An Eagle For The GolfBlogger

Since my car was in the shop, I played hookey from work. After dropping Mrs. GolfBlogger off, I took her vehicle and drove to a nearby course.

I am very glad that I did. It was a spectacular day, and I played a very solid round, highlighted by the eagle I scored on the first. The hole is a 512 yard par 5, slightly uphill, with a large pond along the right side. I hit a spectacular drive to the edge of the right fairway, and then a three wood to about ten feet. One putt sealed the deal.

Very, very satisfying.

Of course, that’s nearly impossible to top. The rest of the round, my drives were not nearly as effective, as I developed a tendency to hit my tee shots too high, losing forward carry. My iron play, however, was nothing short of amazing. As the round progressed, I needed to drop down a club length, and then two and three for my normal distances. On the sixteenth, I hit a pitching wedge from 150 to the center of the green.

The wedge wasn’t a rash choice. On the previous hole, I had flown the green from 140 with a nine iron.

I’ve also improved in accuracy, hitting more greens than usual. Of course, that’s easier to do when you’re hitting shorter irons.

A lot of the improved play is, I am sure, due to the concerted effort I’m making to relieve tension by keeping my grip loose. That allows me to make a full turn, accelerate through the swing, release the club and finish high. One sign that I’m pulling this off is that when I miss, I’m missing left, with nary a slice to be found. That tells me that I’m easily closing the clubface at impact.

Now if I can just figure out how to keep my drives down.

2 thoughts on “An Eagle For The GolfBlogger”

  1. That is great!  I scored an eagle on a par 4 from 78 yards during a scramble about a month ago.  One of my parters had cut the corner off a 330 yard dogleg (about a 250 yard drive, stopped by branches, dropping the ball on the side of a neighboring tee-box).  I flew the ball to about 2-3 feet from the hole and it dribbled in.  Pretty awesome feeling, but not legitimately mine since I had not done the drive.  Unfortunately it wasn’t nearly enough for our team as we had a 67 for the day- 2 eagles, 3 birdies, 2 bogeys.

    Today, I had some of my best drives ever.  I was looking at some of the closeout Callaway X-460 drivers, and trying to decide between the draw-biased non-tour faces and the normal tour driver faces.  I have been fighting a slice, but was wondering what the benefit of the draw based club would be since it is not weighted such, and only is closed 2-degree.  The salesguy suggested using some lead tape on my current driver (Big Bertha 454), to see how that would work- since it is a normal setup like the X-460 tour.  He suggested also if I wanted to keep the drive more flat to apply the tape to the top edge as well, instead of the back or underside.  Well, a 1.5” strip did wonders.  I flattened the drive substantially (my driver is a 10-degree, and I have been thinking about a 9 or 9.5 degree for a new driver since I fly so high)—but more importantly, I hit quite a few straight as an arrow.  The combination of the two led to some of my longest drives ever.  Lately I have been reaching 250 or 265 with some good rolls, today I had at least 4 drives that totaled over 270.  I still had some driver trouble on some of my regular trouble holes, but overall it was a good day with my driver.  It worked so well, I am going to be thinking a little more about whether I even want a new driver now.

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