Underdog Golf Blog

The easiest way to get better at anything in life is to examine past patterns, whether they be your own or that of history and learn from them. This is why in golf so many players keep track of specific results throughout their rounds.

I myself keep track of fairways hit in regulation (tee shot), greens hit in regulation (with at least two strokes left before par) and total putts. May golfers even go to the extent of keeping track of up and downs, sand saves, distances with each club out of every lie and so forth. I’m still have so much to learn and my swing is still evolving at such a changing rate that I only focus on the first three mentioned.

I’ve always thought of myself as having decent posture. I’m 6’4”, so it’s not the easiest thing in the world as there is a lot of me to lean one way or the other. Recently though I discovered that I carry my weight on my toes.

There is never more evident than when I swing a golf club. There are a million things that can happen and the main two that I experience is dropping my head and/or falling forward afterwards. Little bit tricky to have consistency if you’re flopping all over the place.

Tonight I’m staring at my computer screen, the cursor blinking on a blank page almost taunting me. I’ve got so many things going through my head on what I need to work on, but none of them translating to words. It’s almost hard to describe the learning curve I’m on right now.

Woosh. Woosh. Woosh. I’ve grown to love that sound so much. The sound of connecting with the ball first and launching it off the club face. Anytime you watch a PGA tournament you hear this sound with almost every shot. As an amateur, and most importantly beginner, the occurrence of this is a bit more spread out.

Patience is a virtue. I remind myself of this every day, especially those days that involve golf. This past weekend I had one of the best 9 holes of golf and one of the longest most trying rounds to date. The later round tested my patience and I feel I came out on top.

I have always felt like I had pretty good balance. That is until I started seeing my golf swing in slow motion on video with a little red line drawn around my head.

It turns out I, like many other beginner golfers “wave my hair back and forth” during my full golf swing. Admittedly it has gotten much better. My head used to go down during my backswing and then back up in my downswing leaving tons of room for inconsistency. I’ve worked hard and learned to keep my balance and stay more upright in the backswing but that led to my head going down just a tad in my downswing.

Not one day after my last post Back in the Swing of Things, I got sick again; one of the lovely benefits of working with people who are sick and continue to come into the office. This put my total sick time to over 2 weeks and my practice and productivity for this golf blog at an almost stand still.

While complaining to one of my college friends that lives in VA, he not so subtly reminded me that he has to take months off at a time due to winter weather. He also told me it typically takes him 3 to 4 months into the golf season to really feel like his game is back to peak level.

Ahhhhhhh, it felt so good to get out on the range today. Between being sick and it raining for three straight days I hadn’t been able to practice much this past week and a half. During my lesson this week I could tell. I was stiff as a board, reverting back to old bad habits and apparently forgot how to putt.
Needless to say who would have known a week and a half could leave you a bit rusty. It all started getting comfortable again about 15 minutes in and I remember why I love this game. Just swinging that club melted any stress I was carrying with me away.

Change is inevitable. Whether we as people are on board accepting change is another entirely different thing. In my 28 youthful yet wise years, I have learned that it is best to roll with the punches. I’ve learned to accept that not everything goes according to plan and that’s simply because we can’t predict the future.

There is nothing I’d love more than to be shooting in the 80s already each and every time I step out on the course. However, just like anything in life you want to get really good at I’m discovering golf takes time.

I try not to get discouraged when my scores go up and down like a rollercoaster by remembering that even with as much as I practice, I’m still a beginner. When my scores take a hit it’s usually because we’re adjusting some part of my swing or game that is mediocre as it is, but to become excellent I have to keep learning.