Onward and Upward........

Hello again. The Hollingbury Pro-Am, which was my last tournament as an amateur, could not have gone any better. I shot a level par 72 which included a treble bogey and a bogey on a simple par 5. The most fitting thing was that I birdied my last hole, the last hole i'll ever play as an amateur golfer in competition and this was sweet. Beaucoup de beers were consumed that evening and it was a very memorable day. Sam recovered brilliantly from a 42 (+6) front nine shoot a 3-over 75 which I think left him feeling very relieved indeed! He was noticably nervous to begin with, which I can fully sympathise with. He was a member there for a long timr too and a name whose score everybody would be interested to see which is a lot of pressure. I'm sure i'll feel exactly the same next year.

I finally had my lesson yesterday. I have been in need for quite a while for a lesson as I've been losing my way a bit and as usual, my teacher left me going away at the end very excited about working on new stuff and feeling reassured about my game too. I was surprisingly pleased about how good things were looking on camera. My rhythm with my swing is fantastic right now (probably the best its ever been), and I've generally got the club in some pretty good positions. I was worried i'd gone backwards but learned that the majority of the causes of the shots i've losing to the right recently have been because my hands have now lost their ability to compensate for the occasional bad swing. This is a good sign, as I used to have a big problem with my hands overcompensating which caused me to hit hooks.

There are two new things I have been given to work on. One of those things is to work on getting my wrists set as quickly as possible on my backswing (something I attempted to work on last year, without success). I now have a drill which should be much more effective in me implementing this so we'll see how it goes.
The other thing was to do with my transfer of weight through the ball. Basically I dont transfer enough which has been causing some real inconsistencies with my stroke and also a ball flight which is much too high and will cause problems on windy days.
I'm excited about getting to work on these things as I know I will have much better control over the ball when it starts working.
The biggest reassurance I had came when I asked if it was ok to focus on these things on the range, but use my normal swing thought (to stay down on the ball) when I'm on the course still. He said 'yes it is' and that over time these changes shoud gradually bed themselves in. We'll see how it goes.


My PGA forms go off this week, which I am very excited about. I guess now i'll be in a stage where I'm not an amatuer nor a professional until my forms come back. I'm eager to learn what happens next. When can I start to teach and earn some dosh??? Soon I hope, although I feel I have a bit of work to do to begin to feel confident with this.

We'll see. Speak soon folks....