First lesson in a while

I gave my first golf lesson in quite a long time the other night.  I got paired up with a young gun with some game at Eastmoreland for a “super twilight” round.  He stepped up to the first tee, a very short and narrow par 4, and striped a 5-iron some 200 yards right down the middle with a soaring draw.  I hit my little punch 6-iron down the fairway some 20 yards behind his drive (but with the perfect yardage for a full swing gap wedge).  We chatted as we walked to our drives and found that we were both self-taught golfers.  The difference was that he had only been golfing for 5 years and could already routinely shoot in the low 80s.  The 2nd hole is a long straight-away par 4.  He was shocked when I outdrove him despite a hooked drive that ricocheted off of a tree on the edge of the fairway.  Perhaps that got in his head, because he played pretty poorly from then on.  It was obvious that he was a fairly skilled player, but his scorecard was an absolute mess due to a block slice on one shot per hole.  As I watched him swing and listened to his self-analysis, I could see that he had no clue why he was slicing the ball.  Even worse, he thought his slice was caused by coming over the top with an open clubface.  On the contrary, he was coming too far from the inside and over-rotating, which left the club stuck behind him with an open face.  

I bit my tongue until he sliced two drives in a row off the 9th tee box.  As we walked off the tee box, I admitted that I once gave lessons and would be glad to give him my two cents if (and only if) he was interested.  He told me he was all ears.  I told him I would fill him in after we finished the hole.  In the meantime, he filled me in on what he had been working on in his swing.  It came as no surprised when he described how he had been focusing solely on coming from the inside on the downswing.  

We made the turn and I demonstrated to him what he was doing that was causing the block slices.  He couldn’t believe it.  Well, it started as disbelief, which then turned into a bit of rejoicing.  He’d done it- he had re-routed his swing so thoroughly that he was coming too much from the inside.  In fact, I don’t think he thought it was possible to come too far from the inside, so he told me that he was just focus on not over-rotating his lower body on the downswing.  I told him that was one way to go about it, but that it would serve him best to keep the club in front of him on the downswing so he could rotate as hard as he wanted to on the downswing.  I demonstrated how I could point my belt buckle not just at the target, but even left of the target on the downswing and not get the club stuck behind me if I kept the club in front of me during the downswing.  But it was too late- he was fixated on coming from the inside and limiting his lower body rotation, and it was all he could talk about as we finished up the last few holes in the twilight.  

I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that I wasn’t able to get through to him.  At the least, I gave him an accurate diagnosis.  A lot of the time, that’s much more valuable than the prescription.  

Tournament time + new favorite course

I rarely play in tournaments anymore, but last weekend I played in a scramble and I will be playing in another scramble tournament tomorrow.  It seems that when I play in scrambles, I’m expected to be the “ringer.”  The first couple times, I was very uncomfortable with that role, but the more I play in scrambles, the more confident I’ve become.  I realize now that scrambles are very low pressure tournaments in comparison with the college tournaments I played in back in the day.  I have the luxury of hitting last, so there’s almost always already a ball in the fairway or on the green, which means that I have the green light to play aggressively- I don’t really have to be strategic at all.  I also enjoy being in the mindset of making/expecting birdies- something I should be doing every round.  

Last weekend, I was the ringer for my group at a scramble tournament in Central Washington.  We played the Prospector Course at Suncadia and were greeted by 20 mph winds howling through the high desert forest.  With my low ball flight and lots of experience playing in the wind, I knew we would have a shot at being in the money.  I was even more encouraged when another guy in the group proved that he could also hit the ball well on occasion (I’m used to playing in scrambles where I’m the only player who consistently shoots in the 70s, while the rest of my partners shoot in the high 80s and low 90s).  We had a blast out there- ham and egging around the front 9 and piling up the birdies.  Then we hit a lull when not one of us could make a putt.  After going 6 or 7 under on the front 9, we only managed to make 3 or 4 birdies on the back 9 and wound up shooting a very respectable 10-under 62.  Had a few more putts fallen, we could have easily broken 60.  

I took several things away from the tournament:

1) It was REALLY nice to have a partner who could hit a really solid shot every couple of holes

2) I need to work on my putting

3) Prospector is the best course that I’ve ever played

There’s not much more to say about #1 and #2 above, but I do feel the need to explain #3.  While I’ve been known to occasionally exaggerate things, I can honestly say that Prospector is the best course I’ve played because it had so many good holes and absolutely zero bad holes.  It helped that many of the holes kindly suggested that you hit a little draw.  That being said, you could work the ball either way and do just fine.  I also appreciated the greens at Prospector- they were simple medium-sized greens with subtle breaks, not the overwrought, everything multi-tiered BS of many new courses.  Indeed, there was a simple elegance to the course- the holes seemed to blend into the landscape perfectly.  There were bunkers in all the right places, and the landing areas were fair.  I really enjoyed how everything was right there in front of you- no gimmicks, no hidden hazards, no trees or bunkers or boulders in the middle of the fairways.  Beyond that, the views of the surrounding forested hills are absolutely spectacular.  Combine all that with excellent conditions and you’ve got the best course I’ve ever played.