Written: May 18, 2011
An 8am tee time meant that I had to wake up at 5am, get ready, and leave for Orchard which is under an hour’s drive away. The warm up session went smoothly and already, I could feel the intense heat as sweat poured down my shirt. Tomorrow, it will probably be a good idea to wear a shirt for the warm up session on the range then change prior to teeing it up. Anyway, back to the story, I headed for the first tee to chip and putt some.
The night before, I had a nice chat with Doc Rotella who told me to play a round of golf as if you’re playing with your buddies. Stay lose and stay insensitive whether you hit a good or a bad shot. Just see if you can play “Great” golf. Forget about who’s in the field, how big the purse is, the cut… Just see if you can play “Great” golf. I did just as he told. For the beginning at least.
Because of what Doc Rotella mentioned, I was able to calm myself on the first hole to stripe a drive down the middle of a narrow fairway to leave myself with only 100 yards to the pin on the 440 yard hole. Even par after 5 holes, I sunk an eagle putt on the par 5 6th hole to get into two under for the day. Then with some lose shots coming in, I made bogeys on 7 and 9. At that point, I really had mishit quite a few shots and the misses would be both ways. No matter how confident I tried to remain and how focused I was on just getting the ball in the hole, my internal panic alarm was starting to get louder. Even more so after blocking my 6 iron 2nd shot on hole 10, 40 yards right of hole leading to another bogey.
From then on, I managed to steady things out by hitting green after green. I had rolled the putter so well for birdie putts from varying distance and all were glancing over the edge and not dropping in. Then, on the home stretch on 15 and 18, two left misses off the tee led to a hazard an unplayable. Double bogey and a bogey respectively. The best shot I hit was on 16, 199 yards with a 5 iron. The ball landed just in front of the hole and hit the pin!
The final score of 3 over par 75 left me a bit confused since I knew the root cause of the over par score was because of my inconsistent ball striking. Unwilling to pack up and head home, I went straight to range to iron things out. After one bucket and finding the consistency I was looking for on the course, I took a break to eat. Then went to the gym with Ton Ton afterwards, then onto the range again where Ton saw one fundamental flaw, which was that I was aimed too far left of my target.
See, as I started to hit to crooked and lose confidence, I thought the answer would be to play the bunt fade by aiming left. This only caused my club on the downswing to come further under-plane like a Fred Couples move. To get back on plane, he told me to square up not only my feet, but my body as well. Sure enough, the 2 week ball striking struggle was over. After that, we went over to the putting green to roll a couple.
Man am I ready to play tomorrow! Goodnight!
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| Drenched Hole 18 at Palmer course. Good thing we were finished |
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