Progress

Full Swing

I've been working on the same things of keeping my arms in front of my body to help lay down the club on a flatter plane. My ball striking is slowly getting back to where it used to be, and I know that soon enough it will be even better with my misses being smaller.

I'm hitting more balls than I was before I started working on this in efforts to learn the moves more quickly. I also noticed and started working on shortening my backswing because I was overswinging before which I feel leads to some inconsistency. I've been working a little with the baseball drill to give me the feeling of hand rotation, freeing up my arms by keeping them in front of me, and a flatter plane. It's a good drill for the things that I need to work on because my club was slightly shut, I dipped a little on the downswing, and my plane was steep.

Short Game

I started doing this drill that I did a couple years ago where I would place three tees on the green and chip to the front one, middle, the back, and then in between the three tees. After accomplishing that, I would chip to the tees, but instead of rolling the ball to the tees, I work on carrying the ball to the tee.

It helped me notice for one, that I was not as sharp as I should be, and that a lot of my skulled shots was caused by me coming in with the leading edge causing me to come out of the shot for fear of digging into the ground. Also, I had trouble controlling the shots as they were rolling too far and appeared to have draw spin on them. A few days ago I was working on rotating the face open on my backswing and it seemed to work because it allowed for a little more bounce to come into play, but that was only half of the equation. What I realized yesterday was that my mechanics were slightly off: I wasn't using the bounce properly, and I was releasing the club too much. Therefore, I worked on keeping the bounce consistent through the shot and not releasing the club as much.

Putting

I noticed a slight trickle down from the lack of confidence in my ball-striking influencing what was my spectacular putting. I've been working on trying to not let that happen, but it's difficult. I've still been working on the same ruler drill, the putting plane, and making at least a third of my putts around a hole. I reminded myself to stay relaxed, exude a confident setup, and I believe those things help make putting easier.

Titleist Purchasing Program

I've been emailing Cindy Hogge of Titleist with my scheduling information and proof of membership on legitimate mini-tours. I recently had Will, from the All-American Tour, send me a letter that I forwarded to Cindy which showed that I will be a full-time member of the All-American Tour in 2010. I then revamped my schedule to reach the minimum requirement of 15 events of 36 holes or more. I'm hoping to hear back from her tomorrow and hopefully it satisfies all their requirements so I can start purchasing some clubs at PUD prices.

Nike Driver

I sent my old, cracked-faced Nike driver back to the factory and hopefully it's still under warranty & they'll replace it with the new Nike Victory Red Driver. I'll probably then talk to Richard Lee & see if I can swap that factory driver with a Tour version. Currently, my Nike Dymo driver is optimum with really low spin & a great launch. I get compliments about my driver's ball flight all the time.

Events

I wanted to play in the WM Phoenix Open, but I didn't end up signing up due to the fact that I need to purchase a brand new set of clubs. Once I decided I wouldn't play, I then started to work on shallowing out my downswing. Yesterday, though, I did sign up for the Scottsdale Healthcare Charity Pro-Am which is in April. It's a great event with the entry being $50 more this year at $350, but the winner takes $15,000. Amateurs pay around $900 I believe for an entry so it's great to be a pro

Taxes

I will need to file for my taxes soon and my friends Grant & Michael Schnegelberger told me that I need keep track of all my golf expenses (training aids I purchase, clubs, event entry fees, gas used for every event, etc.) because it is a job, and I can get money back from it. For this reason, I'm probably going to opt for the more traditional route of tax filing rather than online like last year.