Bi-Polar Sunday

Mission accomplished. On the second day of the tournament, figured out how to weave spectacular and dismal together into a bundle of fun. Version 0.1, at least.

The first several holes started out fine. Just fired away, played shot by shot, not worried about score, except at the end of each hole when the strokes need to be summed and recorded which gives brain opportunity to drift into "hey, I could shoot this today" mode. Would be great if someone else did the math for you.

On the 5th hole, an easy 370 yard-ish hole, hit the 3 wood off the tee too good, sent it beyond the bend in the fairway back into the wilderness, which triggered a chain reaction of bad stroke neutrons trying to recover from a shot that was hit too good. Shit. I needed that wake up to again toss score out the golf cart, and get back to just playing aggressive and fun.

Left alone to do its thing, the body hit a lot of really good shots today (aside from the short game). Practice is paying off. It was great fun.

The brain made many mistakes, like being lazy and not measuring distance before selecting clubs, or, picking up a 6 inch putt instead of finishing it, and being so focused on the line I forget about the downhill slope of a chip or putt. More situational presence discipline needed to fix these gaps.

On the matter of skill, the short game from inside 150 yards is unfortunately completely random. I make a few good ones, but it's just luck with odds generally not in my favor. With the wedges, I don't know how to properly adjust for distance, and when I try, directional control also goes out the window. For chips and pitches, I don't accelerate through the ball and have no spin control so every stoke is a harrowing experience of slap and hope leading to more of the same with the putter.

Slashing out of the deep weeds strained some ligaments or tendons in my left hand and arm. Time to give it some rest, hunker down with the Tube and start planning the short game practice agenda. Also, now that I kinda understand the concept, once a week, I'll play for score, without worrying about score until I figure out how to weave the purpose of the short game (to score) into the practice paradigm.

So, there's striking the ball where you trust and go for it, and separately a short game where it's about getting it into the cup, hence score. Keep climbing... :-)

Control Freak

Played the first round of the competition today trying to not make mistakes. That was a mistake.

It's a sensation hard to describe when your brain tells body to perform while still asserting control to be safe. Like sitting back on skis or trying to guide a ball into hoop, a weird spastic execution of movement results.

It was a spectacular exhibition in flailing. Topped balls trying not to hit it fat, weak fade pushes to the right trying to make contact, yanks to the left trying not to be short. Left a variety of putts either halfway to the hole, or way beyond where I'm still away. Ended up in all kinds of weedy places I'd never been, slashing out of the tangles to save my life, and having no fun. Zero. What a shitty way to spend a perfectly good Saturday. Hit just three reasonable shots on the front nine, and that was on the 8th and 9th holes. Rest was just hacking around the course trying to finish each hole. It didn't matter how long the course played or where the pin placements were. My own brain was the overlord of pain.

At the turn, started to think about trust and bio-mechanics. I was betraying myself by not believing in the hours invested in programming the body to autonomously execute the swing. The score didn't matter, yet I was trying to not make mistakes, and not believing the body wouldn't. It's one thing to not play smart. Yet, once committed to play a certain shot, you have to just believe, stop thinking and let the body do its thing.

It's easier said than done. On the back nine, three times the brain still kicked in and tried to not make mistakes, costing me a couple more hacking trips back into the deep weeds and over a road out of bounds. The cost isn't just in strokes. That stringy tall grass can put the hurts on the tendons in your left hand and arm.

I did learn a few things about what happens when playing safe. Ease off on the tee, the body doesn't crank through and I hit it weak and right. Be safe yet try to hit it hard, and the arms kick in and hooks to the right. On short pitches and lobs, there's deceleration and you end up very short. On putts, you're worried so much about the break, you forget about whether it's uphill or downhill. As I write, my hands are body are totally sore. Side effects of unconscious tension. Remember to relax. Note to self: spikeless shoes no good in the early morning dew.

It's so mental, it's mental. Tomorrow just plan to pick a shot, then just fire away. If it goes wrong, so be it. It can't be worse than trying to be safe and getting tossed into the wood chipper anyway.

Playing to Win

Few days ago, folks at the course asked if I'd consider playing in the club championship this weekend. I politely declined.

My golf journey was chartered to develop skill necessary to play and appreciate the classic courses as intended by its architect. Along the way, it has expanded to the study of swing mechanics and the application of that to design a swing and practice regime that can perform from the back tees of modern length courses, for those aged 50 years or more.

In my practice paradigm, periodic forays onto the course serve to gather data to drive the practice, with the ball of choice the blemished ProV1 practice ball. What's typically painful to the score for most, is gold for the practice agenda to me. Along the way, skill has improved and I can now start to see how holes were intended to be played, and enjoy playing them either aligned or against the intentions inherent in their design.

Over the last couple of days, I chewed over my feelings about the championship. For one, it's kinda anti-social to refuse. I've met some good folks there. Bigger issue is the notion of playing for aggregate score. Right now, I'm still working a lot on consistency. When I'm on, it's very good. When not, I can easily go through a dozen balls trying to make the ball do this or that. And, as I've focused on the latest rev of swing mechanics, I've pretty much ignored the impact it has had on distance which is the same as missing left or right. Lastly, the short game, well, still remains a mysterious concept.

Playing a couple rounds where every stroke counts is a different animal. I can't play three ball. I can't try experiments bombing it over that, or pinching it into a tight corner for a one hop stop. Yet, again the other fork in the road beckons, so I started pondering: why not play in the weekend tournament?

On one hand, I don't care what I shoot or how I finish. If 16 I might have competitive aspirations, but instead I'm old enough to be nutty but not delusional. On the other hand, the point of playing in competition is about what you shoot, and since it's a competition, might as well play to win. Like having no reliable backhand stroke in tennis, I know the gaps in my skill, and in this circumstance at this point in time, winning is a rational impossibility.

I'd been practicing mostly from the back tees, while the tournament is from the white tees making the length considerably shorter than the usual 7400 yard workouts. From the back, at least on a hole by hole basis, I've parred them all, and birdied probably a majority of them at one time or another. Since the rounds were for practice, I'd never bothered to attempt to string performance across 18 holes for score as I'm not competent enough to do that, and since I'm focused on finding problems, I've tended to play holes in ways that highlighted where and how I suck. Playing for score would mean flipping that and playing my strengths and avoiding my weaknesses, which is something I've not practiced, and hence probably the source of my reluctance.

Why not? Well, in the end I decided to play as a test of self-perceived strengths. A semester exam so to speak, after about 6 months into this golf kick. The driver's in double cross hell at the moment, yet the 3 wood now has plenty of distance for the white tees. Spend the next three days leading up to the weekend on a crash course of pitches, chips and putting, and the short irons required to play safe. Trust the 3 wood swing that's been grooved to date, and spend a bit of time trying to get control of the driver just in case.

Did a trial run today. Lost 6 shots to three driver shots that continues to get sprayed out of bounds into the wilderness. Putted like a blind man with stone hands. Gotta get mindset to play safe, and choose when to be aggressive. Three days to get that figured out.

I enjoy my daily routine of grabbing coffee, hitting the range in the morning, playing a few holes for data, and then getting back to the range and the Tube to do the homework. This tournament thing goes against that grain and makes me feel uncomfortable. So, that's maybe reason enough to do it.

Should I play to win? With psychotic driver and no short game practice, pretty sure the answer is no.  I don't want to get fragmented from the reasons I started this journey in the first place. Clearly, need to mull over this some more.

Three Ball

A little break from crying over spilled milk.

When playing a practice round, I keep two extra balls in my left pocket.

If the first shot is executed the way I wanted it, I move on. If not, immediately drop the second ball and repeat the same shot intention.

If that second shot is good, the first shot is noted as head issue to fix. If not, drop the 3rd and repeat the shot as if it was the first, including set up, etc. That's the suck test.

If the 3rd fails, then there's work for the range.

Unless playing for dough, playing just one ball for some official score doesn't help separate the head issues from swing mechanics issues.

3 ball. If the two balls never come out of your pocket in a round, time to go to some Q-School.

Y.A.F. Alert

Ten thousand balls, and now they fly good. So good, in fact, they fly out of sight.

Poking balls through the bubble of my visible range brought the blog's mission to an abrupt halt, and me gasping for enthusiasm.

Some ask why I'm wasting time with all of this anyway. Why be hard on yourself? Enjoy life, instead of grinding on the range. Others say you're not bad, so why be greedy - just take the skills you have and just go play.

Life inevitably pins you up against barriers or walls with seemingly no way through. Sometimes they find you. Better you find them first. Easy to retreat, or call it quits. Crack the code, however, and the wall melts, and a new reality awaits. That's why I do this.

Start with a macro vision, set some lofty goals, and push yourself. By design, if you grind, you will hit a wall. Playing with the guys in Arizona enabled me to witness and to set clear goals for ball striking. Once you commit to being able to do that, then butting your head against the brick wall is kinda easy. Getting through the wall, however, is hard. Just have to disable the quit button.

It's also one of the reasons why I bother with this blog. I love expressing through imagery yet suck at writing. I want to be able to author books, but lack skill to take a tangle of thoughts, feelings and perspectives and pave them onto paper properly. The golf journey spits out unpredictable topics that I have to put pen and paper to it. Though it too is a grind, new bits of expressive awareness are the rewards along the way. Slowly, I'm learning to write.

At the course, but instead of practicing, I'm writing this. Jason Day is melting down on the tube. He seems to be another go find the wall (and not let them find you first), want to quit, but figure out how to crack the wall kind of nut. Perhaps reflection through writing (or, sessions with my golf shrink if I had one), as well as absorption surfing the Tube, are both part of a larger practice paradigm for the golf.

So, yet another fork in the road. Friend of mine today said, "Well you'll just have to learn to hit the ball so you know where it landed without seeing it."

Hmm. Sounds like and interesting path.

Practice in Search of Meaning

Today delivered an unexpected bonus wrapped in black. Stepped onto the back tee to play the first nine holes of the summer. I'd often gazed at the first hole, a 402 yard par 4 next to the range, imagining the flight of the tee shot. So much for idealized expectations. Skulled it a perfect 100 yards.

What would normally be considered failure was a testament for my golfing prerequisite to get zen about sucking, so just wrote the mulligan off as a head issue, teed up another and swiped again. After all, it's just a game.

Wind blowing left to right as it usually does, so aimed down the left for the drift and practice paid off pure. Then came the unexpected. It disappeared mid-flight. At altitude, now with real balls instead of limited flight on the range, I'd out-driven my ability to see the ball.

Since the eye surgery, vision is better than it was before, but I've trouble with blotchy spots of what's in focus or not. Reading this text, as I write in the aged font size, is a hit and miss exercise finding those spots of focus. On the range, I really have to pay attention and follow the ball from impact else it disappears into the blue, and that works only if the sun is behind me.

In the battle of skill against with par, further modulated by the limits of physical potential which only goes downhill, I'd hit my first wall due to an unexpected limit: eye sight.

If the wall is skill, I can improve it. If the wall is physical, I can work on refining the design of a swing that works for my age. This wall, however, was unexpected. Further, improvements in skill and strength can't improve my ability to see the ball, which can only further degrade with time.

Vision mechanics aside, there's a deeper brain component. I'd noticed when playing around with putting that binocular vision was lost when the dominant eye failed and circuits tried to rewire, only to have that process interrupted somehow by the PVD. Standing over the ball, there's no longer a sense of gradient. I can't see breaks other than by stepping away from the green and looking at the macro contour of the surface in 2D from the side. I'd been compensating by just walking up to the ball and rolling it while looking at the hole. At least I can see the ball miss the cup.

As I'd become attached to the expectation of the practice grind being the source of skill and physical capacity to perhaps play the game as it was intended, this setback has taken the wind out of my sails. The practice had become the journey. Enthusiasm was fueled by the potential of how much more skill and physical ability I could attain through practice, understanding and intention. Until today. Now, the driving holes on the course had all become blind tee shots, and the reality that I can work to hit it longer, but can no longer see the ball. Not much enthusiasm in that.

I've a crisis of purpose of a parameter that can't be fixed through practice. Time to do another Dalai Lama. This time a big one.

Summer Camp

Arrived at the summer digs and getting the practice regime organized. At 2000 meters elevation, there's a bit of flight distance inflation, so need care to not let that get to my head, which means not worrying about flight distance while here.

Hands need rest for a while, so it's a lot of work working on posture and grounding, the rotation and pivot, and body controlled half swings. Wedges at 50 yards will do fine.

Goal for the summer is to master the drills Trevor prescribed recently, and rebuild the swing. Plan on getting out on the course more, with focus on driver consistency, and the short game. Plan to track good data on that to focus the practice sessions. Wanting to work on the scramble takes pressure off the approaches, especially the longer ones. Plenty of time to work on that once I head south in the fall. Need to keep half the focus on the driver to keep up strength and speed training, and to ensure the swing rebuild drills with the wedge scale up to the other end of the spectrum. Maybe work out weekly sessions with Mark Bradley, the pro here...we'll see how that goes.

Cool and green and fresh mountain air at the moment. Looking forward to heading there tomorrow to get introduced to the folks at the course and get the routine all set up.

Weakest Link

It's been about six months of basic training. Gotten into reasonable baseline golf shape, understand now the swing fundamentals, and survived the commitment to daily practice regime. Thanks to Trackman, managed to put it all together to achieve the minimum carry distances needed to have a chance on the modern courses at full length. Recent session with Trevor put me on track to begin work on the next revision of the swing, grounded in a stronger connection to ground, better tuned pivot, and improved arm-body connection and control. It's also time to dive into kinematic sequencing.

Not being a spring chicken, need to consistently fly it 280+ while I can, get dialed in from inside 150, and start to build foundation for the game around the greens. The latter will age nicely while supporting gunning for the pin as long as that defies age. I think it's the right combo for now.

In the fall, I'll switch to irons that force me to tune a more precise strike, but plan for the summer is to get out on the course more, work on distance and consistency off the tee, and learn the fundamentals of the scramble around the greens.

The downside of all of this is that the hands, especially the thumb and pinkie of the left, has reached it's physical limit to deal with the daily pounding and recover overnight. It's a bummer, but every dynamic system has its weak link. So, I need to downshift quite a bit to let the hands catch up, the aches to subside, and work on strength conditioning before resuming the normal practice schedule. Short game practice coupled with just playing a half round or so a day hopefully does the trick while I work on rebuilding hand strength.

Starting first by balancing strength of hand and arm extensors. Bucket of rice should do the trick while reading up on the black art of putting.

Cameo

Mate of mine is into drones and making films, so did duty as prop to help out. Project has to do with autonomous drones configured for specific tasks. In this case, racing the ball to the green.

I'm no Iron Byron, but hitting the green was way easier than getting the drone to fly the ball path and film the arrival of the ball. Below, an outtake from the film.

7 Degrees South

Long windy week in the Indian Ocean on atoll St. François, chasing fish fantasies on flats that span forever. Time also for hands and forearms to get a bit of rest and spa time to work out knots and scar tissue from the last several months of grind on the rock pile.

Deep in the middle of the Indian Ocean, St. François is bathed in clean oceanic blue water. Clean, sadly, except for all the plastic items that still find it's way onto the atoll from continental human masses far far away.

Made friends with some giant tortoises (now found only here and the Galapagos Islands) in their fight against extinction.

Expansive and windy, flew some drone experiments over the vast bonefish flats of St. François, taking off and landing on and near water, and collecting more data on radio signal attenuation due to water vapor (humidity) and vegetation.

With no internet or mobile links to the outside world, no news, no Masters, and plenty of time to reflect on the sequencing problems of the swing, simplify and integrate into the feel machine in preparation for return to practice sessions resuming next week.

Fast Twitch

Orange whip has been sweet for developing rhythm and strength. It's been great for warm up and stretch on the range. The half-slap drill needs punch. Unfortunately, the needed fast twitch muscles deteriorates with age. The net says athletes that rely on explosive power (e.g. sprinters) build fast twitch muscles using what's known as overspeed training.

So, built a little fast twitch training club, basically a stick with grip built up on one end with athletic tape. It's designed to be swung as fast as possible, either single handed or with both. A couple of big nuts are taped at the other end to keep shoulder sockets from popping out. Makes a nice sound at speed, and, if swung properly, good woosh at about 6 to 9 o'clock.

Initial tests show left arm is fast. Right arm super slow. Being right handed, that's interesting. Will add this to the training program, along with fast swings of 3 wood with a small donut.

Need a way to measure progress. Hmmm.

Close Enough

Early on, set an intermediate goal of getting to every green in almost regulation (within 20 yards or so). Can do that now. Along the way, bonus of getting OK with lobs and pitches and starting to figure out the sand stuff, while chipping still needs lots of work. Putting still sucks.

Looking at the data, getting off the tee in playable shape sets up the rest of the hole, including mental state. Without that reliability, spraying the ball off the tee, or not being long enough (or too long) turns every hole into an exercise in salvage from the get go. That wears me out. And it's no fun.

Therefore, decided to focus on driver and 3 wood for the half-slap drills.

Somewhere along the way, also realized that par 3s are supposed to be long, and if short, hard to hit without disaster. So, rather than whining about 220 yard par 3s, long irons and hybrids also get plenty of time in the drill.

Sequencing

Courses are closed due to rain, but their ranges still have balls scattered on them, so been doing the Orange Whip and poaching range sessions for the drills Trevor prescribed.

The idea is to repeat until it's burned into body memory. The 10% speed full swing is still difficult. The 10% speed half swing drill I like. Still, after repeating hundreds of times, it gets boring. Then, it's time to surrender the desire to quit, reset to zero and stay with it. Repeat as necessary. Eventually, new insights emerge.

The main event of the golf swing happens between the 3 and 9 o'clock positions (swinger point of view) of the half swing drill. Everything else is set up.

After a while, the brain starts to become antsy and uncomfortable, the mind also wanting to understand the half swing and the bits leading up to it. Poking around the tube, discover that I've stumbled upon what is known as the sequencing problem.

It's fascinating. Chain all the bits correctly (in sequence and timing) and the ball is smashed. Better yet, there's a feel to it that matches that outcome. From that reference feel, I can now tell when something is awry. For now, not exactly what's off sequence, but at least can feel when it's off. Don't need to see where the ball goes as that's just symptom of the cause. This is terrific news.

Doing Trevor's drills at 10% speed, I crave hitting it hard, and far. Do the Dalai Lama and surrender that.

As the body learns, decided to dive deeper into this sequencing problem and better understand it. As usual, it goes back to the grip, the stance on the ground, and various mechanics of properly setting up the parts of the back swing back down down to 3 o'clock, which is where the drill picks up. It's much easier to grok working backwards from impact.

Did a mod of Trevor's drill and call it the half-slap. From 3 o'clock with wrist cocked, to impact position, then extending through. That's where it happens. Move from cock to impact position, including pushing up and pivoting with the left leg, stop, repeat. Eventually feeling builds up wanting to smash it, so only then do that with focus on really accelerating and extending through the hit.

The rest of the swing, the parts leading up to the starting point of the drill, gets worked out in reverse, so it'll all play together when sequenced forward in the full swing. By working backwards, I can now see why left wrist should be flat to the plane at the top of back swing, and why proper grip matters.

The biggest insight so far is that the hit starts from about half way down the swing, not the top. The first part of the downswing is just getting all that mass moving and synchronized, using the ground, rotation and gravity, in preparation for the hit. That's why wrist cock is maintained until the hit can execute near the end of the whole sequence. Starting the downswing by pulling the club down into a swing is incorrect. Aha.

I remember months ago watching sequencing videos by Paul Kopp on the Tube. At the time wondered wtf. Now I get it.

Do Idle

Rain puts the nix on golf and fishing. When not hunting for a cancelled rooms at the tourist motels, pass time sampling the local eateries, fiddling with the drone, packing for the Seychelles and praying to MyRadar. Uncanny how this spot's a barometric sinkhole for rain.

On a positive note, Grannies' the hands down local cuisine winner. Open only for breakfast and lunch, it's the canonical southern home style diner. Favorite is pinto beans (straight out of can, heated, including juice) with raw chopped onions, stewed collard greens, yams and some fried chicken strips. Mmm-mm.

Orange Whip?

Trevor turned me onto the Orange Whip, which I'd heard about on the Tube. With a new swing to groove, seems this ingeniously simple tool will help me do that, so it was a no brainer to try. Sold. Sale closed by my primate attachment to a fantasy outcome. Just like Trump says in the Art of the Deal.

Orange Whip is pretty awesome for warming up prior to hitting balls. Can also feel how it'll make me a bit stronger and provide the feel feedback to burn in that wide back swing and then accelerating narrow to hit max whoosh past 6 o'clock.

The bonus aha is the realization that swinging a club is more like throwing something rather than swinging something. I've thrown balls overhand and sidearm, and sometimes, as when skipping rocks, almost underhand. There's a wrist flick at the end that really makes the ball (or stone) really go. I don't have the consciousness of doing that in the golf swing. With a ball, the hands, wrists and arm has to be loose to execute that flick, which the Tube says is important in the swing, but didn't connect that to enabling the flick action.

Time to take a few days off, scan the Tube and reflect on the flick. Something tells me I've been doing too much pulling with the left side, and providing that flick with the left hand instead of the right.

TrackMan Time

Driving across Texas, you realize how big the state is, which translates to a lot of deer to avoid amidst even more think time. Repeat the formula by going back to the vulnerable. Continue work on the strike. Hit with less effort. Generate more spin.

Search for TrackMan on Google Maps and two spots in San Antonio light up. Trevor Salzman offered me a slot on his machine for a drive-through session. My first golf lesson.

It's kinda like going to the doctor. Going in, thought about whether to be at my best, or, my worst. The other path choice here was to be at my worst without trying to be bad, to reveal the vulnerable, to improve shots that fall on the left of the bell curve distribution. I'm here to learn, not to audition, to work out the issues when everything isn't executed perfectly, intentional or not.

Machine and video says I'm swinging too narrow and too early, which causes a bunch of issues requiring even more compensation. Targeting the root cause, however, Trevor prescribed a couple of exercises to reshape the swing to be wider at the top, rotate with the body on the way down, and wait until about 2/3 down to engage the wrist and hands to let the club release. It's a weird feeling acting out the new swing at 10% of normal speed. Moving onto the 9 to 3 o'clock exercise, with the back swing still at 10% and gradually increasing the pace of the forward swing, TrackMan said club head speeds at impact were already exceeding my pre-lesson full swing measurements. And the effort needed for the swing felt like a fraction of what it was before. Sweet.

With Trevor's explanation of rotational mechanics, I started to understand how to sequence body mechanics towards letting the club release to do it's thing because all of the kinetic energy has nowhere to go but there. It all starts with being wide at the top on the back swing. I've heard about it, but now understand why. It's not much different than throwing a baseball, or casting a fly rod.

With wider stance, adjusted pelvic tilt, and new exercises for range sessions in hand, walked away happy. The balls aren't flying as far, nor are they as accurate or consistent as they've been, but flight profile is better and I've another reset point from which to build forward. One step back with promise of two steps forward. That's all good.

Promised to swing back through San Antonio on the way back west for a progress check. Thanks Trevor :-)

Range Range

On the road, the daily ritual searching for a practice rockpile. Tuscon. Las Cruces. San Antonio. Austin. Luckily, most have grassy areas to hit from, with the widest variation in the quality of range balls. Public range-only operations unfortunately have the worst, where the balls fly in all kinds of aerodynamic maneuvers you'd have difficulty even programming a drone to perform. Ranges associated with golf courses speak for the intention of the course itself, whether to just let folks warm up prior to the round, or, is a place crafted with passion for those working on the game.

Posh Barton Creek Golf Club had lousy old balls you hit out into a range where the targets were way down below you into some canyon. The municipal courses of Austin, TX carry the legacy of Harvey Penick and strong community support of golf with sweet practice facilities.

50 bucks a month for all the balls you can eat, plus deals on rounds on the Jimmy Clay course, which, for a public track, has sweet greens and an awesome place to learn how to play bump and run off of Texas-style hard pan.

Maybe I'll hang out here for a while in the fall.

Moving On

End of February. It's sunny, warm and gorgeous. As outdoor place to work on the rock pile, love this place.

More fun today playing with the big boys including lessons hidden in the grain.

Slo-mo smash at the Raven, thanks to Steve Tarkon.

Thanks also to chef for an awesome farewell feed at Hiro Sushi.  Now time to head east. Texas.

It's not forever. Promise to return :-)

Jitters are Good

Bonus Friday.

I'm loving being a range mule. Problem is that you really can't gauge distance when the ball goes much beyond 200 yards. With the new R15s, I was curious to try them on the course where getting data on distance performance was a lot easier.

Today, had the good fortune to be paired with Tom, a head PGA pro from the midwest, and his wife Cathy. Tom was playing from the gold tees, so it was a good opportunity to dive in and see what happens from back there with the new R15s.

Like skiing with the really good guys from the movies, got 18 holes of watching Tom play. How his ball flighted. How he hit approaches, short and long. Spun and stopped the ball. Played the short game around the green. And putted. All with this beautiful consistency. It was a great experience, and learning lesson of how things could be.

He was also kind enough to give me a tip about the takeaway and proper rotation, which is something I'm very keen on to protect my back from further injury. As I can't see myself, that one tip he gave me, will make a big difference for me going forward. So many thanks for that, Tom.

It was also awesome experiencing the nervousness of the pro watching, and hitting from where he's hitting, and how my ball will fare compared to his, etc, with these new R15s modded the day before that I don't yet trust. All that ego stuff. So it was four hours of good Dalai Lama time as well.

Weather was perfect. They were great fun. Learned about the GolfNow app. And the R15s tested out just fine for now.

Tomorrow, back to the rock pile. Now three dominas to deal with. The work continues...

Deeper into Hard

Apparent success with the R15 driver mod propelled me to do the same the 3 wood, another club I'd dreaded. Set the goal at reach of up to 260 (with roll) and tune for accuracy over distance as needed. That'll be an option off the tee into tight fairways, and something I can also snuggle onto the green on long par 5s, or when I mess up something shorter and need length to try and recover.

In Golf Disneyland, wishes are granted immediately, so straight onto the net via the phone at the range and then off to the shop.

No reason not to go with the R15. Double check with Shiels and Finch. Find an almost new 15 degree X-shafted one at Second Swing. Trade in my "tink" driver (just learned about that), back weight (lead tape is in my bag), dash to Vans to cut to 42.5" and grip with Winn wrap medium, stretched.

Had to think a bit about the back weighting, and did a variable gap wrap of the lead to reduce the amount of back weight. You smear the lead down so it's all smooth before it gets taped and gripped.

Off to the range. I block it a bit, but it flies solid and it feels great. Needs a bit of work to hit off the deck and get the 260, but occasionally do that already, so it's a good starting point.

We'll see how the incumbent Mizuno hybrid 19 and 22 degrees settle out once I can hit the 4 iron solid and reasonably master the 3 wood. Bit suspicious of the Mizuno's cuz they flew good when my swing wasn't sound. So as the swing improves, not sure what'll happen there. What's clear is that rockpile work is now focued on MB and the new (used and hacked) driver and 3 wood, and work towards the rest from there.