Underdog Golf Blog

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.

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.

There’s an old saying, “Practice what you preach”, that I think has finally registered with this wonderful game of golf and myself. One of the things I did this past week was go back through and read all my previous posts and I started to notice that one key factor that I hadn’t mastered was playing one shot at a time.

It amazes me how frustrating golf can be. No matter what level of player you are, you always want to strive to be better. And no matter how frustrated you may get or how bad you might be playing, it all goes away with that one great shot.

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.

After a few weeks shooting 100 and up I was finally able to break into the double digits for the third time shooting a 94 on Sunday. The crazy part about this is that it was the worst weather I’ve ever played in thus far.

I’ve played with some wind before but nothing like this. At one point the wind was blowing so hard I was having trouble standing still lining up to the ball. This particular hole was a very long par 5 and with the wind doing its thing I shot an 8 and learned a lot about the wind’s affect on each clubs distance. Luckily the rain held off for 30 minutes longer than the forecast had predicted; which happened to be the exact amount of time we needed to finish the round.

More and more I’m discovering that this game of golf is like a machine. It’s got a number of different moving parts and gears and if one of these parts isn’t working properly or out of synch, it can throw the whole machine out of whack. The part that was off for me this past Saturday was my putting.

I’m still scratching my head as to why my progress with the putter has declined over the last month, but I think it has to do with the fact that I’ve been putting so much attention on my ball striking. My woods and iron game has improved immensely, but apparently it’s at the expense of my short game.

Something I’ve been contemplating for a while now is how to report my progress on this blog and what side of things to focus on in the writings. I’ve learned with golf, if you focus on anything but positive thoughts and the present moment, your game will go down the tube. Should I transfer this thought process to my writing? Still in the beginning phase of this project there is definitely plenty of things to report that went wrong. Part of me feels this gives the truest look into my progress. Stacking up what I’ve been working on vs. how I took that on to the golf course.

If there is one thing I have learned so far from my experience doing the Underdog Golf Blog, it’s that the game of golf is a roller coaster. It’s got its ups and its downs like everything else in life. Just when you think you’re starting to get a grasp on it, that roller coaster drops down the hill and fast.

These past couple of weekends my mental game had been very shotty at best. I’m really starting to feel pressured to hit really good scores because I’ve been focusing on the end goal and not the journey there. With the finish line so far away, I’ve been beating myself up on not being there already which causes my game to just collapse.

If I had to sum up this weekend’s efforts into one line, it would have to be, “Big gulps huh?…Welp, see ya later.”

Man, talk about a doozey. Had you asked me Friday after the practice range what I thought I’d be shooting come Saturday and Sunday, I would have told you 89 with ease. I was hitting every one of my irons great and my driver even better. I had developed a mishit on about 10% of my wedge shots but thought I had solved it.