot for an eagle 3 and we split a 250 dollar skin. My 87 was in the other tournament I played and I have not played well for most of the two weeks plus. Now has this been a learning experience, absolutely. Here is what I have learned.

1. I am an idiot

2. Why am I an idiot. Because not once, not twice, but three times during this time, I went into rounds with some preconceived ideas about my swing, and in each and every time these ideas failed to work and were abandoned by the third hole.

3. The second reason I am an idiot is because I am changing putters too much and if anybody knows that its not the putter but the puttee it is me. I am going to pick one putter and it is going to last for the entire year, come hell or high water.

4. I am not finding my that day swing fast enough to say the least. My method to do this is not working. So it is back to the drawing board.

Tomorrow will be June and for me this can not come fast enough. Maybe the turn of the calendar will give me a fresh start. Am I discouraged? Well, yes and no. Yes because I feel that I have wasted a period where I was able to play more golf than usual and instead of getting better, I just saw my game go downhill. No, because of my stupidity of going into three rounds with preconceived ideas of how I was going to swing and failing miserably, just reinforced my idea, that this is the answer to the game of golf. I am back to my normal routine of play with no tournaments for about 3 weeks,so hopefully I can find away to execute the answer. See you next week.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

Back in the Burgh, and three rounds into a stretch of time where I will be playing a lot of golf. I am not going to comment on these first three rounds and the next blog will be 2 weeks from today at the end of the golf fest. During this time I will be playing in three tournaments. If I am ever going to execute the answer this should be the time.

Do you remember that old Memorex cassette tape commercial where they would ask “Is it live or is it Memorex?” and they would show a famous artist singing or playing and you would have to figure out which one it was. This is similar to when you hit a bad shot on the golf course. Was the bad shot caused by a poor swing, or was it from a pre swing  problem. Even though I feel that 85 to 90% of all bad shots are caused from pre swing problems, how do you know for sure? Lets define pre swing problems. First there is the fundamental address position. You could be misaligned, too far or too close to the ball, or you could have poor posture. At this stage of the game I doubt it would be a grip issue. Then there are other pre shot factors. The lie of the ball, the lay of the land, your club selection, the conditions of the course, the weather, and how the shot fits your eye. The last one is particular important on the tee ball. Now I realize that any of these things, can lead to a bad swing which will result in a bad shot. If all the pre shot elements are right that still does not guarantee that your swing can not lead to a bad shot. So when the shot doesn’t turn out well which one is it? Is there a way to know? I am not too sure, but I do think this is one of the keys in trying to find your “that day golf swing or game”.   Naturally, just playing the odds, when the shot does not come off it is probably something that has happened before you took the club back. I really don’t have the answer to this question quite yet. I think in trying to figure this out will help in managing a round. One final point is that sometimes bad shots should be looked at as just one of those things, that are going to happen and sometimes should just be ignored or forgotten. The next two weeks should be interesting.