I hate to admit it but I’m going through a tough patch lately.

Aside from work and home being a crazed scenario that seamlessly changes every day, I’m currently suffering from the worst writers block I’ve ever had to deal with.

I can attribute a lot of it to lack of content. At least on this side of my writing life. For Three Guys I’m busier than shit but haven’t been able to sit down and crank out some content for a couple of weeks now. Believe me, that’s not something you want your editor to have to deal with.

Something happened just the other day though that sparked my internal writing engine and tonight I’ve had words flowing out of my finger tips for the last couple of hours. OK, maybe it was the beer.

Anyways, Wednesday after work I went out and played some of the best golf I have played in a very LONG time. It may be hard to understand but for me, playing crappy golf doesn’t exactly ignite the creative juices if you know what I mean, hence the lack of post by me here on The Breakfast Ball.

For the last couple of months that is all I have done. Crappy round after crappy round. It’s been not only humiliating but demoralizing as well. When you consider I played back to back to back at TPC Summerlin, Wolf Creek and Shadow Creek and shot triple digits you can get a better understanding of why I wasn’t so eager to talk about very much.  Not exactly “Web Gold” content.

I’ve always told myself from the start of this blog that it was full disclosure, if I shoot 110 I talk about it and learn from it. Same thing if the scores goes the other way and I play fantastic. I’d like to think that is still the case but from my perspective as a golfer that’s still learning the thought of talking about my shortcomings post after post was terrifying. That hopefully explains the lack of articles from me and why I asked my buddy Andrew Ganey to help fill in the void. He’s been a blessing! Go read his posts if you haven’t yet!

Back to the golf…

Like I said my game has been basically shit over the last month. I’ve been confused, perplexed, bewildered even. After the three god awful rounds with Ryan and Andrew at the above mention courses it continued at Rio Secco (one of my favorite tracks) then at Sienna and most recently at Paiute this past Sunday. The only part of my game that has been consistent is my putting and chipping. Thank goodness too, if not for that area those scores could have been tragic.

My driver would be on point for one round but on the flip side my irons would be a disaster. If the iron play was good then my driver went south. Back and forth I went just struggling my ass off to figure out WTF was going on.

The two weeks that led up to this past weekend’s round at Paiute I spent a good deal of time working in the garage and conversing with Wade about what was going on. Some video I shot during the Siena round really helped Wade pin point a few of the area that were causing the most issues, swing related of course. My mental game is an entirely different area that needs some adjusting as well, but that for another post.

With a game plan set I went to work and was feeling confident as could be considering all that had taken place over the last month or so. Sundays round was more of the same crap play. My driver failed me yet again and even though my ball striking was vastly better than previous rounds playing out of the junk on a very hard course didn’t bode well for me.

Another triple digit score and another depressing drive home, and from Paiute it’s a long drive!

I talked with Wade for nearly an hour that night about what was going on. Some more video I shot pretty much solidified his assessment that I was still coming over the top and my coil was anything but. Determined to figure this out I went to work in the garage, I spent a good hour and half working on some drills we talked about and really started to focus on my “Change of Direction” and getting my right side to fire at the ball.

With the work I put in Sunday night and feeling better about my swing, I headed to Legacy Golf Club after work on Monday. I love this time of year, it’s hot out and daylight until 8pm, the courses are virtually empty and you can get in 18 holes in a short two hours.

The 40mph winds that were in the air didn’t scare me, I was there to work on ball flight and getting that right side to do what it hasn’t been doing for the last 20 years.

Even with the winds I managed to shoot a 92 on a decent track. The greens were in bad shape, all day in the sun can wreak havoc on the short grass. Even with the crazy winds and bad greens I saw signs of progress. My ball striking was much better than Sunday and I even manages to hit some good drives. Some careless penalties cost me some stokes but overall I was rather pleased with the outcome.

Tuesday I went in for a fitting at Golf Galaxy for some new irons. I’ve never been “fitted” for irons, I’ve done it for a driver but never irons. The Ping G25’s I’m playing right now are great clubs and very forgiving but something just isn’t right, that’s why I arranged the fitting.

During the fitting I realized that what I “thought” was my club distances was off by a lot. I’ve always considered my 7iron to be my 150yard club. Yeah, maybe hitting 41 this year did more to my muscles than I thought. It’s clearly my 6iron now, even with a more de-lofted club like the SpeedBlades I was still hitting the 150 marker better with a 6 iron than a 7iron. There was a lot more involved in the fitting than that, which I’ll go into more details later, but that bit of information really changed how I approached my round on Tuesday.

With this new thought process of what club to swing I went out on Wednesday again after work and tee’d it up at Wildhorse Golf Club and without a doubt I hit some of the best irons shots I’ve hit in years! Not only on target but I was hitting the targets. After playing the first six holes I couldn’t have been happier with how I was striking the ball. Except for my driver. Yuup, it was still all over the place.

When I tee’d the ball up on the 7^th hole I looked over my setup and peered down at my hands and almost fell over at what I saw. I had placed the weakest grip known to man upon my driver and was about to swing with it. I stepped back and thought about all the rounds I had played since Rio (the last time I drove the ball well) and realized I’ve been swinging with a weak grip this entire time. As you might have figured out, I don’t swing the club well with a weak grip.

I made the adjustment and went on the freaking pound the ball for the rest of the round. It wasn’t just the Driver though, my hybrid, 4iron and 5iron were on fire and I ended up tying my best round to date, an 84, which also happened during a round at Wildhorse last year. This time though it was from 6,500 not 6,000.

Firing that score made all the hard work payoff. I’m too excited to see if I can continue what took place Tuesday and stop putting up those horrible scores.

I truly believe that the Golf Gods put a shitty score curse on me that forced my hand and made me start talking with Wade more about my swing. I needed to stop, relax, take a deep breath and analyze what was going on with my swing and get things right.

It was like a “Hey idiot” moment for me, looking down and seeing that weak grip. Had I not, without realizing it, gone to that weak grip who knows if I would be where I’m at right now?

This game is not only beautiful and amazing but it can drive you bat shit crazy if you let it! Hopefully I’ve appeased the Golf Gods for a few months and I can go out and put up some more successful scores!

The good news is besides playing better (I know it’s one round but hey I’m taking it) I’m writing again and have some much-needed work to get done!

I can’t wait to tell you all about this awesome new Yardage Book Cover I just got from Appalachian Leather Works, in one word it’s SICK!