Redirecting my focus

Well, since coming back from the Hooter's ranking tournament I have reevaluated my game and where I need to be playing. For this year, I am going to start a little smaller at the beginning and work my way up. I have found several mini-tours that play closer to home and will not require as much travel as the Hooter's tour would. I would still like to play in a Hooter's event or two to see how I do closer to the end of the year. I have started working with a new instructor as well. He has made some minor swing changes that have taken some time to work in but I am now getting much more consistancy with the good shots as well as the bad ones. At least now I have some idea of where to expect the bad ones to be, short and right because I came up out of it. It is nice not having to worry about the dreaded duck hook anymore. That's all for now.....

Not a great start

Well, Hooter's Tour Ranking School came and went last week for me. I had probably the worst four consecutuve days on a golf course that I can remember. The practice round on Monday went well I thought. Then that afternoon the brain started thinking too much and doubts about being out there with "those guys" starting creeping in. I ended up way back in the pack, I have no idea when I will get to play any events this year. I will tell you one thing, there is nothing like trying to tee up a ball on the first tee of your first professional round and barely being able to keep the thing on the tee because your hand is shaking so bad.

I doubted my swing all week and tried to play the field. I checked each afternoon to see how far I was out of the lead so I could try to post a low number the next day and that just did not work. I ended up trying to play the guys in my group instead of playing the course. I must admit, the course was tight and keeping it in the fairway is a must there (duh!), but for someone on their game it was for the taking. One guy shot a 63, tying the course record set by Chris DeMarco, in the second round.

I am chalking last week up to a big learning experience and now know that I need more competitive experience to learn to deal with the pressure of truely competitive golf.