Tee Time: 8:36am
Players: Steven, Myunggook, Hyejung
This is a foursome that I usually play with my co-worker Kyle but he had a business trip so he couldn’t make it. It’s ok to cancel if you give proper notice and he canceled on us about 2 weeks ago so it was fine.
The remaining 3 of us discussed whether we should play just the 3 of us or bring in someone else as our 4th player and then Steven suggested that he call one of his friends who is a pro to join us and she can give us a field/course lesson so we decided to do that!
Hyejung is a tour pro who plays on the Dream Tour which is the feeder tour to the KLPGA tour in Korea. She even has 1 win on the Dream Tour so that’s great! She obviously has an awesome golf game and gave me a few tips along the way.
I’ve been working on shortening my backswing and she said that I’m very good at that now so that’s great. But my tempo isn’t great and I definitely feel a bit rushed so she suggested that I pause for just a split second longer at the top of my backswing so I’m working on that. It does seem to help to do that very slight split second pause a little longer just to get set up because coming back down…but I am too anxious so I end up rushing it a bit.
I played really well though. In fact I had my lifetime best round in terms of fewest balls lost and lowest score. I only lost 1 ball throughout the round. I lost it around 2 or 3 holes into the second half because I tried a swing change that the pro had me try. It wasn’t a bad drive but it was a little right and the fairway happened to be tight with some water on the right.
My driver was good most of the day though so that was nice to see. My short game wasn’t on fire like it was yesterday so I guess I’m back to normal now. Losing only 1 ball doesn’t mean I didn’t come close to losing more….in fact there were at least 2 other times when I thought my ball was gone but I ended up finding it just next to the water, etc. And there was 1 hole where my drive hit the cart path and bounced a couple of times but then bounced into the fairway so I got lucky.
My final score was an 84. With Korean caddies slightly fudging scores I was probably more like an 88 or so but still my lifetime best.
I’m not a huge fan of course lessons because playing on the course is probably the worst place to make drastic swing changes. But a few points here and there were helpful. These lessons are very expensive though so generally not worth the cost in my opinion. I think what would be very helpful is if your normal coach goes out on the course with you to see how you play on the course and gives you a lesson and then you come back to your normal lessons on the range and your coach can say “let’s work on this drill because out on the course I see you do this thing that you don’t do while we’re here on the range”…
