Thanks to everyone who has watched my youtube channel or interacted with me here on my blog. They are both going really well and I am very encouraged by all the comments I am getting on my journey to be better.
Of all the comments I get (mostly good, some awful) without a doubt the most common comment I get is "Your journey reminds my so much of myself" or some version of that. We are all in this together and I think the truth of how to really get better has yet to be discovered. It seems like golfers have been on their own little islands trying to get better alone but if we can find the things that we are all universally struggling with, then we can crowd source these problems, tackle them together and start playing better and actually enjoying ourselves out there.
So in my journey to be better I thought it would be helpful to give you guys a rundown of my history with golf along with where I want to go and you can see how similar we are.
I didn't golf at all as a kid. I think this is an important point to make because most instructors and nearly EVERY PGA tour player we are taking tips from started golfing when they were very young. One thing that I have learned is that golf is COMPLETELY different for the ADULT learner. People who started golfing when they where already grown up need to be taught a totally different way. The fact that 95 percent of the instruction out there is coming from child learners and 95 percent of the people consuming these tips are adult learners is a huge problem.
I took three golf lessons one summer when I was sixteen, never played just took a few lessons hitting into a net. I am really grateful for those lessons because they gave me a good idea of the concept of golf and a few set up fundamentals.
I went to Film School in Philadelphia and then after I graduated I moved to Los Angeles to try to land a production job in the TV and movie business in about 2003. The first year and a half or so I was out here was a real struggle and no one was really looking for my skills so I had quite a bit of free time.
While I was waiting for job callbacks I started killing time at a golf course in Arcadia, CA where I would putt with my roommates putter. I had no money at all for greens fees, lessons or anything so I would just putt, snag some balls off the range and wait for my phone to ring.
Somewhere in that time I was bitten by the golf bug, badly. My older brother (who has always been a big golfer) sent me some money that he made me promise to spend on greens fees and I started actually playing and I was hooked. I because basically addicted to practice. Predictably I was an ace putter and terrible at everything else.
After a while I leveraged my skills in video production and I started producing commercials and videos for an indoor golf learning place in exchange for lessons and practice time. I was working more by then but every day I wasn't working I was in that practice building hitting balls into the nets and immediately watching my swing on video. They called me the Amateur Vijay becuase I would practice in there 5-8 hours a day without exaggeration.
The teachers at this facility were great and I didn't know it at the time but I was being taught the fundamentals of "The Golfing Machine" the famous book by Homer Kelley that brought a scientific approach to golf instruction. I took everything to the extreme and along with dropping my handicap from a 20 to about a 6 in a year I also ingrained some bad habits.
I started playing money matches around Long Beach, CA where I lived and was doing ok with that so I played a few tournaments on a short lived Amateur tour called the "Birdie Click Tour", scratch level tournaments that were filled by almost all college players. I was about 26 at the time and had only be playing about 2 years but it was a lot of fun and feeling the pressure or posting a score was a thrill. I shot 92 in my frist tournament where I was so nervous I couldn't even see the ball and in my last tournament in the BC tour I shout 78 with a 9 on 1 hole. I never cashed (made any script).
I played quite a few of the local amatuer tournaments with mixed results but never making the cut. I always felt like my ball striking was not good enough to be a real competitor, I was relegated to the status of DONATOR.
in May of 2015 I started my youtube channel show aimed at making me better at golf and helping others through my journey. It is something I had been thinking about for a while but I just didn'y think people would care. I don't know what exactly motivated me but after watching Monte Scheinblum's youtube channel I was just so filled with questions I decided to email him and start my new GOLF SHOW, BE BETTER GOLF, sounded like a perfect name.
Monte really is a special talent and we met and got rained on for 2 hours while I asked him a million questions about his philosophy and then afterward when he asked to see my swing and he could see what those hours and hour of handle dragging and impact bag drills had left me with.
Now 4 5 or so month later I am feeling a lot more confident in my golf swing and I am ready to set new goals. My goal before the year is over is to get my handicap below 3.
My goal before June (the 1 year mark of be better golf) is to qualify for the Long Beach Match play, a great tournament I have played in 3 time but never made it to the low 64 to be part of the matches.
My overall goal is to be a serious competitive scratch level player one day I would love to play in the mid am but that seems a long way off. One step at a time and I hope you'll join me for the whole trip.
Of all the comments I get (mostly good, some awful) without a doubt the most common comment I get is "Your journey reminds my so much of myself" or some version of that. We are all in this together and I think the truth of how to really get better has yet to be discovered. It seems like golfers have been on their own little islands trying to get better alone but if we can find the things that we are all universally struggling with, then we can crowd source these problems, tackle them together and start playing better and actually enjoying ourselves out there.
So in my journey to be better I thought it would be helpful to give you guys a rundown of my history with golf along with where I want to go and you can see how similar we are.
I didn't golf at all as a kid. I think this is an important point to make because most instructors and nearly EVERY PGA tour player we are taking tips from started golfing when they were very young. One thing that I have learned is that golf is COMPLETELY different for the ADULT learner. People who started golfing when they where already grown up need to be taught a totally different way. The fact that 95 percent of the instruction out there is coming from child learners and 95 percent of the people consuming these tips are adult learners is a huge problem.
I took three golf lessons one summer when I was sixteen, never played just took a few lessons hitting into a net. I am really grateful for those lessons because they gave me a good idea of the concept of golf and a few set up fundamentals.
I went to Film School in Philadelphia and then after I graduated I moved to Los Angeles to try to land a production job in the TV and movie business in about 2003. The first year and a half or so I was out here was a real struggle and no one was really looking for my skills so I had quite a bit of free time.
While I was waiting for job callbacks I started killing time at a golf course in Arcadia, CA where I would putt with my roommates putter. I had no money at all for greens fees, lessons or anything so I would just putt, snag some balls off the range and wait for my phone to ring.
Somewhere in that time I was bitten by the golf bug, badly. My older brother (who has always been a big golfer) sent me some money that he made me promise to spend on greens fees and I started actually playing and I was hooked. I because basically addicted to practice. Predictably I was an ace putter and terrible at everything else.
After a while I leveraged my skills in video production and I started producing commercials and videos for an indoor golf learning place in exchange for lessons and practice time. I was working more by then but every day I wasn't working I was in that practice building hitting balls into the nets and immediately watching my swing on video. They called me the Amateur Vijay becuase I would practice in there 5-8 hours a day without exaggeration.
The teachers at this facility were great and I didn't know it at the time but I was being taught the fundamentals of "The Golfing Machine" the famous book by Homer Kelley that brought a scientific approach to golf instruction. I took everything to the extreme and along with dropping my handicap from a 20 to about a 6 in a year I also ingrained some bad habits.
I started playing money matches around Long Beach, CA where I lived and was doing ok with that so I played a few tournaments on a short lived Amateur tour called the "Birdie Click Tour", scratch level tournaments that were filled by almost all college players. I was about 26 at the time and had only be playing about 2 years but it was a lot of fun and feeling the pressure or posting a score was a thrill. I shot 92 in my frist tournament where I was so nervous I couldn't even see the ball and in my last tournament in the BC tour I shout 78 with a 9 on 1 hole. I never cashed (made any script).
I played quite a few of the local amatuer tournaments with mixed results but never making the cut. I always felt like my ball striking was not good enough to be a real competitor, I was relegated to the status of DONATOR.
in May of 2015 I started my youtube channel show aimed at making me better at golf and helping others through my journey. It is something I had been thinking about for a while but I just didn'y think people would care. I don't know what exactly motivated me but after watching Monte Scheinblum's youtube channel I was just so filled with questions I decided to email him and start my new GOLF SHOW, BE BETTER GOLF, sounded like a perfect name.
Monte really is a special talent and we met and got rained on for 2 hours while I asked him a million questions about his philosophy and then afterward when he asked to see my swing and he could see what those hours and hour of handle dragging and impact bag drills had left me with.
Now 4 5 or so month later I am feeling a lot more confident in my golf swing and I am ready to set new goals. My goal before the year is over is to get my handicap below 3.
My goal before June (the 1 year mark of be better golf) is to qualify for the Long Beach Match play, a great tournament I have played in 3 time but never made it to the low 64 to be part of the matches.
My overall goal is to be a serious competitive scratch level player one day I would love to play in the mid am but that seems a long way off. One step at a time and I hope you'll join me for the whole trip.
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