Couple of range sessions. Getting it back on track and started to see some consistency return on Sunday. Grooving the upper arm action, which is where I’m driving my swing from. Nice shot shape, straight to a little draw. Got it working on the pitching again, and the full swing.

Playing Windaroo Sunday with Brisbane Fairways SC, and hope to get another session or maybe two in before then. I’ll hand in 3 handicap cards for my Golf link. So will hopefully have an official handicap soon. :-)

Did quite a bit of chipping too. Felt good. Gap, sand and lob wedge.Still got lots of work to do here. Not just building touch with normal chips, but also with the open face cut shot.

Have also been doing some good putting practice at home. Working on hitting the ball where I’m aiming the face! Sounds too simple! Geoff Mangum’s basic strike motion is aimed at keeping the face square for a few inches before and after the ball to provide a little margin for error. For me it involves getting my arms right – not reaching out to the ball – and getting the whole shoulder and arm shape to move on a pretty vertical plane. Starting to get it consistently. Repetition will make it so it feels normal.

One thing that I am very keen to build is my confidence with the 2-4 foot range. This will help me to get the ball past the hole without great fear of missing those return putts longer than tap in. I generally leave a few short in the jaws and I can definitely lower my scores by being a bit more aggressive. Lagging them to 2 feet past the hole instead of the back edge of the hole.

Looking forward to Windaroo, and having a real handicap.

Quick buck n a half at the range tonight. All upper arm focus. Need to get that consistency back. Real improvement in that direction.

Poor shots were mostly too much hook. Good shots were straight but a little right of my stance line to gentle draw back to the stance line. Just what I want to play. Nice strong flight. Mostly felt solid off the face. So pretty pleased.

Did a lot of pitching tonight. I am keen to get consistency of strike on the 40-70m shots to improve my distance control. I tend to hit them a little fat and they go high and short. I definitely need to fix that!

Hopefully I’ll get to the range again before Sunday’s game. One thing I want to experiment with is some slight back swing variations between a bit straighter back or a bit more around. I know both work because I know I vary between the two. But I’m suspecting that generally a slightly more around move is actually more consistent for me. I think it is a little more of an in to out path that promotes a push to push draw, but it seems to help prevent the hooks and so is a lower risk, smaller desperation swing.

So a little experimentation will I think help me to just tweak things a little.

Didn’t have time for chipping however. I definitely need to do more of that. If the rain stays away I’ll get in the backyard for some practice. More importantly though I need to hit the range green, which is starting to get back to decent condition!

More range time today with company for a while (thanks sandy).

I have been struggling with the start of the back swing. Today I worked through it. I am very positive about swinging the club with my upper arms. But what they should do for the first part of the swing … I just didn’t have it.

Now I do! Just gotta remember it and do it until I don’t have to think about it any more. The key is what I get the upper arms to do rather than how they do it. Swinging the club head back or swinging the hands back. The real key is to focus on the movement of a single object, either the club head or hands, either seems to work.

It’s actually a similar thing to my putting action. Better to focus on the reaction than the action.

Challenge is going to be getting caught up in the object and losing that I am swinging with the upper arms!

I know … I’m mental and I think about it too much. But hey, a guys gotta keep himself busy! :-)

Bit of range time is always nice, something I haven’t done for quite a few months now.

Only real option at the moment! :-)

Wife wanted to go on a shopping expedition this morning, but we got back around 3.30 so I headed to the range for a couple of buckets. Keen to build on the good work yesterday.

And I did! Have finally integrated the stuff Fos taught me with the Manuel de le Torre stuff. I knew that the two approaches had much in common, and in fact shared some key elements. But more I wanted to take some aspects of MDLT’s approach that have worked really well for me, and use them to achieve what Fos has been trying to teach me.

The most important part of the MDLT teaching that worked for me was swinging the club with the upper arms – between elbow and shoulder. Why this has been so good for me is that it allows physics and my body to release the club however they want without me trying to time it. The hands are fairly inactive – specifically they are not being deliberately timed.

So today working on swinging the club with the upper arms, but working on the correct path was working very well. I had been trying to get the path sorted by using my hands but I was extremely inconsistent. And not very powerful. But tonight the extra distance was back, and much better consistency. Using the upper arms seems to make the variation in path much less. It is easier to keep the club and hands moving along the right line, especially on the forward swing. And the club head speed through impact is very good for me.

Pitching 40 to 80m and full swings were all improved. I’ve had to weaken the grip a little more because my path is no so in to out and so I was getting draws that were starting on my target line and drawing away.

Still more to do here. And hopefully the rain will go away a bit so I can do a lot more chipping practice! And I need to keep up the putting practice to get that movement more natural and automatic.

So lots to do. But so nice to have the swing back. It’s hard for Fos not being able to work with me in person, so I very much appreciate his help and advice. And I do enjoy the process of working through it myself because then I really learn it. But when it brings a wobble in – which has shown in my last 2 scores – it can be frustrating.

Back on track now though – I know what I need to do so I can make it happen. I love it when I get what I need to do sorted out in my mind. I can work on something I can understand. I’m never comfortable or confident when I am just relying on my body to somehow work it out. Never seems to work for me.

Probably something wrong with me there! But such is life!

You get a official hcp yet? If not, how many cards to go?

Not yet. Not sure how many to go. It could still be 3 to go because I have to find out what cards the handicapper is prepared to accept. Most likely the social Gailes round won’t be acceptable. Possibly Glades with SEQGG may be because it was a comp, albeit a social club comp. Probably 50:50 on that.

Any round with Brisbane Fairways will be OK. And if I can get my Golflink number I can play comps with sandy or Dazza and get them included.

If this weather doesn’t go away and the rounds keep getting cancelled it could take a while! :-)

Pretty sure you don’t get a number until you get a hcp? I think you just need to play with a golflink holder signing your card?

I understand that the rule is social rounds with a GL marker signing are OK, but in the end it’ll be up to the handicapper if he will submit it or not I suppose.

Whatever will be will be! :-) Playing Arundel in 3 weeks, so will find out then how we’ll proceed.

Round 3 in the bag! Average result of 19 over 92, which is 21 over ACR. So here is what I think will happen. I had nothing worse than a triple today so the score will stand. I had a 19 over at Glades which was also 21 over ACR, but there was a 4 over in there so I think it will go in as a 20 over. That will give me 18.6 handicap!

Nice start hcp Weety….now just waiting for official?

4 pars 10 bogies 3 doubles 1 triple
8/15 fairways
Only 2 GIR
Only 3/16 up and down
4 pitches 4 sand 9 chips 3 Texas and 34 putts = 54 short game
Leaves 38 long which is 1 over for this par 73 course

The long shots were lost off the tee with a nasty hook on the second followed by two topped shots, a shanked drive on the ninth requiring a chip out, another on the 16th with a big slice into the trees that required a chip out. Got two back though with good drives on the short par 4 4th and 17th where good drives left me with pitches in. So net 1 over but I should have been 1 under.

I should also be getting more that 2 GIR. Working on my swing with Fos I am still learning my shot shape and that cost me today with good hits that didn’t get on the surface. Given that though I had 3 others that were putting from off the green. I realistically think that I’m a range session or two away from being confident with my shape. Really after today I know that I am playing a little draw still. I will tweak my grip at the range to see if I want to stick with that or weaken things a little for a straight to fade shape. That is my current thinking but I need to test if I can get a consistent result with it, or if I’ll get big pushes and slices.

Nice start hcp Weety….now just waiting for official?

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VTTP #534
The “unofficial” millionth POST poster

Yeah AB. Gotta send in my last card and then it’s just time.

Not pleased with myself, but I am making pretty substantial swing changes with Fos compared to my very flat swing. So bound to be a period of adjustment I suppose.

The stats don’t lie so there is obviously a lot of work to do on my short game. My putting letdown today was a tendency to push a few. I had 3 3 putts today mostly due to leaving some long putts short. I got caught up in controlling the pace and that’s not good.

Didn’t leave myself many tap ins from chips or pitches. Which doesn’t help!

I also had 2 sand and 2 chip shots all on the 11th, which definitely doesn’t help.

I’m not really worried about the putting. I know what I need to do and my training at home needs to move into practicing more like I play.

Chipping though remains the area I need to sort out. The full swing technique changes also affect my chipping so getting that more consistent will help. And if the rain stops being a daily occurrence I’ll get into the backyard for more practice. And the range.

Which will also need to happen for the sand – 1/3 sand saves but one involved leaving the first in the sand the next over the green! So plenty of scope for improvement there.

Well it’s official! I have a handicap! 17.6 playing 18!

So now it all begins!

Going to update my signature! :-)

Congrats on finally getting an official cap mate.

Well done on the cap – now the hard work starts.

Congrats on the starting hcp Weety !
Can I borrow it sometime ;)

Thanks all. I’m surprisingly excited about it! Don’t know why.

I think it’s the fact that you can now ‘officially’ measure yourself. No questioning or argument.
Now the challenge of making it go south and not north :)

Couple of range sessions during the week and a good chipping session in the back yard tonight. I’m moving into the phase of trying to really nail down what I am trying to do in the swing, especially the takeaway. I find that the takeaway has a significant impact on my swing – it really set things up, either positively or negatively.

My conclusion at the moment is simply to focus on the hands and get them to take the club head as straight away as possible. It logically works with a swing that works on ‘straight lines’ as I am building. And it is very specific, which works with my brain; I like to have a very specific intention.

There is a downside which is that I can lose the hands and focus on the club head – I tend to throw it at the ball when that happens. But that is why I have to go through these phases of being very clear and very specific about my intent. It’s training the brain and the body abut what it good and what isn’t.

Starting to really see consistency returning across all swings. And the swing and resulting ball flight is definitely becoming more reliable. My club path through the ball is getting closer to straight; it was quite inside out.

My motivation for this change was to zero out the club head path which will allow me to play fades and draws. That potential is manifesting because I can finished left nor right of the target. But the size of the variation is much smaller than it used to be. So it’s good progress.

Will hopefully hit the range again this weekend at least once. Game next Sunday with Brisbane fairways – so number 4 card.

Chipping time like tonight is great for testing areas like the takeaway. The slower motion allows more precision, but the results still are relevant for full swings.

Tried left and right hand and arm focussed takeaways, both hands takeaways. But in the end nothing works as well as the idea of swinging the club head with the hands, rather than focussing on trying to manage hand path by itself. Much more natural and much more consistent.

Just gunna need more work on making it more natural.

Was chipping very well though, so hopefully that will be a sign of things to come.

Ok Weety…18 is the starting point….I want to see that at no more than 14 by the time the National weekend comes around mate.

That’d be shooting myself in the foot hey!

Hopefully even lower though – more interested in boasting about my handicap than my championships! :-)