Warming Up

I know how very lucky I am to get to do one of my favorite things and call it my job. I absolutely love to play and practice golf, and it rarely every seems like I am going to “work” when I am on the job. The last five days last week felt like work. I absolutely do not want to sit inside very much as I am in the final two weeks of off-season preparation, but I had to brave some pretty harsh elements to have good practice sessions the last several days. In truth, though, I even enjoy the challenge of that. I practiced at Dandridge Golf Course each of the last four days (Thursday-Sunday) with wind chills in the twenties and twice with different forms of frozen precipitation coming down. Other than battling to keep feeling in my hands, the elements did not keep me from having great practice. I definitely continued to improve a lot last week, and though I may complain about the weather a little bit, I still had a lot of fun at work.

With a dusting of snow covering the greens on Saturday, I had one of my best ball-striking sessions of the year. My short game work is feeling great as well. I feel great over the putter, but I have to say that is the one area of my practice that gave me the most trouble in the cold and blustery conditions this past week. I came up one putting drill and one hour and forty minutes short of completing all of my work goals last week. I can blame that short coming mostly on the fact that severe cold temperatures in the mornings shortened my work days, but in truth, if I could have completed my putting drills in a timely fashion, I would have had plenty of time to finish all of my work. I am disappointed not to have finished my goals for the week, but all areas of my game feel very good, and I feel like I really did get a lot better. It was a solid week of work, but I am excited to see some better temperatures in the forecast moving forward and am ready to get all of my work done.

In addition to good practice, I have also been having great work towards my fitness. I feel like I have added a few elements to my workouts here in the past month or so that are helping me to feel stronger and quicker. In general, I would say that my fitness level feels as high as it has ever been. Given the busy schedule that I plan to keep this year, staying on top of fitness will be important, but I think I am off to a great start in that regard.

As I enter the last full week of preparation before kicking off my 2013 competition schedule, I am feeling great. I am excited to hopefully have a few friendly matches this week and just to have a great week of work. My game is feeling good. I really do feel like I am a good week of work away from being tournament-ready. Can I find mid-season form in mid-February? I think so!

Keep it here for practice reports throughout the week. Thank you very much for following me and rooting for me.