I had to withdraw from the Tar Heel Tour event this week because of illness. I came down with the flu on Friday and it’s still hanging in there. I can’t remember the last time I had the flu. I hope it’s a long time before I have it again.
I finished strong in the Tar Heel Tour event today at Rivertowne CC. I started with a birdie on 1 and then burned the lip on 6 of my next 7 holes. I was 2 over going into the ninth hole and needed to get something going. I hit a great drive and a near perfect utility club into the par 5 but had another awful break. The ball caromed sideways off the collar of the green, bounced into a bunker and buried under the lip. Instead of a reasonable eagle putt, the best I could do was blast out to 30 feet and two putt for par. So, I turned at two over par in very difficult conditions but felt like I could have easily been 4 or 5 under.
This is where I was proud of my mental game. I buckled down and put the bad breaks behind me and birdied the tenth hole. I parred the next several holes in a very tough stretch of the back nine and then birdied the 15th. This is a 490 yard par 4 that was playing dead into the wind. I absolutely smoked driver, 4 iron to 15 feet and made the putt. This honestly may have been one of the best birdies I’ve ever made…the hole was that hard! Then, on 16, I hit a good drive and a 3 wood - again dead into the wind - to 15 feet on the par 5 which I then two-putted for another birdie. I made two pars on the last two holes to card the second lowest round of the day.
I finished in 4th place, two shots out of a playoff. I feel absolutely great about the week. I proved that the changes I’m making in all aspects of my game are starting to have an effect. Though things aren’t exactly where I want them to be quite yet, they are definitley moving in the right direction. More importantly, I see a clear path about how to keep improving. I think this is a feeling that I’ve not had in a couple of years. Perhaps due to this my mental game is better on the course. I was able to shrug off bad breaks better than I’ve been able to in years.
The 4th place finish should guarantee me a pass into the Match Play championship in two weeks. The top 32 on the money list are exempt from qualifying. The next event starts Tuesday back down in Charleston.
I had another good day today and carded a one over 73 on a course that was playing substantially harder than yesterday. The 8 tees that were up a box yesterday were all back making the course play almost 200 yards longer. The wind was up, but only slightly more than yesterday. We still haven’t felt the teeth of this course in its normal wind.
The story of the day, however, belonged to a friend, Aaron Black. With three holes remaining, he was 6 over par and 3 shots on the wrong side of the projected cut. Aaron birdied the par 5 16th and then made a hole in one on the 17th. He followed that with a par on the difficult par 4 18th to make the cut.
The season officially started today at the Tar Heel Tour event at Rivertowne CC in Mount Pleasant, SC. Rivertowne is a stern test and is in very good condition considering it is February. I shot an even par 72 which is three shots off the lead. Though I left a few shots out there, I am very happy with how I started. The quality of my putts was very good. I was making solid contact with good speed. This was the first opportunity that I had to put my putting changes under some pressure and I’m very happy with how they held up. My short game was similary good considering the changes I made in the off-season. I was happy with my long game as well. I dropped a few shots because my mental game and greens-reading skills are still a bit rusty from the off-season. These will recover very quickly.
I was down in Sea Island yesterday to work with Jack Lumpkin. It’s my third session with him and this, like the previous two, was very productive. We split the time between putting and full swing. Here’s what I learned about each:
Full Swing
All three of these things had been addressed in the previous two lessons, but either I wasn’t clear on it or I was overloaded. I’m very clear now and feel like there is a clear path for improvement.
Putting
I mentioned to Jack that putting was the one aspect of my game that still concerned me going into the year. I feel great about my short game. My mechanics already feel very solid and I’m able to focus more on the details of the shot (spin rate, velocity, trajectory). While my long game isn’t exactly where I want it to be yet, it is already improved and I feel like there’s a clear way for me to get there. I’m confident that it will be where I want it early in the season. With my putting, however, I didn’t feel like I was where I needed to be yet and didn’t feel like there was a clear path for improvement. The one part of my putting that needed improvement was solid contact. Every other aspect - reading, routine, feel, etc. - was good. So, he watched a few putts and then asked me to just take my left hand off the club and hit a putt right-handed. I couldn’t do it with the grip that I had. My right hand grip was all the way down in my fingertips so I had very little control over the club. We changed my left and right hand grip to make them sit firmly on the club and match up to each other. I immediately started hitting putts more solid. On video, the transition from back to forward swing started to look much better. Before, it looked like there was a hesitation in the transition area. It seemed like I released the putter too early. After the grip change, I would say the transition area looks 90\% better. The grip change is significant, but I was having so much trouble hitting the ball solid before that I feel like it will be easy to make. I now feel like there is a clear path to getting my putting where it needs to be and that it will get there relatively soon.
So, it was another very productive trip to Sea Island and was timed perfectly for the beginning of the season next week.
