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As I write I’m sitting in the car in the parking lot at the Creighton Farms Golf Club just outside of Leesburg, Virginia in the midst of a rain delay at the beginning of the first round of the Senior Professional National Championship. It is 51 degrees and pouring, as it was when we warmed up (?) and teed off on the 10th hole at 8:17. By the time we got to the fairway there was pretty much casual water everywhere, and when we got to the green we were barely able to hit a putt without water interfering with the roll of the ball. The hole plays 410 yards slightly uphill, and it is usually about a drive and an 8 iron. Today I hit a good drive considering full rain gear, rain gloves, a 15 mile per hour wind in our faces and a constant downpour, and was left with 192 yards to the pin. I took out a 2 hybrid and somehow knocked it on the green some 35 feet from the pin. My first putt brought up water and ended up 3 feet short, and then the horn blew. We marked our balls and paddled in, and I decided to sit in the car as it has nice heated seats that might possibly keep me from stiffening up if we happen to go back out. It’s been dumping now for an hour and a half, so there’s no way the course isn’t completely saturated by now. The weather people are calling for 6 inches of rain over the next 3 days, so it doesn’t look good for getting this tourney in, at least not all 4 rounds.
My practice round yesterday was a mixed bag of good and bad shots. My hips and back felt somewhat fatigued but not painful as they usually are. I am concentrating on getting deeper in the backswing with my right hip and having the club swing to a less vertical position at left arm parallel (I would like it to point at the ball), and then staying deep in the forward swing so that my hips don’t come out of the box as much. I filmed a couple after the round and found that I was not really doing what I wanted to do, with the added attraction of not opening up fast enough in the forward swing. When I fail to get deep I usually lift a bit, and as a consequence the shaft gets vertical halfway back and tends to cross the line with the longer clubs. In the forward swing my first move is too much toward the front of the left foot and I wind up coming in steep with my right leg and hip pushing too much toward the ball. One thing I noticed in the swings I took is that I have to add a thought to clear hard with the left leg, because if I don’t it is slow to get out of the way and I exit too far to the right and up around my neck on the follow through. As I try to flatten the overall look and feel of the swing to get that sidearm motion I would like to exit more to the left.
I don’t really know how well my old body is going to function in this weather, but you can only go out there with your keys and try to grind it around as best you can. I just switched to a Daddy Long Legs putter, a counter balanced model with a Ghost Spider head that Taylor Made came out with about 6 months or so, and it rolls the ball great and has about as stable a face as I have ever felt. It’s an interesting concept and features a long, fairly thick but uniform grip that you are supposed to choke up on about 2 inches. I will certainly need to make some putts this week to shoot a respectable score, My pitching and bunker play are pretty good, which usually happens when I play in more competition.
Well, it’s still pouring so I’m skeptical about getting the round in, but we will just have to wait and see. Since I was talking about yesterday’s swings I will load them into the V1 and let you take a look at them to go along with this piece. I hope you’re having a nice day.
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