Looking back, looking forward........

I'll tell you what, for a golfer who absolutely loves golf and being outdoors, I can't believe the amount of time I have spent indoors in these last three weeks. I have at most played 2 times in one week now for the last month and a half probably and I am getting very frustrated with not being able to play and get stuck in to working on my game for next year.
The fact is that it has just been literally too bloody cold to even pick up a club. On the occasions I have been out, my body has just been too numb to concentrate.

There are two arguments, one being that I should be forcing myself out to face the elements, whatever they be and get a head start for next year, the other being that I have enjoyed recharging the golfing batteries by having a break and also my personal view that any work I do on my game would not constructive in these conditions.

I decided after my last test failure at Weymouth that I was desperately in need of a wind-down and breather from golf. I have struggled to accept doing this however as I simply love the game too much. Thus, I feel I have found the right balance of playing whenever the right chance comes along and just enjoying it for what it is. Don't get me wrong, I've not lost any dedication to persuing this dream (i'm doubly dedicated if anything) but the breather has been much appreciated.
I'm at a stage now where I really want to get 'stuck in' to my golf again and facing the reality of an english chilling winter every day is starting to get to me a bit now!

This lack of playing and the greater amount of free time i've had has got me to thinking introspectively and retrospectively (this one more so) about the year I've had and the one ahead. It's very weird that although this year brought about many setbacks and disappointment, I have realised that I honestly dont regret one bit of it and I can really appreciate now how this year can only benefit me in the future. I have been given the opportunity to learn so much about my sport through these tests and I cannot believe how much experience and knowledge I feel like I have gained through this whole 2005 golfing journey and have undoubtedly emerged a far better player for it. Some key things I feel I have learned are:
- the importance of having a sound temporament, particularly in 2 round events (perhaps the reason I failed every time).
- the importance of nutrition and maintaining sufficient energy levels (a factor that let me down twice!)
- that I generally do have the ability to do this but have to learn how to sustain my concentration.
- that it is important to focus on every single shot and take in all the external factors.
- course management skills can save even the poorest of rounds (a biggie)!

Introspectively, I have decided that it is no good acknowledging the above factors if I dont implement them in the future.
I will continue to rest until January but come the new year, I will gradually begin to build the amount of work I put in to my golf and also begin a strong focus on getting in shape for the new year and getting stronger.
As I am still an amateur, I will also look to take part in some county tournaments to get myself into more of a tournament frame of mind and also it will be good practise on a 36 hole basis.
This will all hopefully aid me in my build up to what will be my first (AND ONLY) test in the year in May. My goal is to blitz my first test by more than 10 shots and come home laughing.

Only time will tell, but fingers crossed. I can only do so much......

Barcelona......

Hello again, the lady and I got back from Barcelona on Sunday and we certainly had a great time although from a personal perspective this was definitely a very unique place with some great elements and others not so great, as I think R would agree.

Barcelona was heaving!! I thought London was a busy place but I dont think it would come close to here. Everybody was on a mission to somewhere! The two aspects I didnt like the most were that the streets were laced with a strong smell of the sewers and that the spanish have a horrible habit of spitting quite grotesquely in any which way direction.

I really enjoyed wandering up and down the 'Rambles' which is the main shopping street in Barcelona. This road was lined with different stalls selling everything from postcards and magazines to birds, rabits and snakes! The street entertainment was fantastic. My personal favourite was a guy with one of those puppets on strings (the type with one string attached to each limb from a 'cross' shape of wood - not the best description). The puppet was a skeleton and the act was singing (well miming) to Jonny Cash style music and swinging hips etc. It was brilliant to watch and so funny! We could have stood all day watching that!
Barcelona aquarium was good fun too, especially the underwater tunnel where you are literally surrounded by sharks and eels. This was great and we rewarded our efforts with a well earned 'Maccy D's'.

The night life was an interesting experience. Due to the fact that Barcelona were playing a football match on the first night - we literally couldnt get our feet in the door of hardly any of the pubs. It was tricky as well because we couldnt find many bars where the staff spoke English, so in true 'Lew and Rach' style we made a beeline on the second night for every Irish bar we could find (there were quite a few actually!)

So, in conclusion it was a very enjoyable little trip that I think many people would enjoy. Thank you babe for the treat and I cant believe its been 3 years now! Long may the happiness continue x.

On a more humerous note, I was brought back the real world with a bang by being greeted by a parking ticket on my return. I think the new car must be a jinx.
Haha....

Great day!!!

Well I said recently that you have to document good days and bad days as part of an authentic diary and I am very pleased to say today was a great one.

Wednesdays tend to be my only GOLF day in the winter so I was excited to awake to sunshine this morning anyway. I tend to go up to my local club and play in a money school on wednesdays. I do this for a number of reasons; it's good to have a bit of competition over the winter to keep the ol' brain focused, I get to play with some good mates I dont see as much now and I also still get to play the course I have grown up on, even though sadly its condition is terrible now!

In the first installment of good fortune today, I actually won the money - the princely sum of £12.50 that was up for graps. I'm shooting some fairly decent scores at the moment actually - 72 today, 69 at Mid Sussex a couple of weeks ago and some 73's and 74's also. This is great as i'm not even playing that much so its nice for my confidence to be performing well. I also figure that with my coaching etc, this can only improve! I am so eager to commence the 2006 campaign but I know that I have a lot of hard work ahead of me when the weather improves.

My brother S is away at the Belfry this week for his PGA residential. I am really gutted to not be there also but there's no point tugging at that thread once more. He says the days are long but it is very interesting which is cool. He's doing the smart thing and paying a little extra to have a room to himself, as opposed to having to share a room with a stranger who for all he knows will be going out drinking every night and waking him up too. I most certainly will be doing the same thing. I dont see the point in risking your career on a night out and where's the fun in having a good old drinking session if you've got 8 hours of lectures the day after. As a sufferer of intense hangovers, I am most certainly not gonna take any chances when its me there!!

I got picked up in the after by Mark, a good mate from the golf club and as it turned out, he's looking to sell his car!! Long story short - I have now purchased a Silver Ford Mondeo K reg 1.8 engine! Its only done 85000 miles and I got it for an absolute bargain. In a further stroke of luck, R owns a cd player for it that she doesnt use and she is letting me have it for my car!! Thanks babe, love ya x.

So, as you can see, this was a bloody good day all in all. I'm off with R at the weekend to Barcelona in celebration of 3 years together. Wow, R you crazy lady!

Stay tuned.....

Nanie's birthday, the AA, Weightwatchers and the Gym.....

Well, Nan's 90th birthday was last weekend and it was great news that R was able to come with me. It was a brilliant occasion. My brothers and their lady's came too, as did my little pride and joy, Maxy. I really enjoy family occasions actually, maybe because they don't happen very often and everybody seems to have a lot of fun. It was cool to catch up with my cousins as well my other nan. The nan in question however, was in great form! It was unbelievable how good she looked for 90. She has had her problems healthwise in the past but it was fantastic to see her looking so well and enjoying herself. I think its quite incredible that a person can live for 90 years, let alone longer! The memories they must have - some clear & some not so clear, the things they've done and seen, the changes they've experienced in many different ways, the people they've known and the things they must have learned along the way. I truly hope I can get to an age like this...

Anyways, I received my letter from the AA this week stating why I hadn't been approved for my car loan, or so I thought. I was pleased when I saw the letter come through the post as I can't take any more steps towards getting a new car until I know why I was disapproved.

Thus, disappointingly the letter I received simply stated the most obvious thing - that I had failed because I hadn't achieved the necessary requirement for the credit score. Well 'duh!', I know that!!! They didnt specify any reasons at all and instead said I had to write off to Experian (credit reference agency) for a report of my information. How annoying as I am now probably going to have to wait another 2-3 weeks to hear from them now. I wish they could have told me to write to them in the first place.

Here's a beautiful example of irony: I decided to look at their website and see if there was a way of accessing my information my details online. Sure enough, there was!
They were in fact offering a 30 day free trial but you still have to register your card details when you sign up. If after those 30 days you decide you dont want to stay registered then fine. Thus, I went to register my card details and here's the funny bit - they don't accept switch, only Mastercard or Visa!!! I find it highly amusing that a company that holds all your credit information and provides the criteria on which you are judged for loans only accepts credit cards as payment. It was like punishing me for not owning a credit card - haha! Anyway, I wrote off enclosing a cheque for the princely sum of £2 and a strong persuading note to make haste on the reply.

On a seperate note, I have embarked on a programme to help me shed a few pounds as I feel that for my golf next summer, I need to be fitter and stronger. I am also a stone overweight too, which doesn't help!
My choice of programme is the wonderful world of 'Weightwatchers'. This humerously reminds of Marjorie Dawes and 'Fat Fighters' on Little Britain. I am not attending the meetings or anything, just following the dietary guidelines as I don't consider myself in need of support.
The way the system works is by assigning yourself a points allowance each day based on their criteria (mine is 29) and each food has a points value. The aim is to eat upto, or preferably less, than your allowance. I have learned so much about my diet and how bad my eating habits must have been in the past. An example is just now for lunch - I decided to have a ready meal of sweet and sour chicken with egg fried rice. Just before I popped it in the Microwave I realised I'd forgotten to check the points on it. I nearly screamed when I saw - 15 points in one meal!!! That's nearly half my allowance for a day! I threw that straight back in the freezer and opted for beans and toast (7 points instead)! I am certainly looking at things like this differently now and in my first week I lost 3 pounds.
I do give myself 2 days off a week though but have read that this ok provided I dont go crazy!

I am also going to the gym as much as I can now too. It has become very clear that I need to make strong physical improvements to myself not only for my golf but my health too and general wellbeing. I actually quite enjoy the routine I have gotten into there now: cross-training, weights, walking, jogging and swimming. This is the first time I have really attempted to commit myself to getting in shape, so we'll see how I go.

Current weight: 12stone
Target weight: 10stone 8 lbs

Anyways, bye for now......

Golf lesson.......

Warning to all readers, this blog entry may contain information of a highly golfing nature. Non-golfing viewers are advised at their own discretion to perhaps bypass the coming words in order to perhaps save their sanity. The blog is solely intended for future recollection by the author, or whoever may be interested.

That being said, I would like to write about the golf lesson I had this week as well as to document to the swing changes I will be making and have been implementing over the winter.

Before I go into the lesson, I have to first highly recommend my swing teacher Richard Kirby over at Chichester to any advanced golfer serious about improving their game. I selected him on the basis of his teaching background and the facilities available. I have to see him about 5 times now and here is an overview of some of the things I have been working on since lesson 1:

1) Grip - My grip on the club was way too much in the palm of my hand! This has caused me to have very little flexibility in my wrists, which reduces power and control. I am now holding the club with the grip running through the base of my fingers to promote maximum mobility and this is also giving me much more control of the club.

2) Wrists - the above grip fault has caused me to create virtually no wrist hinge in the early stages of my backswing. They havent been fully hinging until the top of my backswing which has thrown the syncronisation of my swing right out ie my arms were trailing behind my body on the downswing which tends to leave the clubface pointing way to the right. I am now working on creating a full wrist hinge early in my swing to prevent problems at the top of my backswing. This so far has been the hardest change so far and it as not drilled into my swing at all just yet!

3) Synchronisation - this has been the most succesful change so far and I have made quite a large improvement in my consistency with this swing thought. I have been focusing on holding my stomach facing away from my target at the top of my backswing which allows my arms to come down first as opposed to my problem of my body leading my arms. This has made my errant shots far less errant and very nearly could have got my through either of my last two tests!

now, the more current things...

4) Posture - I have had very little knee flex in the past so I have been looking to implement this quite significantly in order to create more power through my legs and improve my balance. I have also been looking get my upper body more over the ball too which in turn will help my swing plane also.

5) Takeaway - this is by far the move that has been causing me the most problems. My takeaway as it is now, actually goes outside of (to the right of) my ball-to-target line. This causes me via the use of a severe wrist compensation, loop the club back in an attempt to get it square again. Due to this, I end up with the club laid off (aiming left) at the top of my backswing.
This means that the club ends up approaching the ball from way too far inside the target line and unless I make another strong wrist compensation to hit the ball square (and usually ends up as a big hook), I hit it way right, especially if I am out of sync too (as in the first problem), not to mention way too high!
I am now using any physical barrier I can find to prevent this outside move when I practise. It feels very strange and 3 weeks into working on this, it has nowhere near ingrained itself so again this will be continued work throughout the winter. I am excited about making this change as I feel it make me far more consistent and I notice that when I get it right, the ball goes very straight and quite a lot lower too, which is a bonus.

6) Shoulders - I will eventually be working on steepening the angle of my shoulders throughout my backswing ie get my left shoulder lower which should help me get more of a powerful strike on the ball. This is not something I will be focusing on just yet, as I feel the takeaway problem is the foremost priority and should help with this problem anyway.


So, as you can see, there is plenty to work on. I wont know the frui of my labour until the real acid test - my playing test in May but am excited to have the time and freedom to work on these things. Come the new year, I will also be starting to work very hard on my chipping, putting, pitching and bunker play.

Boring blog over........... I hope those non golfers who get to this point are still awake and may have even found this interesting. Did you R?x