Technicalities………. These are the things you work on with your coach on the range. Not in warm-up before a tournament.
I felt light and easy approaching today. Even a little confident ……. Then on the practice range during warm up he starts talking about rolling his wrists like his coach was talking about yesterday. What? His left foot – pointed out or straighter? The club face is remaining closed because I’m rolling my wrists …… My shots are going so badly, what am I doing wrong ? …….
OMG! The warm-up is precisely that. You are warming up your muscles, reminding them that they know what to do. It is a place, ultimately, of faith. Faith in your body that it knows exactly how to hit the necessary shot.
Oh Rob of little faith lets the starter’s untimely advice, avoid the hazard to the left by any means, manifest in a massive left hook straight into it. Fortunately his drives worked themselves out beautifully after that.
We are playing a two ball with probably the top boy in the State in their age group, who is making pars look easily while Rob is grinding out bogeys. At one point Rob is almost crying : where are the pars? I’m really not sure just how good Rob thinks he is …….. I always tell him – everything starts in the mind, so he’s probably going to be ok with his thought process as long as he can stir a healthy dollop of positivity into the mix at some point.
That all being said I felt he played better than the score reflected. He drove the ball beautifully. Putting was a nightmare. It would be nice to have them both gel at some point. Maybe tomorrow’s Drive, Chip, Putt qualifier ?
In the end it turns out his score was middle of the pack – everyone shot higher scores than normal (except our playing partner who won by a large margin) – the tricky, sloping greens apparently getting to all.
In the very end, there is no need to be a superstar when you are 10. This is the time to enjoy playing alongside the superstars. This is the time to build and grow and learn to grind.