Great Week in the Books; Exciting Things to Come

The past seven days have been some of my most productive that I can remember. I think I actually put in a lot more hours on non-competition weeks than do when I have tournaments. The good news is that I really enjoy almost every aspect of my work, so I never mind the long days. This week I finally completed all of my process goals, and I spent a lot of time on the course, too. I am spoiled when I am in Columbia to have the Mizzou Athletics Training Complex available to me, so my workouts were a bit heavier than usual this week as well. Long workouts and big days of practice equal a lot of time dedicated to golf, but I also found some time to relax this weekend as I caught a Kansas City Royals game at Kauffman Stadium Friday night and watched my Mizzou Tigers man-handle Western Illinois University (or High School, was it?) on Saturday evening in Columbia. It really was a great week, and it that has me feeling great as I move forward and get ready for more tournament action.

I want to share a couple cool stories from my week. My plan for Thursday practice was to go to Old Hawthorne and do a few putting drills, practice some wedge play, and then spend the entire afternoon out on the course by myself playing a couple of balls and hitting a lot of practice shots from any and everywhere. Instead, I got tipped off that there was a great game at Gustin Golf Course and found out that a couple of my former Mizzou teammates were playing, so I joined them. The game was just a big skins game, so overall score meant little, but making birdies could be valuable. After a slow start that saw me birdie just the reachable par-5 first and one other short par-4 through the first 8 holes, I made three tough birdies and an eagle over the final ten holes. Three sloppy bogeys on the round knocked my final score back to pedestrian four-under-par 66, but my birdie/eagle run over the last ten holes was rewarding--in more ways than one!

Another cool story from my week is the manner in which I completed all of my process goals. As I've discussed on here before, my putting drills have been giving me trouble lately, and upon my return to Columbia this week, I was unfortunately greeted by recently aerified greens at Old Hawthorne. They were punched with only small holes and had been top-dressed heavily, but still my early-week motivation to get after my putting drills was not great. Therefore, I entered Sunday needing to do not only my proxi drills with my wedges but also three putting drills in order to complete my goals for the week. Having struggled recently on perfect greens to complete my drills, doing three of them in one day on a green that still showed signs of its recent punching might have seemed like a daunting task. I know that putting is absolutely a strength of my game, and I was determined not to come up short today. Each drill I attempted felt like a tournament to me, and though there were some setbacks, I followed all of my rules and completed my six-footer drill, a three-footer drill, and capped off the last of my process goals in dramatic fashion by making a 50-foot downhill putt on the last hole of my lag drill. It was really good stuff!

My work this week was very good. I feel great about my wedge play and was so pumped to step up and complete my putting drills today. I really do feel pressure while I'm doing those and have to rely on the strength of my routine to complete them. I get back into competition this week with the Missouri Open on Thursday and Friday, and I feel like my game will be ready for it. I have a lot of possible tournaments coming up in the coming weeks, and the First Stage of the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament (Q-school) will begin in exactly a month. I am really pleased with the status of my game and the quality of the work that I am putting into it. I am confident that I will continue to improve and feel like coming weeks and months will bring some very exciting things. Keep it here to enjoy the ride with me. Thank you so much for following!