Underdog Golf Blog

This weekend I got to attend my first ever live PGA Tournament. Living in San Diego, CA, I am lucky enough to have an annual event hosted at Torrey Pines 10 minutes away from my house. I didn’t really know what to expect when I got there as I had heard mixed reviews about attending these tournaments live.
People had told me that I wouldn’t be able to see anything and it’s better to watch from home, yet others told me there was nothing like it. I have to say I agree with the positive reviews as I had a blast and loved every second of it. It also didn’t hurt that it came down to a 2 hole playoff between Brandt Snedeker and Kyle Stanley.

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.

If there’s one thing I haven’t perfected yet it’s gauging distances on the golf course. I’ve definitely gotten better with time, but I’m still not where I need to be. To help out with this, I asked my wonderful girlfriend Maria for a SkyCaddie SG5 as a Christmas present. I asked, I received, I screamed like a little school girl when I opened it Christmas morning.

As my first Movember comes to a close I can’t help but look back and recollect on the fun stuff that went along with it this month. So I thought I’d share my “top five” list from this past month that includes golf and personal experiences.

So if you haven’t heard, November has in the past few years come to be known affectionately as Movember. Movember was started a few years ago in Melbourne, Australia. Since then it has gone global and helped raise of $7.5 million dollars for various charities.

Basically guys sign up to grow a mustache for the month of November and get sponsored by friends, family, strangers and anyone else willing to toss a few bucks to a great cause and a ton of great stache pics.

The Guys and Gals running Movember are doing something truly great here. I encourage everyone to participate or get involved.

It’s now been four months since I first launched the Underdog Golf Blog. From the beginning it’s been a balancing act between focusing on the basics of golf and improving my golf skills and the actual blog itself and all the stuff that comes with it, i.e. facebook, twitter, promoting the blog, making it show up in Google, etc…

Up to this point I would say it’s been about a 90%/10% split. I’ve focused 90% of my time and efforts on practicing and getting the basics of the golf game and 10% on the blog. I set all the basic social media touch points; I’ve made sure I get my posts published every Tuesday and Thursday and I’ve interacted with those interested in my story. I now feel I have come to a turning point in this equation and I’m becoming more comfortable with my practice routine.

When we’re kids everything is new to us. With each new experience we gain a little bit of knowledge about the world. These little bits of knowledge stick with us and in conjunction with our environments form our personalities, opinions and routines of how we do things day in and day out.

So true is the golf swing. When I first started taking lessons with Tim I knew nothing about how to correctly swing a golf club. We started with the basics. I learned proper grip technique, how to address the ball, correct posture, alignment, swing plane and so on.

Expectations… they can improve or ruin an outlook on just about any situation; whether it is a movie, a first date, a raise… or a round of golf. By setting high expectations we run the risk of turning a positive situation into a negative one if it doesn’t meet these imaginary benchmarks, even if the overall outcome is relatively good.

Take going to a movie for instance. I learned years ago that if I want to enjoy a movie no matter how good or bad it was according to everyone else, I had to go into with no expectations what so ever. This has allowed me to become one of Brendan Fraser’s biggest fans and enjoy a plethora of other movies I wouldn’t have, had I gone into it expecting greatness (even though I think Brendan Fraser is great).

Its spring of 2000, I’m in the 11th grade at Salem High School. I’m in Mrs. Gardener’s Spanish class and we’re playing BINGO. Mrs. Gardener calls out the letter column and a word in Spanish and we have to translate it then check to see if we have the coordinating picture on our BINGO card. I remember this being an exercise I’d actually get excited about coming into Spanish class to find out we were doing. Even though it seems simple, it took something that can get mundane at times like learning another language can, and made it fun.

I’m always looking for things of this nature to help make practicing golf more fun. Don’t get me wrong, I love practicing. But sometimes doing the same drills over and over can start to make me less productive and I need to find a new way to spice things up and get reenergized to keep my momentum going.

So it’s been about 2 ½ months since I launched this blog and about 4 ½ months since I started taking lessons and decided I was going to pick up golf for real. I didn’t really know what to expect, how fast I would advance or really anything other than I loved the feeling that 1 time out of 25 I’d hit the ball crisp and watch it sail.

When I first started I read some books on swing mechanics, did some research on equipment and started taking lessons. However, I never really knew what to expect. Anytime I told someone the idea for the blog they’d either tell me there’s no way in hell or tell me they think that’s great and to go for it; nothing really in the middle so much. So I thought I would put together a short list of expectations and advice for anyone looking to get into the sport. Think of it as one beginner to another.