This past Friday we had a work function in the office. There is a course near my office that has a nice driving range and a good short game practice area. When working in the office, I would sometimes go and hit balls during lunch or after work. This is one of the few things that I have missed about having to go in to work – being able to go to the driving range with some frequency.
Overall, I was happy with how I hit the ball at the range. My back has been doing better since my last round when I had tweaked it again. I’ve been doing drills at home to try to get back into the Sean Clement style swing, but short of hitting a few balls into a net at home, I had not had a chance to actually hit balls. Staying smooth is definitely a work in progress. It never ceases to amaze me that even after playing as long as I have, and obsessing as much as I do about the golf swing, that I still struggle to make a smooth swing when there is actually a ball to be struck. This is something that I need to focus on and try and find a way to finally understand at a cellular level
While at the range, I tweaked my lefty driver to max out the loft at 12.5 degrees. Because I have tended to hit the Lefty driver too high, I had dialed it down a degree, but found at the range that I was struggling to make good contact. While I intellectually know that this should not make that much of a difference, for whatever reason I started hitting it a lot better with the additional loft.
This carried over to my round on Saturday. I hit my lefty driver on seven holes and they were all really good shots – all solid and in play. I need to really pause and take a moment to appreciate just what a good Lefty driving day this was.I know enough about dispersion to know that this will almost certainly be the best lefty driving round that I will have for quite some time.
I also made several good lefty iron swings as well. I hit the green on the short par three 3rd hole with a pitching wedge. I hit the green on the par five 7th an 15th holes with really solid, full sand wedges. I also hit several really good punch / bump and run shots from the left side as well.
However as good as my lefty swing was, my righty play was off. The mistakes were largely a result of misjudging my yardages and how far I needed to hit the ball, though some were due to poor contact as well. I can probably partially attribute this to the fact that I’m trying to swing the club much differently than I have for the last year or so.
I hit my righty driver five times, and only had one good outcome. On number 4 I pushed my tee shot to the right of the cart path, and while I was able to advance the ball toward to the green, I didn’t have a clear shot. I split the fairway on number 6, but I topped it on number 10, and on 16 I pulled it left of the trees. On 18 I hit it very solidly, and while it did initially land in the fairway, a slope carried it down into the left rough, leaving me a very awkward second shot. I have played that hole enough times to know that the tee shot needs to be played much further out to the right.
On the positive side, I managed to avoid any blow up holes until I got to the 18th hole. Up to that point, despite most of my game not working very well, I had not made a single double bogey all day. When I got into trouble, I did not get overly aggressive with my recovery shots, and only had to make one really good putt to save a bogey. Otherwise, the multitude of bogeys I made were all relatively stress-free once I got to the green.
Standing on the 18th tee, I really thought that I was going to finally have a true bogey-free round. As mentioned earlier I hit my righty drive solidly, but it was too far left to stay in the fairway with the way the 18th fairway tilts. This left me with a very awkward second shot as the ball was well below my feet and on an uphill slope. I tried to punch my Lefty hybrid, but I topped the ball and it only went 5 yards or so. I now was faced with the ball being well above my feet and on an uphill lie. I hit a very solid righty hybrid, but the combination of slope and stance meant that the ball kept drawing more and more, and went into the trees on the left side. This was as much a mental mistake as anything, as I should have aimed more to the right, and should have tried to hit more of a punch shot instead of a full shot. However I hit a fantastic Lefty bump and run from the left trees, punching a 6-iron about 80 yards on to the green, leaving me just a 15 ft putt to save par. It was not a particularly difficult putt, with little to no break. however, I misjudged just how downhill it was, and knocked it about two feet past the hole. I marked the ball and waited for the other guys in the group to finish putting out. It should have been a routine tap in, and while I did not feel like I twitched or did anything unusual with the putting stroke, I didn’t even touch the hole.
I left the round with some ambivalent feelings about how it went. On the one hand, I am extremely happy with how I drove the ball from the left side, as well as several other lefty swings. I seemed to have good rhythm and while I certainly don’t expect to have that kind of lefty driving performance with any sort of regularity, it does leave me feeling good about my lefty driving potential.
The most disappointing part of the round was how I swung my righty driver. I simply was unable to swing as smoothly as I wanted. I would not have minded the poor outcomes of the drives nearly as much if I had at least made a smooth and controlled pass at the ball. I was able to do a good job with how I took the club back, but for whatever reason, as soon as I start the downswing, my lizard brain switches into aggressive mode. This will need to be a primary area of focus for me. If nothing else, I will need to put in a lot of reps hitting righty drivers into the net.
I am also proud of how I generally kept the round together. It would have been very easy for me to allow this round to have gone much worse. Despite all of the mistakes that I made, I managed to make it through 17 Holes without making a double bogey. This is the sort of round that very easily could have gone much worse. I also know that my scoring on this round could easily have been much better if only a few things had gone differently.
Alternate Golf 