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Should Have Bought a Bicycle Instead

I was telling a buddy at lunch today how my life basically centers around hitting a little white ball as far and straight as possible.  No joke.  Rather sad, actually, what my life has turned into--an obsession with hitting a little white ball.  Almost every waking minute I'm not working I'm probably thinking about what's wrong with my golf game--my grip, alignment, balance, posture, tempo, how they all suck.

Worse than golf consuming all my thoughts is its affect on my mood.  If I'm hitting it well I'm happy, social, cheerful.  Walk around with a little extra bounce in my step.  But if I'm playing poorly then I literally get depress, annoyed, withdrawn--you name it.  This can't be good.  A psychologist would probably diagnose me with some sort of disorder.

Why, why this obsession/addiction?  I can understand drug addiction or sex addiction--those things make you feel really good.  But hitting a little white ball doesn't make me high or give me an orgasm.  I have a few theories:

• I'm a bit of a perfectionist.  I want to hit the ball perfectly, but golf is not a game of perfection.  Until I can accept that golf is not a game of perfection every bad shot, every bad round will just eat at me.
  
• I pride myself on being a quick learner, but I'm not progressing quick enough.  I'm too impatient.
  
• I like to be in control, but no one can truly be in control of their swing/game. Even Tiger Woods has said there's only two golfers who have ever "owned their swing", Moe Norman and Ben Hogan.  

It's just all very frustrating.  I hate it.  Perfection.  Progress.  Control.  Can't have any of it.  Imagine how much less frustrated and healthy I'd be, how much more money and spare time I'd have, if only I had bought a bicycle instead.  I'd be cruising around the beach, enjoying the nice Spring weather.  My chicken legs would be huge and muscular.  Instead I'm going insane thinking about how to hit a little white ball.  Damn you defunct Copeland's Sport for not having a better selection of bicycles.  Damn you.

Designer Water, Too Much Thinking and Left Eye Dominance

The grocery store near my place has a large selection of what I call "designer" water: ridiculously priced, vitamin infused, flavored water in fancy bottles.  I bought some HINT and ICIO to try.  Not bad tasting but I don't think I'm hipster enough to spend $4 on water.  Rather drink some tap and spend the $4 on real fruits to get my vitamins.  It's not like apples and bananas are hard to find that you need to drink designer water to get your potassium.

My golf game has gone to shit.  For 5, 6 holes I'd find every fairway, then for the next 6 holes I can't get rid of this pull hook.  I'm starting to think it's because I have so many swing thoughts in my head.  Between the Golf Digest tips, the late night Golf Academies on the Golf Channel, the swing books, I'm too overloaded.  So as soon as something goes slightly wrong I lose my confidence and start trying to recall all the crap I've read.   All this does is make things worse.  I need to get to a point where I'm not really thinking about my swing.  The only thinking should be course management.

But speaking of pull hooks I'm wondering if it's just an alignment problem.  I did an experiment today using my alignment stick.  I would quickly place my alignment stick on the wrong pointing toward the target.  Then I'd step back and check if the alignment stick was actually pointing at the target.  The alignment stick, upon double checking, was aimed incorrectly--too far left.  Every time.  Maybe it has to do with my left eye dominance from to my anisometropic myopia. 

Odds of Ray Romano Breaking 80

Golf Channel has this show called The Haney Project Ray Romano featuring Tiger Woods' swing coach Hank Haney and comedian Ray Romano of Everybody Loves Raymond fame.  Haney is confident he can help Romano achieve his goal of breaking 80 before the season ends.  I told my golf buddy today this ain't going to happen, and here's the math behind it.

Romano claims to be a 15-18 handicapper.  The odds of 15-18 scoring 79 ranges from 1 in 1,138 to 1 in 37,000.  On a typical course (say 71 rating/125 slope) Romano would need a net differential of 8-10 to score 79.  Base on this USGA chart the odds of that happening are not good.

I think the biggest misconception about the golf handicap index is it represents some kind of average or typical score.  But you only shoot to your index 20% of the time.  So if Romano's index is 15 he scores 87 only 20% of the time.  If Romano averaged 87 then breaking 80 wouldn't be that big of a deal.  But when he only scores 87 20% of the time taking 8 strokes off (even for just a single round) becomes very unlikely.

  

All About the GIRs

Last weekend I played a pretty good round at Half Moon Bay's Ocean course, finally ending my birdie drought.  I didn't keep score but know I had 4-5 pars and 1 birdie.  I also know that I didn't have any blowup holes thanks to no OB, nothing in the hazards, etc.  Maybe 1 triple.  Might have actually broken 90 without realizing it.

In any event, I got curious if there were some formulas, relationships between pars and score, birdies and score, GIRs and scores, etc.  Luckily I'm not the only golf geek.  Lucius Riccio did a study back in the 90s and found several relationships, some stronger than others.  For example, the relationship between score and pars is

score = 102.6 - 2.7 * number_of_pars

This is the equation for GIR

score = 95.1 - 2.0 * number_of_GIRs

Other relationships are listed here.

What caught my attention was the weak relationship between putting and scores compared to the strong relationship for GIRs.  That is, you can have a good putting day and still score poorly, you can have a bad putting day and still score well, etc.  This goes against all that I've been told, that you must putt well to score well. 

Base on these relationships I think I should focus the majority of my practice time on the mid/short irons.  You figure on a typical course you'll probably have a mid/short iron approach shot 10 times?  Just getting half of those mid/short irons on the green (5 GIRs) puts you at 85 according to the equation. 

WITB 2010, Revision 1.2

After thinking about it for a little bit, I realized that carrying two 60 degree wedges, one low bounce and one high bounce, is a bit silly since I can't really tell the difference.  So I returned the Cleveland and got an Adams A7 22* hybrid.  This fills int he gap between my 19* and 25*.  I do have an old Bridgestone 22* rescue but its head is so big and ugly looking I can't force myself to play it.

Went with the A7 because I've heard good things about Adams hybrids.  The head is about the same size as my Bridgestone hybrids so it'll fit in.  Like the orange shaft, nice contrast to my very boring black bag. 

So here's WITB 2010, revision 1.2.  Hopefully this will be the last change as March approaches and golf season gets underway for real (none of this muddy fairway conditions).

TaylorMade 420 R9 driver, 10.5*

TaylorMade R9 15* fairway wood

Bridgestone J36 19* and 25* hybrids

Adams A7 22* hybrid

TaylorMade SW-6 Burner wedges/irons, 2* flat, .5" short

Titleist Vokey Spin-Milled 60*/4* wedge

Cleveland VP 509 blade putter

Born 2 Bogey

Over Christmas I birdied 2 holes at PGA West TPC Stadium, including the island green.  A couple of days later I got another birdie at the Classic Club.  So I bought a Garfield "Born 2 Birdie" head cover for my driver.  Then I went 54 days, maybe 15 rounds, without a birdie.  So last night I got so piss I changed birdie to bogey with some masking tape and a permanent marker:  

That must have done the trick, broke my birdie dry spell today at Half Moon Bay's Ocean Course on the 16th hole.  The 16th hole is a great hole, slight dog leg right with the ocean to the left.  Decent drive but the wind took it right and short.  Thanks to the soft greens from the rain my 19* hybrid shot actually held.  Got the 15 footer to drop for birdie.

Actually had a pretty good overall round.  Didn't keep score, but think I had 5 pars and of course that 1 birdie.  Driver wasn't on fire, but I found the fairway most of the day.  Irons were okay, needed to be a few yards more accurate but no crazy, out of control shots today.   But I'm most happy with my chipping.  Been chipping horrible lately.  So I put in some time this week to practice chipping and it seems to have paid off.  Still need to work on better distance control but no ridiculously bad chips today.

I attribute my better play to a few adjustments/changes I made this week.

• A flatter wrist at address from a weaker grip position.  I'm trying to get as close to impact position at address as possible.
• A firmer grip pressure after reading this post.
• Less wrist cock.  The increased distance from cocking my wrist isn't worth the increased margin of error.
• Less vertical head movement.  I try to achieve this by rocking my shoulders during my pre-shot routine.  When putting I keep my head still and try to use my arms/shoulders like a pendulum.  So I try to get this shoulders rocking feeling during my pre-shot routine with the hopes that like putting I can avoid excessive head movement resulting from the body getting all out of position.
• Shortening my back swing to increase balance.  I think naturally I just don't have good balance, so when combined with trying to make a really big shoulder turn and swinging fast I get really out of balance.  I hated that I was falling all over the place after hitting good drives.  I think my balance was much better today from shortening my back swing.  Don't really any shots were I was falling all over the practice.

Vertical Head Movement

I realize I have a fundamentally flawed, unsound golf swing.  On Monday at Presidio my friend recorded our tee shots with his iPhone 3G.  Occurred to me that watching yourself in a video is probably the best way to diagnose your golf swing, otherwise you don't know if a good shot was good because you got lucky with timing or if you actually swung properly.

So I used my Macbook's shitty web cam to record a couple of practice swings with the 8-iron in the living room.  Wow, what a wake-up call.  I have so much vertical head movement and my left shoulder dips like crazy.  It's no wonder why I'm not consistent at ball striking because my swing requires very good timing to move my head back up during the down swing.

WITB 2010, Revision 1.1

Made some purchases over the long weekend...here's my updated "what's in the bag" 2010.

TaylorMade 420 R9 driver, 10.5*

TaylorMade R9 15* fairway wood

Bridgestone J36 19* and 25* hybrids

TaylorMade SW-6 Burner wedges/irons, 2* flat, .5" short

Titleist Vokey Spin-Milled 60*/4* wedge

Cleveland CG15 60*/12* wedge

Cleveland VP 509 blade putter

If you're wondering why I have two 60* wedges in my bag, one is low bounce (4*) and one is high bounce (12*).  The low bounce is good for firmer conditions and out of wet sand.  High bounce for softer conditions and fluffier sand.  When I shoot a 112 I want to make sure it's not because I didn't have the right amount of bounce on my wedges. 

Thumbs Down Presidio Golf Course

Played Presidio Golf Course today with a couple of buddies.  Only live about 15 minutes away, but this was only my second time playing Presidio.  Horrible round.  After my Tiger Day yesterday I was feeling pretty confident.  But Presidio doesn't drain very well so it was very wet, soggy and muddy.  After a while it just got tiresome cleaning your plugged ball before every shot.   

Even more annoying were the tee boxes.  The tee area is suppose be flat and well maintained to give you a good start to the hole.  But every tee box at Presidio was sloping left to right, right to left, downhill, uphill.  Golf is hard enough without having to deal with uneven lies on the tee.

What else didn't I like about Presidio?  Greens were too slow, really threw us off.  All the holes seemed the same.  Straight with bunkers guarding the green.  Think there were only 1 hole with a dog leg.  Too many blind shots.  On one par 3 you can't see the green, just a tree right in the middle.  I don't think I've ever played a blind tee shot into a par 3.

Presidio is very scenic but no amount of scenery can make up for all the shortcomings.  Might be a little harsh because I played like crap, but I'm thinking even if I had played well I'd still rank Presidio pretty low on Northern California courses.

Tiger Day

Did a "Tiger Day" today.  Not too long ago a Tiger Day was very clear: dusk to dawn focused practice.  But now it could also mean you're banging cocktail waitresses.  Unfortunately, I only practiced today. 

Was at the range hitting balls at 8AM trying to break-in and get the feel for my new 420 R9 driver.  Went with the 420 R9 for a few reasons

• Wanted a smaller head.  Sick of these 460cc monster heads.
• Wanted a shorter shaft.  The 420cc R9 is 45.25" versus my Burner's 46.5".  Even when I hit the Burner dead straight I just feel out of control.
• Wanted a driver with an adjustable head.
• Wanted a lower launching shaft.

Was pretty worried because after 45 minutes I couldn't really hit the R9 at all.  Maybe I should have gotten the 460 model, which is more forgiving and aimed at the higher handicapper.  Or maybe I should have just not bought a new driver. 

But on the course it was great.  Think I missed 1 fairway on the front.  I liked that it launched lower than the Burner, felt I was losing too much distance from the Burner's high trajectory.  They say you get more distance with a high trajectory, but mine was too high.  The 420cc head might be less forgiving but since I felt more in control I think overall I made better contact.

Despite a good driving day my overall round was awful.  Think I've focused so much on the tee shot I've completely forgotten how to chip.  Livid with frustration.  In the fairway all day and I can't score because my chipping and bunker play sucked ass.  Luckily my putting is still decent. 

So I went home, ate, rested for bit, then headed to Mariner's Point to work on the short game.  Did that for about 2 hours.  Think I got the feel/touch back.  Finished the day with a small bucket, focusing on making sure I get my left shoulder under my head during the back swing and slowing down my down swing.

8AM-8PM, nothing but golf.  Such a frustrating yet addictive game.