Great Weekend of Work

I came home from my tournament this past week with a lot of mixed emotions about my golf game. It has been really great lately the way that I have been able to take some very poor ball-striking and manage it quite well to post some great tournament scores. That is very encouraging, but the fact that I am hitting the ball poorly puts quite a bit of pressure on the rest of my game, and when I made a couple of mental mistakes in my final round of last week's tournament, it was too much to overcome. I posted a lousy score that left me at the bottom of the final-round field. In addition to the ball-striking woes, I have gone back and forth over the past few weeks as to whether or not I am making good progress towards my goal of improving my pre-shot routine and instituting a new "one-look-at-the-target-and-go" approach to hitting golf shots. I was thinking about a lot of things as I made the trip home on Thursday evening, and two thoughts became clear to me. First of all, it is really impressive how good I am at golf to be able to have the successful results that I have in the past four weeks without hitting very many solid shots. Secondly, I needed to have a very good weekend of work.

I have continued to meditate on that first thought, and I am glad to say mission accomplished on the second thought. I really haven't found any major improvements in my ball-striking yet, but I have had some great practice sessions and absolutely nailed all of my putting drills and short game work. I focused a lot on my routine while I was practicing, and I think I have come up with a key to help my improvements take hold. The "feel it" portion of my "see it, feel it, trust it" approach to golf is very important. If I can truly feel the shot that I am trying to execute before I address the ball, one look at my target just confirms that feeling and I am ready to pull the trigger. If I address the ball and am still trying to get the feeling of what I want to do, however, I fidget and take multiple looks at the target before I finally start my swing. Therefore, it is imperative that I feel the shot that I am trying to hit before I take my stance at the ball. I feel like I definitely made great progress towards improving my routine this weekend. My putting and short game work this weekend was some of my best practice of the year. I'm still not sure why my ball-striking is a little bit off right now, but I feel good about everything else and am confident that I will start hitting the ball better, too. Overall, I feel great about my game after the weekend of work that I just completed.

By the way, I was thirty minutes of short game work shy of completing all of my process goals the week before last. That bothered me. I worked really hard to complete my fitness and putting goals, but I didn't get all of my short game work done. Darn it. I made up for it this past week, though. After completing very few of my practice or fitness goals before traveling home on Thursday evening, I worked very hard and efficiently over the weekend to complete all of my process goals. My goals are definitely doing their job. I feel great physically and my game felt good during some highly focused practice sessions. I will get my goals done every week!

I am hitting the road Monday morning for an eGolf Tour event this week at a course called Northstone Country Club just north of Charlotte, NC. The event is Tuesday-Thursday, and Northstone is a course that I know decently well. I will get in a practice round on Monday and will be ready for a great week. I'm excited about my game. I can't wait until something clicks and I start hitting the ball better, but I know that I am good enough to get the results I want even if I'm not hitting it very well. I have a feeling good things are going to happen this week, and I'm nearly certain that great things are coming up in my future. Keep it here to enjoy this fun ride with me. Thank you very much for following me and for your support!