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New baby in the house makes a full 18 hard to get in so I got up at the buttcrack of dawn and got the $17.50 back nine rate at El Dorado Park Golf Course. El Do is a nice course and pretty challenging for a shorter course and I wanted to play it this week because in just a few days the pros will the Long Beach Open here and the greens should be good.

The Lb Open is a cool tournament, it is one of the few truly Open tournaments, meaning that anyone with $750 dollars can tee it up and give it a go. No qualifiers. Winner gets about $30,000 dollars so it attracts some good golfers.

I was able to play by myself so I filmed a Vlog with a tripod which came out really nicely, video of every shot up soon. Trying to play and film yourself is really hard. Mainly all I care about is playing well but I don't want to look stupid on my channel either. However I have determined to put up all my shots on the blog good or bad as I journey to be better than scratch so added pressure of knowing that every shot I hit will be published globally adds something.

I putted great, my wedges of all lengths need a lot of work.

I played great today and shot -2 for 15 holes before it got too dark to continue. Bummer because 69 is my best score ever and I had a good chance to break it. The last two holes are tough so if I played about average on those three it would have been a 70. Plus we played from the tip which aare the tees the Pros use during the long beach open, plays 6910 yards.

554 434 443 354 345 ???

I actually bogeyed the first hole after thinning one over the green but then didn't make another bogey all day.

When you are working on your sequence like I am it helps In practice to think, hands first from the top. But when you are playing I think the swing thought should be, "I just want the hands and arms to MATCH" on the way down.

I played with an old friend and good played I hadn't seen in 7 years and he was floored by my play.

Iron play using the no turn and cast feel was really getting on point near the end of my round and I started nearly knocking down some pins.

And this was all after I had a really horrible range session last night and shanked 3 shots on the range in my warm up today.

Posting this to my handicap really moved it , from 3.9 to now 3.1

Hopefully this is the new normal. Golf is a lot more fun this way!

070415
Current HANDICAP 3.1

Snuck out today while my son was napping with his mom to play 5 holes with the Rec Park Loonies in Long Beach. Should have been enough time to play at least 9 but it was painfully slow.

I did not have a good couple of holes with the driver. My new swing doesn't sem to fit my old driver shaft and I am experimenting with some other ones.

yank left on 1, bad approach from the thick stuff, up and down, PAR
Hit a tree on 2, BOGEY

Bomb yank 3, literally shanked it with a 7 iron (I thought I was done with that, still not sure why that happens) to 30 yards, failed to get up and in, BOGEY

Yanked a solid drive over bunker on 4, good approch, 2 rotations short of bird, made PAR

Hit a VERY NICE, 50 degree wedge on the 120 yard downhill par 3 5th to 5 feet. Misread the putt though PAR

I pull all my confidence in my game from my driver, SO goes the driver SO goes my game. Obviously I am yanking it too much, I have to figure that out.

HANDICAP, 3.8