M2Gile's Morgan Cup Prep

This past week has been absurdly busy for me. I had mentioned I unexpectedly changed jobs and this past week have been working 13 hour days. To say I'm tired is an understatement. I was so dead I didn't even continue my superspeed golf. I'm hoping that things will mellow out, but this week was a "fun" confluence of events.

My warmup this morning was the first real time I had with clubs since last week and immediately I could tell something was off. My ballstriking felt okay but my arms felt detached and handsy. When I got to my longer clubs I noticed I wasn't controlling the face at all. Getting to my driver, I knew today was going to be rough.

I played pretty poorly to start out with. Probably one of my worst set of 9 holes in a while. However, I put that mentally tough mindset on at the turn and shot significantly better. Despite my struggles I still broke out even for all of my bets for the day, but besides doing well on a stretch of holes, I could of done a lot better.

My most glaring portion of my game is greenside chipping. My next most glaring is course management.

Greenside today I was unable to get up and down.

But I think that was more an issue with my course management. I wasn't missing in the right locations and being needlessly aggressive. On one hole I pulled driver and hit through the fairway and left myself on a steep hillside. Even though I was only 205 yards out, I had to layup and I pulled my layup resulting in a fairly poor score even though I had "good" drive. On multiple occasions I thought to myself today why did I make that decision.

Getting golf smart and working on my greenside skills is my focus over the next week. Making sure I play to my strengths will lead to better scorea.

I also had my screen arrive and I need to get to lowes to build the frame. This got here a bit faster than I expected. I do not think I will hit driver indoors, but I think working on my irons will go a long way.

Long time without an update but here goes.

Since the last update I have received all of my clubs and built my hitting area. Weight loss is still progressing and I should be around 168 lbs for the Morgan Cup which is pretty good. I also got a push cart because I want to save my back and give me more of that caddie feel.

For the clubs I still haven't had a chance to hit the longer clubs yet. So far the waggle test has me thinking the atmos black feels a bit heavier than my old pro white. Fairways I think feel similar to what I've used before.

Since the sim was built today I took some swings with my irons and wedges. Irons are definitely long and I really think these may change how I get around the course. Easy swings go far with less spin, hard swings go far with more spin. I cant wait to get them outside to see real ballflight.

Wedges I love the look. Indoors, wedge shots seem nice but it doesn't give me the turf interaction feel. Right now I like the widelow off more tight lies, but again I need to get them outdoors.

Putting seems to be improving after switching back to another one of my putters. I will see how it works after my round Saturday, but I'm still not exactly sure what I'm looking in a putter.

I definitely feel like my swing speed is slowing down right now which kinda sucks, but I do think as I get familiarity with the new clubs it will start to come back.

So I guess I never updated after I received my clubs.

I was able to get a few rounds in in order to start getting Arccos working. I don't have enough to get my distances yet and am still working off a general feel/numbers I saw with my GC2. Going into the Morgan Cup my GHIN was 11.0. My Arccos calculated handicap was 11.5; however it had me as a plus player out of sand even though I never hit a single sand shot with my new clubs until I got to Hilton Head National. My Driver was an 8.3 (apparently being out of play is much worse than being short), Approach 9.9, Chipping 2.9 (this has to go up), Sand +1.7 (note, I have zero sand shots), and putting as a 28.5.

Going into the Morgan Cup I worked on pretty much all of my game, but most importantly I worked on my irons and around the green wedge play. I think Arccos really captured that improvement. However, my plan for bunkers didn't really workout as much as I hoped. On most holes the miss ended up being towards a bunker and I seriously struggled from bunkers.

For putting, I think JD and Jose had gotten the clue from that I was battling putting for the past few months. The single worse thing I did for my putting was go to a fitting for my putter. After sinking 10 putts in a row from 10 feet and then being told that is the complete wrong putter for you in terms of toe hang, loft, lie, and shape they handed me what was supposed to fit my stroke and I couldn't start a single putt on line and made maybe 4 putts out of 10 after that. I then went back to my old putter and was seeing putts dropped, but every so often I would have that thought in the back of my head that I was using a poorly fit putter and my ability to start my putt on my line fell apart. All of sudden I would start hitting this right to left pattern and the fitting saying to go even more upright just really messed with my head.

After that point, I was kinda in a putter swirl going from putter to putter to putter just trying to find something that would work. I bounced between my old Toulon San Francisco, a newport 2 that was bent to the supposed spec, my gamer newport 2.5, a spider center shaft, a spider double bend, and a ping vault anser. It was getting a bit crazy. I really thought I would be playing my old gamer of the newport 2.5 and get through this battle I was having, but the toulon started working where I had my first eagle putt of the year drop for me. But when I looked back at my putting for that round, I still had 6 three putts from within 20 ft.

I then went to the double bend spider and liked it for the most part, but I was still losing the left a bit so when I went to go commit to using the tp5x for the Morgan Cup, I picked up a spider x that Thursday. In the store I was seeing it hit my line and so I picked it up. I hit my first putt with it at Hilton Head National and liked what I saw and had it in the bag for the practice round. I then said to myself that I'm not going to let this get in my head and left the 2 other putters I had brought in my trunk when I went across the ferry.

Jose took a look at my stroke Saturday morning when he watched me roll 5 or so putts. He said the words I needed to hear, you have a good stroke just try and get your eyes a bit more over the ball and I think I nailed some putts this weekend.