Tag: Free

I have not been able to get out to play golf lately. I was really looking forward to playing fall golf as this is a time when golf courses start to soften up after the summer and regain some green. However, each morning lately has seemingly been plagued by frost and frigid temperatures. And when there is frost in the morning, golf courses enter what is called a frost delay where all the tee times get pushed back and sometimes cancelled. I am also not really looking to get out and play golf when it is 5 degrees outside. Sure I could layer up, but I would rather just wait for the cold spell to pass. If it never passes then I’ll just get over myself and play in the cold. Here is the twitter account of the golf course I play at updating us on the status of the course:

https://x.com/RoyalColwoodGC/status/1717901005709529168?s=20

I found this YouTube video that includes some solid tips for how to brave the cold on the course. They talk about simple things such as wearing a base layer on the course and even buying one of those hand warmers that quarterbacks wear in the NFL. The most interesting tip to me that was mentioned was how you need to put your ego out of the way and club up. What do I mean by that? Well in the cold air, the golf ball is guaranteed to travel a shorter distance versus the summer air. So the guy in the video suggests that although it might be slightly embarrassing, for the best results you need to hit a longer club than you might normally to account for the loss of distance. That isn’t something I’ve given much thought in the past but will keep it in mind going forward.

Hopefully I will be able to get out to play a little bit next weekend so I have more to share.

I got out to play golf at Royal Colwood on October 1st. The weather was great and I was feeling confident about my abilities, until I got on the first tee box. Not much went well for me in this round. The biggest positive about my time on the golf course was that I got to play a full 18 holes and spend time with my friends.

Let’s start with the driver… I am lost with this club. I can not seem to figure it out. Every time I swing it, I am slicing it hard right and it either goes out of bounds or just loses tons of distance and is ineffective. I need to figure this out quickly or else my desire to play is going to go out the window. I think my problem is that I am swinging “over the top” of the ball and it causes my terrible ball flight. I found a few videos that I plan to watch before my next round: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzYJ_3sAgSc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On7K89a1Buw

Both of these videos include definitions and drills to help fix my problem.

My irons, short game and putting were all average too. I had a couple of putts that I just gave up on and didn’t take my time with so that obviously never works. And towards the end of the round I started to fatigue and when that happens everything just kind of falls apart. I only made 3 pars the entire round and sprinkled in many double bogeys on my way to shoot 91. Not great. But at least I had fun.

Ratings: Driver 2/10, Irons 6/10, Short game 6/10 Putting 5/10

I was able to get out and play 9 holes on Sunday but was a little bit disappointed with the weather. We played about 3 holes before the rain started to come down and the wind started to pick up. There was a small part of me that wanted to keep going and play 18, but that just was not in the cards. Regardless, I thought the round went okay. Here is my scorecard:

The square boxes mean I made a bogey (+1 on the hole) and the double squares mean a double bogey (+2 on the hole). As you can see I was doing very well until the last two holes. I am a frequent maker of double and triple bogeys so to not have any going onto the eighth hole was a good feeling. And then everything collapsed as both my drives on 8 and 9 went into the trees and I was unable to save myself. However, I like to take the positives away and the fact that I was playing pretty steadily until then is great.

Moving forward, I am going to rate the different aspects of my golf game on a scale of one to ten. Those different aspects are my tee shots, irons, short game (chipping, pitching) and putting. My driver has been in shambles lately and Sunday was no different. I took a total of seven drives and 1 of them went straight with the rest having a heavy left to right movement. My irons were quite good and there is not much to complain about there. Short game and putting are always things that elude me but I feel like they were not too bad. Although I had four putts for birdie (-1 on the hole) and I didn’t make a single one.

Driver: 5/10, Irons: 8/10, Short game: 7/10, Putting: 7/10

I think I am going to give it one more round before I start looking for help/resources and make massive changes to my driver swing because I used to be half decent with it so I know it’s in there!

For my free inquiry project I decided to stick to a hobby of mine and that is playing golf! Playing golf with my friends is something that I love to do. My two friends and I have memberships at Royal Colwood and through the summer we played about 3 times a week. Despite all of this time spent golfing, I am not very good and that frustrates me. I have for sure improved a little bit over the last few years but I usually find myself shooting anywhere from 87 to 95 with my lowest score being an 84. For those that might not know golf, those are okay scores but nowhere near what is considered good.

My vision for this project is to simply play golf, and document how I do! I will post updates from each round I play and include photos and videos. I also want to post updates on skills that I am practicing and working to improve. For example, if I finish a round and think my putting could have used work, I will research some putting drills or YouTube videos that touch on that subject and post them to my blog along with media of me putting those drills into practice. The beautiful part about golf is that there is always something to work on and there is always someone that has something to say on the matter.

I am hopefully going golfing this weekend so hopefully I will be able to make my first post about how well (or terribly) I played.