Shutting it down and then rebooting

Injury, lessons learned and coming back

(I meant to publish this months ago)

With my last competition of the season done, I’ve decided to shut it down for a little bit to let my pinkie finger heal. Come to find out, gripping the club still doesn’t feel great. Even with the grip change, it’s better, but it’s still not entirely pain-free.

I wanted to reflect on a couple of things from this season. While I missed a bunch of goals, primarily the handicap drop, there were a lot of good things. We’ll cover the goals and positives in a later post, though. Right now, I want to figure out what went wrong.

Worked on mechanics deep into the season.

I started taking lessons again too late into my offseason last year. The weather was good here longer than expected, and I kept playing, dragging my feet on starting lessons. So, a lot of mechanical changes were happening well into the season.

This led to me essentially being in between swings and not committing fully to the changes. This was a massive problem that reared its head a lot and really messed with my brain. I was really committing to turning over my wrists with my driver and three wood off the tee but backed away from doing it with irons because of the massive two-way miss it was giving me. I felt like I was hitting my irons well early in the season and didn’t want to mess with it. However, as the season progressed, and I kept at it with the wrists off the tee, my irons fell apart because I was kind of doing the wrists but not adjusting my aim and then sometimes not doing my wrists.

What will I change? Commit to the wrist hinge on all shots. Swing like I am aiming to the top right corner of the goal like I was playing ice hockey. This will get me appropriately aimed as well as get my arms away from my body, all while creating compression.

Also, I am going to go back to lessons in a week or two and commit to mechanical changes with a goal of no more overhauls past the month of May.

Changed the grip.

I didn’t have a choice. I tried to talk positively about it, and I just don’t feel comfortable with it. Changing a grip into the season sucks, especially when you are playing a lot and playing in tournaments.

What will I change? I just need to continue to do it and make it feel like second nature. I have a grip I can throw into my hands while on conference calls or watching TV. I just need for it to feel second nature because right now, it doesn’t.

Chipping, chipping, and more chipping

I don’t practice chipping enough, and it is by far the biggest weakness in my game. I’m so wrapped up in my larger swing mechanics that I ignore the one issue that probably adds the most strokes to my game.

What will I change? Focused practice on chipping each time I pick up a club. I need to spend the start of every practice session doing it and then do focused practice sessions on the chipping green just to open up my creativity.