Golf Practice Notes and Other Ramblings by Rob Peterson

Scotland Day 5, May 9, 2009

rpete1647 — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:00:31 +0000

6:30am wake up call came early today. Donncha and I headed 10 minutes out of town to the Castle Course, which just opened last summer and is the first new course owned by the St Andrews Links Trust in a long time. More about the Links Trust later. This reminds me so much of Whistling Straits, I was very excited to play here. It was designed David Mclay Kidd, the guy who designed Bandon Dunes. The driveway down to the clubhouse goes through the course and there are big dunes all over the place with great views of the sea. When we got to the first tee it was sprinkling rain, cold, and the windiest golf conditions I’ve ever been a part of. The starter told us to be careful….that was somewhat daunting!!! We had come this far, so we marched into it.

I think the hole was pretty short, but I hit a great driver and 4-iron to get a par. The second hole was about 140 yards and I hit another solid 4-iron (I hit a 4-iron about 200 so that is a 6 club wind if you’re keeping track at home). Another par. Great start!

You learn a lot about your golf game in these conditions…I became much more comfortable hitting 4 irons, 5 irons, and 3 woods routinely. The greens on this course have received a lot of criticism due to their extreme slopes and are often compared to mini-golf. This wasn’t as accurate on the front as it was on the back, but I would agree that for the most part the architect went way overboard.

Back to the weather. The sun shined quite a bit during this round, otherwise it would have been pretty bad.

Me with the Auld Grey Toon of St Andrews in the background

We saw bench flip over in the wind.

Bench flipped over at Castle Course

Balls were rolling off greens. I hit a putt 6 inches past the cup and it blew back in. I hit a 376 yard drive followed by a sand wedge to get home in two on a 530 yard par 5. I followed that up with a driver on a 175 yard par 3. Donncha determined that there was a 10 club wind on one hole when he hit a 4 iron from 100 yards. The conditions were so bad here that it was actually comical.

Flags struggling to stay in the hole

[slideshow]

I’m an 8 handicap, I hit the ball well, and shot 95!

We took a half hour break at the turn for coffee and warming up. Once we finished we headed back into town to find the others, but we weren’t successful. Donncha is a member at The New Club, which is similar to the R&A. The New Club is located on the 18th fairway of the Old Course wo we had lunch watching the golfers come in. Another member joined us…he was also a member of the R&A…it was fun to hear his stories about living around there and being a part of those clubs.

Then we were off to the Old Course. I expected to be nervous on the first tee, but for some reason I wasn’t. Unfortunately, they ran out of caddies so I didn’t get one, but I was sort of tired of caddies so that was okay by me. It is such a strange setting though…people are everywhere there. A road goes through the middle of the first fairway, people are cutting across fairways on walks…not golfers, just people. The St Andrews Links Trust is set up to maintain all the golf courses…there are 7 of them in the area looked after by the links trust. The actual property of the Old Course is public land though and no golf is played on Sunday’s. People just go for walks out there. Not something you’d see at many courses back home.

It was pretty magical hitting our tee shots and walking down that first fairway. The wind from this morning had died down to about 30mph so it was still really tough, but not nearly as bad as it was this morning. The second through 5th holes weren’t extremely memorable although I think there were some pretty cool holes. The green complexes were amazing. 14 of 18 greens out there are double greens so some of them literally seem as big as football fields and you have groups all over the place. The course goes out and back and a lot of the fairways are shared so people are yelling FORE all the time…it is very entertaining. Every once in a while people will have 250 foot putts…literally. It was so cool. I didn’t play particularly well on the front and I think I shot 47. Without wind this course could be really easy. The back 9 was much more fun as we had a more favorable wind. By the last 4 holes it had even died down quite a bit. To me, the back 9 is great. I two-putted from about 200 feet on two occasions. I almost got home in 2 on 15 (I was actually over the green), which was fun! I made my first par of the day and avoided the cavernous Hell Bunker (which once took Jack Nicklaus a bunch of shots to get out of). 16 has a bunker called Rob’s Bunker, which I thankfully avoided. Then, 17 is one of the most famous holes in golf…the Road Hole. You literally have to hit it over part of the Old Course Hotel and you can’t see any of the fairway from the tee. I hit a decent drive, but still had 200 yards into the wind to a narrow, elevated green with out of bounds on the right and a tight pin on the front left by the famous Road Hole Bunker (which took David Duval 5 shots to get out of). I hit the best hybrid shot of my life to 15 feet…damn that was fun. Unfortunately I missed the birdie putt, but I’m glad to say that I got it to the hole. Par is a great score there.

Obviously, the last hole is also very famous for its bridge. We hit our tee shots, then got our pictures taken, and marched up the magical field that is shared with the first fairway. It is a pretty easy hole. I hit driver, sand wedge to about 20 feet. I left the putt 1 inch short…dead in the center of the hole…almost birdied it. The entire group had an amazing time on the Old Course…one guys said it was the most fun he’s ever had playing golf.

After golf we had another round of pints at the Jigger Inn and then showered up and headed out for a good dinner. A few of us hit a few bars after that in St Andrews, which was fun. One of them is an old golfers bar called the Dunvegan. The owner had pics with celebrities and golfers covering the walls. After it closed we walked home on the 18th hole across the swilcan bridge and along the road hole. Not too many bars allow that walk home. Jim and I decided we wanted a couple more so we went back to the Road Hole Bar. One of the problems with hotel bars is the opposite of the local pubs. They will stay open and let you drink as long as you want them to. Dangerous.

Tomorrow we play at Kingsbarns, which is out of town past the Castle Course. I tried to type this entry after getting home from the Road Hole Bar, it was a futile effort!!!

Cheers,
Rob

Scotland Day 4 – May 8, 2009

rpete1647 — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:59:19 +0000

I can’t even begin to explain how windy it is here. Every day we ask ourselves if it can get any worse…every day it gets worse.

We packed up and left North Berwick to head for St. Andrews. It is about a 2 or 2.5 hour drive. There seemed to be a whole new energy to our trip as we arrived into town. This town is amazing. I don’t really know how to describe the vibe of St Andrews, but I’ll give it a shot. If you combined the golf atmosphere of Pinehurst with the college town feeling of Iowa City with the nightlife of Austin Texas you would have St Andrews. I think St Andrews University is the 3rd oldest university in the UK behind only Oxford and Cambridge…that is pretty good company.

As we approached our hotel, The Old Course Hotel, we could see the Royal & Ancient golf club building, the first and 18th holes, and then eventually the 17th (aka the road hole) and then our hotel, which is right on the 17th. It is a beautiful hotel. We went over to the St Andrews New Course clubhouse for some lunch. The New Course was built in 1895 so don’t think there is anything new about it. I really didn’t play well at this course and I don’t think it was my favorite course over there, but a lot of guys in our group loved it. I think I was distracted by the 35 mph winds gusting to 45. I spent most of the day trying to balance myself. It is hard to swing a club when you can’t get any balance. You learn a lot about the golf swing in conditions like these and you hit shots you’ve never hit before due to the 4,5,6 club winds. On a positive note, we had sunshine for the first time, which was nice. Also, I had a great caddie who used to work on the european tour for 5 years in the late 70′s and early 80′s so I got a bunch of great stories about that. I was glad to finish that round…I shot 97 I think.

After golf, we went to a little pub that is right off the 17th fairway of the Old Course…it is right next to the Old Course hotel and has been there for a long time. It is called the Jigger Inn. It was a great place to have a few pints and tally up all our bets…that was much more fun that golf that day!

We went to dinner in the casual restaurant in our hotel called the Sands. As we were eating we realized that Arnold Palmer was eating 2 tables away from us. None of us had the guts to go say hello to him, but it was amazing to see how gracious he was. He said hello or nodded and smiled to just about everyone who walked by. By the time we finished dinner, it was 10:30 or 11 and since the pubs close at about 11:30 we just went upstairs to the road hole bar on the off chance that Arnold Palmer was having a drink. The Road Hole Bar is on the top floor of our hotel and overlooks the entire golf complex of St Andrews. He wasn’t in there, but we had a good time. It is a beautiful old bar with floor to ceiling windows…the sense of history is really remarkable. I can just imagine an evening during the British Open with all the golfers in there having drinks. Tomorrow night we’re going to hit the town of St Andrews.

I went to bed early because Donncha (trip organizer) and I decided we were going to squeeze in an early round tomorrow at the newest St Andrews course, called the Castle Course, in the morning. So….very big day tomorrow, Castle Course at 7:30am and The Old Course at 2:30pm!!! This is going to be great!!!

Cheers,
Rob

Scotland Day 3 – May 7, 2009

rpete1647 — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:05:34 +0000

Its hard to say whether today was a better golf day than yesterday. As I mentioned before, the weather this morning was beautiful…sunny skies and everything. It wasn’t even bad when we teed off…that changed fast.

Jim and I slept in until 8:45 this morning…we might still be asleep if I hadn’t set my cell phone alarm clock. We had the full scottish breakfast and then our driver, Brian, took us to the Muirfield logo shop, which is in the village of Gullane (pronounced Gullen) a few miles from the course. Apparently, they want everyone to be able to buy their logo gear, but they have plenty of other rules for preventing people from getting into their club. Gullane is the home of a few other courses, and I took pictures of the first and last holes…it looks interesting and I’ve heard it is pretty good.

After we got back from the pro shop, I typed my Day 2 email and screwed around for a bit and then Jim and I walked to the course at noon for our 12:52 pm tee time. I was amazed at the number of people and their dogs walking around the ON the course. I took some pictures of all the things going on at the course. For instance, Jim and I walked around the 16th green and took pictures.

Jim in the middle of the Biarritz Green at North Berwick

As we were doing that we saw a man with his greyhound dog playing fetch in the 17th fairway. There weren’t any golfers coming for a bit so he would throw the red ball 3/4 of the way down the fairway. One time that the dog got annoyed and just left the red ball out there for the man to go fetch himself. With the links golf roll, and throwing down wind, I bet the dog made him walk 150 yds down the fairway!

A great place to play fetch with your dogs

Our afternoon round started off with pretty decent weather. The first hole is pretty easy and I barely missed a birdie putt. Even Jim had 20 feet for birdie, but he 3-putted for bogey. Starting on 2, we were back to rediculous wind. Holes 2 through 8 were all dead into the wind and two of the par 4′s were over 415 or so. I played pretty well today except for 8 and 9…both par 5′s. I took a solid 9 on the 8th hole and a 7 on 9. Then we turned downwind for the rest of the round and the rain started. I got out my rain pants again…worn them in every round so far!!! I also had to get out my rain gloves, which I’m starting to like. The walk from 9 to 10, which isn’t far, was very depressing. We weren’t having much fun at all because it was so cold and windy. Jim’s comment was that “Scotland is lucky they are the home of golf or nobody would ever come here”. I disagree! Anyway, Jim and I were playing a match and were tied through 9 despite the fact that I shot 47 and he shot 58. We had a great match on the back. I shot 38 and he shot 43 and he beat my net score by 1 and won the match 2 up. I ended up with an 85, which is decent considering I had a 9 on the front…I really hit the ball pretty well on that back 9 with one exception. On the 14th hole one of the guys I was playing with hit me in the neck with his golf shot…hard. He was on the right side of the fairway (actually…rough) and hit a wedge right into my neck. Fortunately it didn’t hit my ear or any bones…it couldn’t have hit me any more perfectly. It scared the crap out of me, but didn’t hurt that badly after the shock wore off.

I double bogeyed that hole and played the rest of the back nine 1 over. I was +2 on the stone wall holes today…you may remember that I was +10 on the three stone wall holes two days ago.

There is a famous hole at North Berwick called the Redan hole. It is a par 3 with the green on top of a hill and the green slopes back to front pretty steeply. There are huge bunders in front of the green so you have to get it up to the green. It is one of the most duplicated holes in the world. I made a nice par out of the sand, but Jim hit his shot to 10 feet and rolled in a birdie putt.

After our round was over we had a couple pints on the 2nd floor of the clubhouse overlooking the course.

One of the guys in our group is a Chelsea soccer fan so we went to a bar with him to watch the Chelsea versus Barcelona game. I enjoyed watching soccer with such passionate fans…one guy there reminded me of myself watching Iowa football games. Even jim enjoyed soccer as the end was pretty exciting.

Tomorrow, it is off to St. Andrews. I’m very excited.

Cheers,
Rob

Practice Notes, July 2010

rpete1647 — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:12:13 +0000

The main thing I’ve been working on with my full swing is keeping my right side stabilized on my backswing. This has straigtened my ball flight out substantially. The swing thought is to feel like my right leg is not moving at all on the way back. Of course my right hip will get pulled back, which is perfectly fine. This thought keeps me from swaying to the right on the backswing and then shooting my right hip forward on the downswing. It also greatly helps me get back to my left side on my way down and through.

Watch how stable my right leg and knee are on the takeaway:

The other thing I worked on this week is my putting stroke. In particular, I straightened out my left wrist at address and worked on taking the putter away much more slowly and accelerating it through the putt. I haven’t taken this to the course yet, but I’ll post again after doing so tonight. I missed a bunch of short putts in the tournament last weekend. I would either pull the putt or worry about pulling the putt which caused me to open the face up and push it.

Game update

rpete1647 — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:01:40 +0000

In the month of July, 2010, I’ve played the best golf of my life. My handicap index is down to 4.2 and 8 of my last 10 rounds have been in the 70′s! Hopefully I can keep it up.

My driving has improved, my misses with my irons are within a much smaller range, but my putting has been holding me back. I continue working on it and hope this isn’t an anomaly!

2010 First Practice Notes

rpete1647 — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:12:46 +0000

Bent my knees and got the grip of the club lower at address.

Used the empty box on the ground to keep the clubhead on plane as I take it away.

Swing thought for September 2009

rpete1647 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:54:46 +0000

I was playing as well as I’ve ever played in mid-August. By late August my scores were back up into the mid-80′s with some periodic shanks with my 58 degree wedge. I believe I’ve worked through those issues by working on two things:

I started taking the club away with more of a shoulder turn. My contact has improved greatly and my long irons are as good as I think they’ve ever been.
I renewed my focus on keeping my left arm close to my chest at the top of my backswing.

Hopefully this will continue for the rest of the season as I’ve played very well for the past week.

Scotland Day 2 – May 6, 2009

rpete1647 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:49:21 +0000

Yesterday was another great day, but it was definitely challenging. We played 36 holes at Muirfield. When we arrived, our bus had to drop us off about 200 yards away from the gate because they won’t allow buses to get any closer than that. So we had to carry our golf clubs and our jackets/shirts/ties a couple hundred yards and stand there in front of a gate until someone came to let us into the grounds. There were no signs for Muifield anywhere…you just have to know where it is. Even the gate into the club didn’t say Muirfield. It said “Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers” in smallish letters on the right side. They don’t want riff raff figuring out where their club is. They asked us the name of our group and then the second thing he said is that cell phones are not tolerated anywhere inside the gates. As I said in my first email…they take themselves pretty seriously. Jim’s caddie told him that Princess Ann was at Muirfield recently and she needed to use the restroom. I’m not sure why she was there because they don’t allow women on the course or in the clubhouse. Anyway, they wouldn’t let her go to the restroom in the clubhouse…she had to exit the gates and go use the restroom at the caddie shack 200 yards away by where the buses dropped us off.

The morning round was a beautiful 50 degrees with 20mph winds…I sincerely mean that was beautiful. Although I can’t putt to save my life, I was able to turn in an 84 in the morning round (par 70 so the 84 is slightly deceiving). I had two birdies and didn’t card anything higher than a double…which I had maybe 2. I had a young guy named Ross as my caddie…he is graduating from Edinburgh University in a few weeks and is the captain of their golf team. I wish I would have trusted his reads on the greens more because he was always right and I was always wrong. At least 6 times in the morning round he told me a putt was uphill and I didn’t believe him…it looked way down hill. I left each of those putts 6 to 15 feet short. We had to play the back 9 first because only members can play the front nine first. Our last hole of the morning round was a little taste of things to come…the wind picked up to about 30mph and it started raining. The 9th hole (our last hole) was 465 dead into that wind…a par 4. I hit a solid driver and a great 3 wood and was 45 yards short of the green. I was very happy with my bogey.

After our round was completed, we changed into our jackets and ties and went into this cafeteria type room for lunch. We had a couple pints and a fantastic meal. I hope the couple pictures I got do this little room justice because it was a strange setting to see all these guys dressed up eating lunch in between rounds of golf.

We got back out to the course at about 2:30 to start our afternoon round. Muirfield only lets each group play 2 golf balls in the afternoon…so you have to play alternate shot. We have 6 guys in our group so the first four went off and played alternate shot. I volunteered to be in the 2-ball (they don’t have twosomes, threesomes, or foursomes…they have 2-balls, 3-balls, or 4-balls). Since you can play two balls in a group, I was able to play my own ball…hence the reason I volunteered to be in the second group. Anyway, it rained for most of this round and the wind was probably 40+ mph…it was windier than I’ve ever played in my life…even windier than our first day. These conditions were unbelievable and fortunately we played pretty fast. I think it took us 3:15 or so to finish our afternoon 2-ball. The guys in front of us finished in less than 3 hours. I played match play against the guy I played with and we had an enjoyable match. I ended up winning 2-up. I would have closed him out on our 17th hole if I could have two putted from 5 feet straight up hill. I was working on something in my putting stroke and must have thought it was a good idea to hit it six feet past the hole…now I was facing a 6 footer down the hill and I missed that one too. I won the last hole though so it didn’t really matter. It was quite an experience playing in that weather…I don’t know if you guys remember Tiger shooting 84 a few years ago at the British Open at Muirfield…I think these were similar conditions. I ended up shooting 93 in the afternoon with only 2 pars.

We don’t play until 1 today so we drank a few too many pints last night. We had a fantastic meal at this little Italian place in the village and then went to the pub. Fortunately they close the pubs at 11:30pm…except for our hotel bar so we had a few more beers when we got there last night. We talked with some guys from Lawrence KS for a while. Decent guys…a little full of BS. They were pretty drunk from their trip into Edinburgh last night. There are 12 in their group and they flew over here on the private jet of one of the guys in their group. I learned today that Bill Self is one of their 12 guys when I was talking to them in the Lobby this morning and he walked by.

This morning was bright and sunny outside so hopefully that will stay for our afternoon round. I don’t have high hopes though because it is getting a little bit cloudier. I’m off to the course now. More updates will come from St Andrews, which we leave for tomorrow.

Cheers,

Rob

Scotland Day 1 – May 4, 2009

rpete1647 — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:28:50 +0000

The following posts are emails I sent to friends and family during my trip to Scotland in May 2009!

We arrived today an hour early into London, which cut an 8 hour flight into 7 hours. Also, we each got our own rows because the flights were pretty empty. Unexpected surprise!!! Our flight into Edinburgh (pronounced Edin-burrow) was uneventful and only an hour long. We got a decent amount of sleep on both flights. I ordered 2 beers as soon as our Chicago to London flight took off and then I watched James Bond and then slept for a few hours. It went amazingly fast.

In the words of our captain, Scotland’s weather was “blustery” today…very very windy. We played the North Berwick (pronounced North Berrick) West Links and it was a fantastic course. Lots of undulations and mounds in the fairway…lots of “I wonder where I should hit it” shots…lots of shots where you need to land the ball 15 yards before the green. Dad, you would love it here…so many options. Our course had 3 holes with a stone wall running through the middle of them. One of them literally had a wall 5 feet from from the green on the right side.

You have to hit it in the fairway on the right and then the green is very narrow with a 3 foot stone wall on the right side. Dad…it is like that crazy hole at Long Cove except there is a 200 year old stone wall instead of a 20 foot mound. I took an 8. We had to fly that stupid wall 3 times and on those three holes I took a 7, 9, 7 (all par 4′s). I’m no numbers guy, but that is 10 over on 3 holes. I was 8 over on the other 15 holes for an 89. Not a bad score considering the wind was 30-40 mph most of the round.

We had a fantastic dinner tonight in our hotel…the Marine Hotel in North Berwick. They gave me the wine list and I ordered a Gevrey Chembertin Red Burgandy (pinot Noir) and a Chateneuf Du Pape. People loved both and I was happy that they didn’t complain! It is hard to order wine for a group who won’t tell me what they like or how much they want to spend. The CDP was great with my Scotland Lamb Chops and some fish appetizer.

Our trip organizer’s name is Donncha (pronounced Donika)…he’s a GREAT dude…37 years old (closer to my age than anyone else on our trip by 18 years!)…he shot 81 today. It turns out he is a member at Loch Lomond…go read about how tough it is to get on that course if you have spare time…if you need to get in I can hook that up now. After dinner, Jim, Donncha, and I went out for a few pints at a local pub with some great beers on tap. It was very tough for me to leave at 10:45pm, but we play 36 at Muirfield tomorrow so I need some rest. We have 2 more nights in North Berwick so I’m sure we will have plenty of pints. As I said, we have Muirfield tomorrow…The Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. The first private golf club in the world. These guys take themselves way too seriously so it should be fun to see that. In between rounds we have to change into a coat and tie for lunch. I only lost 1 ball today…I expect to lose a dozen tomorrow.

Cheers,

Rob

Recent improvements

rpete1647 — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:33:11 +0000

After taking a few weeks off for vacation with my wife, I got back into the swing of things last weekend with a long practice session and four rounds of golf. It was the best weekend of golf I’ve ever played.

My practice session started off very poor, but what I finally realized after about an hour of practice was that my trial-and-error method of practice is NOT effective. For the last 45 minutes of practice I got back to fundamentals doing some impact drills and hitting some half shots. I worked on tightening my swing up and taking some sway out of it. I think my body was moving around way too much so I focused on a turn back and a turn through.

I also tried to keep some width in my swing as my backswing was a little too close to my body…a problem I’ve had in the past.

I shot an 84 the previous Thursday, a 47 last Tuesday night. After my Wednesday practice I shot 81, 79, 77, 75 last weekend (my wife was out of town with our girls so I had freedom to play!). That 75 could have been an even par 73 and was the best round of golf I’ve ever played. My second shot on 18 slammed into the flagstick on its way down and bounced about 8 feet away, but I missed the slippery downhill putt for 74. My index will go down from 6.0 to the low 5′s, which is as low as its ever been. Great improvement from when I started this blog a year ago!!! Hopefully I can keep it up!