Back in form at last...

Sunday 22/9/13 A good nights sleep and ready to play another 18 in today's home club comp. Finished in a credible 7th place in field of 34 at Kingston SE yesterday, it was good to have a but of form return in my game. The realisation that part of my form drop had been caused by equipment no longer suitable to my golfing is still a surprise. Facts; Playing golf regularly since 2009, have got down to 12 handicap and blown out to 15 in the last two months of winter golfing. Fitness, using the Dream Swing trainer, health and golf swing are at their best in a long time. Changed from regular flex driver shaft to stiff approx 4-6 weeks ago. Have been using regular flex iron shafts since 2011. There are three video links in this post of my golf swing in 2010, 2012 and September 2013. GOLF SWING 30 march 2010 Recently a mate actually got fitted by our club Pro after I suggested to do this instead of getting the clubs he wanted online. He did this and I could have been knocked over with a feather when he said he needed to get stiff flex shafts in his new Irons! This guy have extra stiff driver shaft (Ping G20) hits a 260-280m drive easily. His iron shots are all over the place and it made no sense until I found out he was using regular flex shafts. In my favour is that this has been what my game was doing. The control accuracy of iron shots had gone to pieces of late and made no sense to me why. 2012 Last Golf Range session By chance it has been shown that I have picked up a lot of swing speed and need stiff flex shafts myself now. The Cobra Forged S3 irons are great and I have not budgeted $300-$400 for another iron set this year. Fortunately in my shed is a set of old S300 shafts and a set of Nike Stiff Flex graphite shafts fitted to and old set of Keith Knox blades. Took that sets 5 iron to the range this morning and used it in tandem with the Cobra 5 iron. Hit it a little shorter but this time it felt great where as before it damn near broke my hands when using them. So may be able to save by fitting the NIKE shafts to my AP2 irons in the meantime while waiting to regrip the old S300 shafts and see how they perform. Golf Practise September 2013 Either way greatly increased swing speed was the last thing I was expecting. Even though the Dream Swing hand book does say that this will happen I discounted that as a possibility for a porky 50 year old bloke. Still it is great to have the power to go with improved swing technique and ability. In the space of three days I have gone from reconciling myself to having peaked as a golfer to rejuvenated and on the move down again. It has been 6 months of training with the Dream Swing combined with the Strand pulling exerciser routines that have made this happen. The swing improvement is well recognised by myself the increased swing speed though has rocked my entire game plan foundation. Now is another period of major golf game reconstruction for me. Thankyou for your time and attention hit the ball find the ball hit the ball Geoff

No Way; Swing Faster and hit longer...!

Saturday and back on a golf course and a bit of improvement in a game at last with an 89 gross 74 nett. The week of helped a little and a very weird and unexpected discovery yesterday playing in the 9 hole chicken run. A mate had asked me to sell some Cobra S3 forged S300 shafted irons. His work has him travelling a lot so he changed to Cobra AMP's to counter the lack of playing time he is getting to get form with them. The Chicken Run is fun and I decided to have a wack with the Cobras, great looking sticks and endure my lack of ability to use S300 shafts. Have regular flex in my irons and hybrids. Well it seems that the last few months of exercise and training has more than made it necessary to go back to stiff flex in my Driver. I hit the ball excellently with the Cobras and a lot of the problems with my recent iron use disappeared. Hence today I put the Cobra irons in the bag for the round at Kingston and this time had 18 good holes of golfing. So Friday has been a bloody expensive 9 holes as the Cobras will not even get a look in on ebay. Staying in my bag instead. Thankyou for your time and attention hit the ball find the ball hit the ball Geoff

Footyheads Review 2013 Elimination Final

Carlton get a finals appearance courtesy of Essendon being disqualified. Richmond make their first finals appearance in several seasons. Then 94,000 fans turn up to see the Elimination final that was a cracker of a game. All or nothing for either team and Richmond 4 goals (26 points) in front at half time the second half was sensational! Thankyou for your time and attention, Geoff

Get fit and win golf..

Sunday 25/8/13 After 2 months of frustration yesterday I finally put a half decent 18 holes together. Nothing spectacular finishing with -3 after the round. At no time did it feel like or happen that my round was about to fall apart. Even the loss holes were always close to halves. The only irritations, that came from two three putts. Finishing the day with 32 putts and a little more wayward off the tee than I have been lately 11, but GIR's made the difference. What really made the improved score was nothing to do with golf. Playing nine holes is a doddle for me and that has been shown in all of my practise of late. My technique across the board has been vastly improved Yet for 8 weeks my golf has been falling apart in competitions. There had been one significant change in my routine since the golf began to fall apart, I had stopped the morning swimming and the daily fitness workouts with cable/strand pulling. At Home the next day an 85 off the stick with 25 putts was good enough to win the August Monthly Medal. A $20 Strand Pulling set and a series of simple excercise routines and my golf is back on the winners list. That is what I started using after the last 7 rounds of failure, it was the only thing I had stopped doing since the failing began. Up until 8 weeks ago I had been still swimming 3 mornings a week and using the strand set each day with a 10 to 15 minute routine as well as doing 15 reps (just did one now) when sitting at my desk or watching tv at night. It is that simple to improve your stamina. Look at your own golfing, do you practise? do you get coaching? do you look at a round and isolate those shots that went wrong and realize where the club be it driver, iron, wedge or putter went off line and the ball missed the target? Then you have no difficulty in calculating why the ball went in the wrong direction so you practise more to stop the deviation again. Have you ever considered that it was not lack of ability that caused the fault, instead it was because you had tired during the round? That is what I realized last year that fitness is more than walking around the course it is being able to swing a club precisely through the round and that is every club from putter to driver. How many times have you miss hit a chip shot or a putt and thought how did that happen? It does not happen with my game now yet it was simple little miss hits that were destroying my scores on one or two holes in past weeks. Still practicing the same amount but I was not excising any more. Start it again and after two weeks the form is back and I have my third club monthly medal in a row for 2013. Thankyou for your time and attention hit the ball find the ball hit the ball Geoff