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Ben Crane pops out another good video

31 Mar

Long time no blog, eh, Internet?

 

The team has me super busy. Poor excuse, indeed, but the only one I got. Recruiting is a pain, especially since I have two teams (men’s and women’s) to handle.

 

The fantastic boyfriend and I also started Crossfit recently. The owner of the gym said it added 30 yards to his dad’s drives. Right now, however, I’m too sore to even think about holding a club.

 

Thankfully, however, Ben Crane has popped out another insta-classic video that makes me love the game. He’s been in a series of videos as a helmet-wearing, wetsuit-donning goober. This one playfully makes fun of his slow play:

Practicing Smarter with a Deck of Cards

12 Feb

Goodness, it’s been a while. Spring season is finally going at full strength, and I’ve been organizing my first golf tournament that we are hosting Monday.

It’s frustrating trying to get the most practice out of the day when the NCAA regulates that I can only have the players out for 4 hours a day, 20 hours a week.

My biggest goal is to keep the kids from becoming “range zombies.” In other words, just becoming good at practicing on the range, but not exercising the problem-solving part of their brain which is necessary to make a good score in golf.

So obviously the answer would be to just forget the driving range and play all day — however, the club where our team practices tends to be picky about when we can get on the course. Therefore, sometimes the driving range is just our only option.

How do we make the most out of practice, then? With games on the range. The goal is to engage the players mentally and provide stimulation to their problem-solving areas.

My new favorite involves an unusual training aid: a deck of cards. Here’s how you play:

The numbers on the cards in the deck correspond with the clubs in your bag.

King = driver; queen = 3 wood; jack = 5 wood.

10 = pitching wedge; 4-9 corresponds with your nine-four iron. I removed all the aces, twos and threes, but you can leave them if you have clubs to correspond with them (like a rescue club for the aces).

Shuffle the deck, and spread the cards face down. Then, one at a time, the players each draw a card and hit the club that corresponds with that card.  Go through the deck as many times as you like.

I like this drill because it forces the player to focus on the single shot, rather than just hit ball after ball on the range. Because each player goes one at a time, you get to practice having people watch you — which is a realistic tournament scenario — as well as learn to deal with the shot, even if it sucked.

Snow, what is that?

10 Jan

It’s January, and we’re golfing today!

The college golf team I coach starts their spring training this morning, and I couldn’t sleep I’m so excited. It’s 6 am, we don’t start till 9, but I just can’t sleep.

To keep things fun this week, since school hasn’t started yet, we’re doing sort of a “mini camp” format. Each day, we’re playing 9 or 18 holes. Then, we’re going to have an hour of putting and chipping, as well as nightly workouts.

Today to get us back into it, I’m having the kids do a “Texas Scramble.” In this scramble, basic scramble rules apply — all players tee off, then the best ball is used to determine the next shot for everyone and they all hit from there, and so on until the ball is holed. Except in a Texas Scramble, all players must have at least 4 of their drives used as the best ball — even if it’s not the longest or straightest.

I like this for my players because it will force everyone to try their best and work together to have the best score. So we’ll see how it goes.

Alright, gonna try to do some yoga or something to at least relax for the next three hours!

No snow here in Texas!

You know what sucks?

6 Jan

Not having a good women’s golf community where I live. And that the nearest women’s amateur event (150 miles away) requires that I live in the area.

I mean, I can still find women’s amateur golf events in the state of Texas to satisfy my New Year’s resolution, but I’m gonna have to go quite some distance to play.

Oh well.

 

Alright, bitching session over!

I signed up for amateurgolf.com today. It’s a site for amateur golfers to find events and connect with other golfers. Sadly, one has to pay for a membership, which I did for $45 for one year. But after searching for events, I was able to find a bunch of reasonable tournaments I could attempt this year as part of my NYR to return to competition-but-not-a-competition-where-I’ll-get-completely-creamed. Because let’s face it, I want a trophy, but I’m no Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel or Alexis Thompson. I need quality amateur tournaments that aren’t pro-ams so I can actually consider making the cut!

2011 Golf Resolutions

3 Jan

Happy New Year from The Forward Tees!

Once again, time to imagine ourselves as limitless beings and decide upon lofty goals for the next 12 months!

In the past, whenever I’ve met my resolutions it’s always because I’ve made clear, exact goals. Nothing like, “I will loose weight,” or “I will save more money.” Instead, my resolutions provide a realistic achievement I could legitimately reach within a few months of January 1. For instance: “I will run two 5k races for charity,” or “I will set up my bank account to automatically save 25% of my paycheck — and then not touch it.” Sometimes I still don’t meet these goals, but I definitely never do whenever my resolution is vague.

So what is my goal this year? To play in my first amateur tournament. I’m itching to return to competitive golf after being out of college for two years, and this year will be the year.

With every resolution, one must make a game plan. Mine is thus:

1) Get my handicap. Can you believe I’ve never officially figured out my handicap? For some reason, we never needed it for college tournaments — they always wanted hard scores, not handicaps, whenever we were placed in groups. And now that I’ve been playing only for fun, I’ve been very lax about my score. To get my handicap I’m going to resolve to play at least once a week and have the pro at the club help me calculate my handicap.

2) Decide if it’s good enough. I’m not trying to play in a pro-am or anything, but even so, the handicap will predict my potential in a tournament. Thus, it needs to be decent. Determining my handicap will also help me know whether I need to sign up for a mid-am instead of a standard amateur event. I am not going to force myself yet to reach a certain number. Instead I’m going to figure out what my current ability is and decide from there.

3) Sign up for a tournament! The area I live in doesn’t have a women’s golf association, so I’ll have to go out of town. But by late spring I will know when I will be playing in either summer or fall.

And there it is, for all the internet to see and keep me accountable! Here we go…

NCAA Women’s Golf Teams On Facebook

15 Nov

Ah, Facebook. I hate how much time it sucks out of my day, but the sad truth is it makes me feel more connected to friends afar…

I can also follow some great NCAA women’s golf teams who run their own pages. As a college coach, it keeps me in the loop on how bigger teams are doing, as well as makes me reminiscent of my former college playing days.

Here are some of my faves:

University of Florida Women’s Golf

University of Georgia Women’s Golf

University of Oregon Women’s Golf

University of Iowa Women’s Golf

University of South Florida Women’s Golf

Not included: my team. Why? We don’t have a Facebook…. If I had one for us, we might never actually get any golfing done!!!

I would just like to hit my woods well, please.

2 Nov

(Image: http://photos.demandstudios.com/236/4/fotolia_2325820_XS.jpg)

Over and over I read about how the fairway woods are supposed to be easier to hit than long irons — and even easier for beginners off the tee than a driver. That might be true, but for some reason I still hit low, ugly shots with my fairway woods more often than hitting them well. And when I do hit them well, it’s usually extremely hard to repeat it.

So I am focusing some more on my woods, because since I’m not very long off the tee I’d like to get myself into some better scoring opportunities.

Fairway woods tips I’ve found useful:

1. Start with the right stance — a little wider than hip width, and like you would with the driver. (I must be doing something wrong though, because I’m great with my driver and I take a HUGE stance with it!)

2. Low and slow takeaway — Aha; this must be my problem. I need to sweep it away more like a driver, and less like an iron or my hybrid. I need to make much more of a wide sweeping motion. Except I still have to hit the ball with a descending blow, like I would with my irons, because the ball is on the ground instead of on a tee like it would be on a drive. So divots are definitely still welcome with the fairway wood.

3. Don’t try to help the ball into the air — also a big Aha. I’ve lost count of the times where I’ve tried to “kill” the ball, only to have it backfire and just skidaddle a few yards in front of me (embarrassing!). Butch Harmon says to think more about making the swing and less about hitting the ball to help with this. I tell my players all the time to just let the club do the work — guess I need to follow my own advice!

I also found a drill that I’m going to try:

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Golf Pumpkins

1 Nov

Ahhh! It’s already November! Lucky for me, it’s so hot here that I’m still playing….

Yesterday I got into some last-minute Halloween spirit with some baby pumpkins and a paint kit.

(copyright theforwardtees.com)

I then went and played nine frightfully terrible holes. Seriously, it was scary — couldn’t do anything with my woods on the fairway. I’m still really inconsistent with them, and what works one day makes for a totally terrible day the next.

But it helped me work on my new relaxed playing style, for sure. I tried to just let it be, work on what’s next, and not dwell on the past. It’s harder than you’d think.

I also worked on the “Think Box/Play Box” that they talk about in the book “Every Shot Must Have a Purpose.” What you do is “box off” where you’d hit and call that the “play box.” In a spot behind your ball, make yourself a “think box” where you deliberate what you intend to do. Here, you also take all your practice swings and get out your thoughts. Then, you step into the play box, set up, and play — no more thinking.

I’ve always used a “behind the ball” practice swing style, and so this mental division of space was easy to implement. All I had to do was the deliberate task of not thinking any more when I stepped into the play box. It took being very conscious of my inner workings to break that habit, as there’s usually some sort of residual “don’t hit into the water” kind of thoughts rolling around in my brain. That, however, was not even the most difficult part. The real thing making it hard for me was the chatty out of towner that I had been paired with since the course was busy that day. He didn’t know what I was trying to do, but I did notice a marked worsening of shots whenever he managed to get some statement in while I walked into the play box. Any sort of comment was a big distraction. So the think box/play box is perfect for competitive play, but I need to figure out how to make it work when I have to be social.

Recent Feel Good Moment

21 Oct

Took my team to my first tournament as their coach over the weekend, and I hope my recent restructuring of the program was evident in the fact that they scored significantly better this week than their last tournament before I came in. Shows what happens when you practice!

In the mail from Amazon is the book, “Every Shot has a Purpose,” written by Pia Nilsson and Lynn Merriott. They are the coaches that helped Annika shoot her legendary 59, and from the looks of it, reading it will hopefully help get the stick out of my ass every time I play. Their philosophy, if I am reading the excerpts and interpreting their Web site correctly, is that you think about only exactly what you control at this very moment. The score at the end of the round will be what it will be, but right now you can focus only on your shot at hand.

So when one of my players was bummed about her first day score, I gave her the mandate that she just needs to forget about the score and tackle the task at hand. If she trusted her decision and focused on the shot, she would succeed. On day two, she shaved ten strokes off her score! After, she came up to me and thanked me for the advice, saying that tuning out everything else made a huge difference. When she focused only on her next shot, she did much better.

Gave me the coaching warm fuzzies — anyone who’s tried to teach what they love knows what I’m talking about. And, it makes me even more excited for the book to get here, I can’t wait to read it!

Every Shot Must Have a Purpose

Image: overstock.com


The Boyfriend Golf Project: Getting Off the Ground

9 Sep

Since giving myself the project of teaching my wonderful guy the game, well…. nothing has happened. Unfortunately my dream to spend lazy weekends on the links together has not come true yet.

The fact is, we’re just young and both in a “transitional” phase of life where buying a new set of golf clubs for him might not be financially prudent. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not still brainstorming on how to make it happen.

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