Putting Changes

It seems every MCO brings about a change in the golf game.

Possibly due to boredom and the closure of golf courses, I’ve taken the time over the past 6 months plus to revamp the swing and move from the conventional weight shift left-right and left again to a stacked left side. The result? Well, I am not playing worse as before. In fact, my score is more or less the same, hovering between high 80s, low 90s and occasional moving down to mid 80s and low 80s but never breaking 80. That’s pretty much how I play previously.

The problem now seems to be more in the irons and less of the driver/woods. Especially, the shorter irons which I generally pull left and the occasional struggle with the mid irons when I would shank it. I haven’t figured out why, but those blow holes are usually the 7/6-iron shanks. But the drive now is very much more consistent and distance wise, more confident.

Putting seems to be the problem now, so for this MCO, 3 things are being experimented.

a) Left Hand Low

I saw Jordan Spieth putting the lights out and tried his grip. Even though it’s indoors, and on a cheap putting mat – it works. It feels much more ‘intact’. In terms of the takeaway and stroke, it feels more one piece as opposed to my previous conventional overlap. Of course, it’s on a mat, so a lot of discount is needed on the results, but it does feel better, which is important.

b) Forward press

I never thought this would help, but it does. I always had a weight back a bit on my putter stance and sometimes hit up on the ball the same way as how I hit the drive. With the forward press, the putter face is more level and lower when it impacts the ball and it seems a lot more solid as opposed to my previous attempts to hit up – causing very inconsistent hits and often end up just brushing the damn ball – the way I did my eagle putt at the Impiana a few weeks back.

c) Head Up Putting

Now I probably won’t put this in practice just yet but have been experimenting this since a year + even before I knew there was a term for it. My original idea was that – if we threw a ball, we don’t look at the ball we are throwing, we look at the target. So why is putting different? Only recently I found out this is actually a thing that many other people are thinking – and saw Jordan Spieth do it as well. So, head up putting isn’t about staring at the golf hole, it’s about just loosening up without getting too caught up staring at the ball. What I do is to just look probably a few feet ahead of the ball, or to the break-line that I want my putt to go, blur my vision and just stroke the ball.

Blurring my vision is how you do when you disfocus your vision on purpose, same way as you would do when you are looking at a 3D magic eye picture and looking through the picture instead of at it. So far, again, it works but I haven’t done it much on the course except for some simple 9-hole games when we don’t have those previous RM5 hanging on the hole. But now that I know it’s an actual method used by the best putters in the world, why not??!

So those are the changes on the putting – let’s see how it works out as soon as this MCO is over and we are back out on the course!

Schadenfreude for Spieth?

jspieth

One of the first German words I learnt was schadenfreude. At least I think it’s german. Ich weiss nicht, tut mir leid.

It means that we are happy over someone else’s misfortune. For instance, the BMW that just cut into my lane this morning and immediately ends up in a horrific crash…but of course he escapes and his entire car bursts into flames. Man, that feels good. Or the car that parked in two parking lots suddenly randomly bursts into flames.

Or take Tiger – after years of dominance and arrogance, suddenly to be reduced to a lousy hacker that cannot chip – tell you what, a lot of people had that schadenfreude feeling.

But Spieth?

I saw his trainwreck in Augusta back nine. It’s similar to the one that Rory endured in 2011. Unlike Spieth, Rory was already struggling on the front nine before exploding to a back nine 43 and a final score of 80. That’s like us hackers scoring 110 on the final day.

Jordan? No one saw it coming on the front nine. He was at one time -7 and 4 under for his round. After he reeled off 3 birdies in a row including an extremely difficult one on the 9th, most people just thought, just give him the damn jacket.

Then came the implosion.

10 was a bad drive, 11 was a bad putt where he missed a 4 footer after an incredible 3rd shot. And then, came the 12th. Amen corner, at least 11 and 12 are.

Remarkably, his total strokes on 10,11 and 12th is exactly the same as Rory’s in 2011. Rory scored 7-5-5 and Jordan scored 5-5-7. Unfortunately his meltdown of 7 came on the par 3, so he played it 6 over as opposed to Rory’s 5 over. So it’s worse.

But while Rory was shaking his head, throwing his putter, untucking his shirt and looking like he had the worst job on earth collecting shit; Jordan did not throw his club once, did not slam his club into the ground, did not slam his club into his bag, and when he chunked his second into the water on the 12th – he just calmly ask for another ball. When he putted out for a 7, he just walked off, disappointed obviously but all the while as if he was just 1 down on a 15-5-5 betting game instead of the bloody Masters at bloody Augusta.

Its impossible to not like Jordan Spieth. Welcome to the world of sports, where you can be a good guy and also the best in the world. The world of Michael Jordan thrash talking is replaced by the mild mannered Stephen Curry – the world of Tiger Woods replaced by Jordan Spieth, who has a little sister with Autism and started a foundation for special children’s needs.

When you have him say, “Being Ellie’s brother humbles me every day of my life.”, you know his guy is honest-to-God a great guy and there is no way anybody on this God given earth can have a bad thought about him. Check out this clip on him and slowly clap your hands.