Clueless Wonder

Well today was the last day at my current job. Tomorrow I start my new contract position. Should be an exciting change of pace even though it’s still within the same organization. Anyway, it being my last day I was able to get out of the office early and it’s in the mid-60s outside. What else was I going to do but hit the links!

I went to the closest course to home, which is Pinecrest Golf Club. It’s a little 9 hole muni course run by Fairfax County. I had heard good things about it’s value and layout so I wanted to give it a shot. The good: decent layout, nice mature trees, opportunities to use the driver, cheap green fees. The bad: they had just aerated the greens this morning, poor shape of the fairways and tee boxes. I realize that they haven’t fully been able to work on course conditions and it IS a muni anyway, but I was a bit disappointed in that.

Since the beginning of the year I had only gotten to TopGolf twice and hit in our full-swing simulator upstairs once as well. This meant I wasn’t too worried about results today and just wanted to enjoy myself. Overall I played better than expected, especially with my putting and the times I used my 3 wood off the tee. I was able to drive the green on a 240 yard par 4 and it felt good! Anyway, check the results on my online scorecard on this website. It updates every time I input a round into my scorecard software on our Mac.

Well it’s been awhile since I’ve actually posted anything here so I figured that it was about time. This morning I was finally able to go and get a round of golf in for the first time this year. I played in a scramble tournament less than two weeks ago but when you’re playing best ball you get to just try and nail every shot and you don’t get a true reading of how well you played. Today I played a round at the 9 hole executive course at Hilltop Golf Club in Alexandria. It’s a nice little par 3 and par 4 course set up in a semi-links style.

Overall I’m pleased with my round. It’s always different playing on a course vs. on a range or in a simulator and it showed. I was VERY inconsistent and did not hit my driver well at all on the 4 holes I brought it out. I still have an inside-out swing with that club so it starts right and then slices even further out. That’s really my biggest leak and I should start teeing off with a 3 or 5 wood instead until I fix it.

Anyway, I’m about a 30 handicapper so scoring 50 on the 9 holes I played was actually not bad. My goal for this summer is to start scoring consistently in the low 90’s. I think my short game is getting pretty darn good and I only 3-putted twice today so that is coming along as well. Here’s a link to my scorecard from today, courtesy of the Scorecard software for Mac OSX, made by Cynical Peak Software. I highly recommend it.

That’s right. I still live and breathe each and every day. Just been busy with work and other exciting projects. We’ve had a few warm days here and I’m becoming very excited at the prospect of hitting the links for some golf very soon. I’ve been to the driving range once in Jan and might head there this evening. Reading and thinking about the game has apparently provided me a little bit of insight as to what was wrong with my completely incompetent swing. I was making very good contact the last time out.

The secret? Concentrating on just that. Contact. I found that I was swinging like a home-run hitting for the fences and so just was very inconsistent. Take a little bit off and suddenly my accuracy and predictability of range were vastly increased. I can’t wait to take my game to the course this spring/summer and track my progress.

This is an amazing video of what you can do if you’ve got proper form when hitting a golf ball.