Friday, December 30, 2011

9-Hole Practice Round

Anything can feel natural if you do it often enough, and so it is with golf. Last night I went to bed visualizing my new swing (I go to sleep picturing myself hitting driver the way some people count sheep), and this morning I couldn’t remember what the old swing felt like. I had a 3pm tee time, so by 1pm my husband and I were out the door to get some quick lunch and hit some practice balls before the round.

At the range, I found that my distances were not much better than before. In fact I was hitting some clubs shorter. But I chalk this up to not taking a full backswing or hinging my wrist much, which Mike said we could work on later. I didn’t stress about it, since I was mainly concerned with being able to hit well enough to get through nine holes without making a fool of myself.

My new swing feels very compact, like my arms are closer to my body on the way down. If I ever find myself trapped in a 2-foot wide corridor where the walls are wired with detonators, I think I could manage to swing a golf club in it without setting off any bombs.

Overall, my 9-hole round went better than I expected, despite the fact that my husband, who shoots in the 80s and never practices, was not on his best behavior. As usual, he tried to give unasked-for advice and stated the obvious if my putts went past the hole by saying things like, “You hit it too hard.” I told him he better act more blog-worthy or I wouldn’t have anything nice to write about him. He said if I wrote anything bad, he would have to start writing a counter-blog, or a meta blog, in which he would run commentary on my blog commentary about him. That made me laugh. Good thing he’s cute or he would have been done for by now.

Distance-wise, I can claim two victorious shots. One was a drive that maxed out at 165 yards and the other was a 7-iron shot that flew a good 110 yards. These are 10-15 yards more than my usual. I also hit a good shot with my 7-wood on the 8th hole, which is 128 yards over water.



And I even got closer to the hole than dear hubby!


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