Category: Golf

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Weekly Post 10/21/2019

Highlights:

  • Fired up the grill
  • Driving Range Session 

Lowlights:

  • Ate 2 Desserts On Monday
  • The Bears Are Embarssing 

Goals for next week:  Zero mocahs during the work week.

In the long-time effort of trying to reduce and or eliminate caffeine from my diet. Mochas/expresso has been the toughest to raign in. Kicking the soda habit only took three months. Albeit I did stop cold turkey style, the coffee is much more a social/ fun engagement for me layered with the added benefits that the jolt of caffeine gives on those weekend end mornings after a fun night out.
Maybe I need to change my goals to something more achievable in a short time and put some wins on the board and build off that success. So starting to this week My new goal will be to only have mochas 3 or fewer in a week. I will strive for 2 of those to be on the weekends and stay away from the weekdays as much as possible.

A quick recap of the Bears the past weekend. We sucked and I’m not ready to talk about it yet. This season is dangerously close to falling off a cliff. Not sure who to blame here but it feels like a lot of bad coaching decisions have not prepared this team at all for this season.

Got to fire up the grill this week for the first time in a while. Since both, I and the wife are back at work full time and the baby is at daycare. Family time has been condensed to 200 minutes daily. This has cut out a lot of time for things like grocery shopping, dry cleaners, golf. One of the services we have found to help maximize the time spent at home and not running errands was Hello Fresh. This meal-delivery service drops of ingredients for 3 meals a week. All of the ingredients are separated in a way to ensure a meal in less than 30 minutes. There have been some meals that took longer than that but all of those were due to a longer oven time, but the prep time is wicked fast. All of these meals are designed to be cooked with the least amount of tools and create as little mess as possible to eliminating the need for me to grill anything. I’m sure we could be grilling most of the meats that have come in the meals but they mostly cooked in a pan with sauce. So it was a real treat when I found some great looking bone-in ribeyes at the market this past weekend.

The weather was a little warmer on Sunday so I went to the range for an early morning practice session. I hit the first 5 or 6 balls well then the next 25 progressively got worse and worse. This time though I was able to work my swing back to some decent ball strikes. That process took way too long if memory serves me right it was close to 40 balls which do not is able in a regular round of golf. This is why we practice though. The best swings of the day came form hitting my 52 and 58-degree wedges. All of a sudden I’ve developed some distance control. I played a game where I would aim for the 25,50,75s yard flag and was sticking balls within a couple of yards and hitting the flag a few times. This is a major game-changer for me, if I can take the distance control to the course I should be giving my self ton of more par chances and maybe even some birdie puts on the Par 5s Now I just have to get out and play but it does feel like the golf season here in Chicago is about to slam shut.

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Weekly Post 8/12/2019

High Lights:

  • Decent Range Session

Low Lights:

  • 7 day of work in a row
  • Car Trouble

The car trouble has reached a new level as the winding and grinding sound has increased in volume and also my anxiety that this is something way more than a loose pulley or belt issue so I had to pull a hot route and drop it off at the dealer on Sunday after work. It wasn’t too bad of job dropping the car off. it was close to the red line and was also able to score a mocha right before I jumped on the train to head home.

I also put in some serious hours of work this week. Working 7 days in a row only means that ultimately I will end up working at least 13 days in a row maybe even 14! I will do my best to keep these days to the smallest amount possible because I do not like working this much even if it means earning that massive overtime pay.

I was made it out the Jackson Park Driving range for an hour and a half range session which I was able to bring the GoPro and get a down the line recording of.

I will be cutting a video of this practice session but I am going to switch editing software but haven’t decided which one I would like to move forward with. There will be a learning curve with any choice I make so I will need to do some due diligence to make the right choice. I would like to start making more higher-level production videos with titles and such. This should also enhance the content of this blog as well.

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Weekly Post 8/5/2019

High Lights:

  • Golf League

Low Lights:

  • Car Trouble
  • Sun Burn

For the first time in a long time, my skin got so burnt that it has actually started to peel off. Now it’s not what you think as I did liberally put on sunscreen, but there was a section on my back just below my shoulder blades that my hands couldn’t reach. I did ask for help applying the lotion. Yet, I was a bigtime idiot and told my helper that I had already covered that area. well after something like 9 hours in the sun playing in the sand and waves of Lake Michigan the strip of exposed skin fried like a piece of chicken at KFC.

But at least my sunburn will heal back. In other news, my car has started to make an awful noise from 0 mph all the way to 25 mph. I think it has something to do with a belt or pulley when both the electric motor and gas engine are working in tandem to get up to speed. After having some friends take a look at the car and see if they could help diagnose the issue. They all agreed it was something with the belt system or a shaky pulley. I tried to book some shop time with the dealer since the car is still under the 60,000-mile drive train warranty. But, alas the earliest they could get me in was August 21st. This was a problem because I was several hundred miles over 59,000 was getting dangerously close to having my warranty expired. I wasn’t to too worried though since I was pretty sure it was something small but you can’t be too careful when it comes to these manufacturers warranty because they will not touch your car if it’s even a 1/10th of a mile over that magic number. For now, I’ll try and keep my car in the garage and conserve as many miles as I can to make it all the way to the 21st.

Was nice to get back out on the course and play a league round with the group. even though it was 4 club challenge day I still was able to carry over some of the stuff I learned on the golf clinic I had just gone to.

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Season 1 Week 5 Golf League Night

This week league night game was a 4 club round. I chose to keep the 4i,6i, PW and finally my putter. The 4i and 6i are my two most shapable clubs so even though they are pretty close in loft IO am able to get the ball where I need it to be or at least in the general direction of the green.

I caught some grief on the first tee when I declared my 4 clubs. the rest of the group either took their driver of 3 wood. I knew it would be a very long day if I wasn’t hitting my driveway even halfway decent so I played it safe with my 4i that I could hit off the fairway and tee it on the tee box plus I can hit my 4i just about as far as the other guys hit the woods and drivers.

The other iron I kept in my bag was my 6i due to me being able to hit a ball out of the rough with it as well hit a fair bit of distance or check my swing down or add some loft to achieve the acquired distance

Even with only being able to hit 4 clubs, I was able to hit a 103, which isn’t under a hundred but for only being able to hit 4 clubs this is a big win for me. If I had to speculate I think conservatively I could have hit 7 or 8 shots better assuming I did not use my driver at all and stuck with 3i of 4i off the tee.

The trend continues/ #letsgo

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Season 1 Week 4 Golf League Night

Best Round this Season with a posted score of 98

Still, Haven’t figured out how to cleanly post an excel table in the blog. A bit frustrating to be fair, but I will keep trying until I can figure it out. None the less as I’m super psyched to say that I shot my best score of the season. It was a wild as I had no idea I was on pace for the result I scored. It honestly felt like I wasn’t playing that great. If you can see my scorecard I just played a stoke better here and there and seemed to scramble and get up and down. I still chucked a few chips, but also didn’t skull them across them over the green.

A few stats from the round:

  • Started out with Birdie on the first hole
  • Shot a 48 on the back 9 instead of my average
  • 2 Pars and 5 Bogeys the rest double or worse
  • Didn’t shoot 9
Score distribution of my round played on 7/23/2019

There is a trend in my past 4 rounds and its trending the right way for me. Still, need to drill at home more and maybe even get to the range to work on my aim. Let the trend continue!

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Weekly Post 7/29/2019

High Lights:

  • Golf Clinic
  • Golf League
  • Weekend at the lake

Low Lights:

  • Only spent 2 days at the lake

This was the biggest week of golf I’ve ever had outside of some of my past golf exurions during the offseason here in Chicago.  In total I played 3 Rounds and had a total of 5 hours of instruction. I came of my best round of the year on Tuesday and was invited to a very last minute golf clinic here in the Chicago area. 

The first day was at the Mistwood Golf Club.  Mistwood heavlies advertise this golf course and I kinda found tht to be a little off putting and had stayed away from playing there and it turns out this clubs is nice with a pretty challenging course that really put me through the ringer. I really enjoyed their practice area that is integrated with a full bar.  Gotta think if I was a suburburb guy this is where I would spend quite a bit of my free time. It looks like they do have the ablity to offer all grass range, but on the day I was there it was hittng off a permanate mat. 

Driving range at Mistwood Golf Club

The first day was dedicated to chipping. They basically reworked my whole chipping style and moved to me to use the “bounce” of the club when hitting the ball. This took an about 10 attempts at a 10-foot shot but after that this new move really clicked and then gave me a quick run d down of when to use my PW,52,56(SW) and my 58 degree wedge and where to land the ball in relation to the hole and pick a landing spot and use the rollout of the ball to get within 5 feet of the hole.

I did not hit the ball off the tee well at all(I know the same story different week) for the whole round and found myself hitting three on my second shot for 10 or 11 holes. I posted a score over 100 but I chalk this up to all the adjustments to my seeing that were made to my swing right before our tee time. I did gain a lot of knowledge during the playing lesson. My course management skills continue to increase which has been the main factor in my league scores as well as some improvements in my seeing that have taken away really bad misses and have limited them to just bad misses. to put that in easier terms, instead of being two fairways over I’m only one over.

The second day was at Harborside, a course I’ve played over 20 times. Ball striking improved off the first day and I actually starting hitting my driver down the fairway for more than a few holes in a row. This was a successful day. even though on the back 9 I think I found every bunker. It always seems that once I hit one bunker I’m going into the bunker the rest of the day. Come to think of it maybe I am focusing on those bunkers to much and not at the playable landing spot that I should be aiming at.

Quick League Recap

I also shot a 98 in the league this week, and this was also the best round of the season for me. Pretty jacked up to play again but I will take this weekend off to spend some time at home and chill a little bit and string dong the golf drills at home to really ingrain the new movements into my muscle memory and continued

A long weekend at the Lake

Had a last-minute opportunity to drive up to Holland Michigan and spend some time with all of my Aunts and Uncles plus cousins at Lake Macatawa. The weather turned out to be great on Saturday and Sunday. Lots of time in the sun and on the beach and actually got to bogey bord on Friday afternoon with the winds kicking up 2.5-4 foot swells. The waves weren’t exactly great for bogey boarding but we got the job done and caught 4 really good rides.

Also tried to track down a good iced mocha spot in the downtown area while we were picking up some ice and few incidentals. We googled a place and looked for a place with cool-looking photos and chose the 205 Coffee Bar.

Iced Mocha at the 205 Coffee Bar
Iced Mocha at the 205 Coffee Bar in downtown Holland Michigan Website: https://205coffee.com/

We got home very late Sunday night to be able to squeeze in as much time at the beach before the work week came upon us. This was one of the best weeks of the Summer for me and I’m ready for more.

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Weekly Post 7/22/2019

High Lights:

Low Lights:

  • Missed league night

Finally actually made some time to start learning to code in Python. I created an account on Udemy and purchased a course called “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python Programming”  I did some quick research and found on a couple different forums that this course was mentioned everywhere as a great place to start cold without any type of programming knowledge.  I’m only about 90 minutes into this course and still excited to complete it.  It is a lot of new information for me so I will have to pace myself to be able to comprehend all of it and hopefully put it to good use in the near future.

I finished the book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain-John J. Ratey, Eric Hagerman   This was a fast data packed book, The audiobook length was just over 8 hours. The main theme of the book is how exercises/physical activity increase the quality of life thought your whole life.  It even goes into detail about how exercise will help the deteration of your brain by actually growing it in you later years.  I Might do a full book review on this one in the future.

I got invited pretty last minute to play in a golf outing at Cog Hill with the Disabled Patriots Fund This was a pretty fun outing that had a bunch of fun event holes along with the usuals like Longest Drive and closet to the pin competition. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate all day.  It was a 9 am Shotgun and it drizzled all the way until the 12th hole and the sky’s opened up and dumped a bigtime downpour for the next 5 holes. We tried to play through it but at one point the everybody that was still on the course and to get cover under trees for about 18 minutes.  This was kind of fun as we had about 9 carts all huddled under 4 huge oak trees.  After the big down pour then sun cam out for the rest of the wholes but everybody was soaking wet and with hot sun and what felt like 100% humidity the rest of the round was kind of uncomfortably swing and walking in super damp clothes.  It did get to smoke a great cigar while we played though and hey if you can’t golf in the rain your cutting your golf season even shorter.

AVO cigar on the 8th hole on course #3 at Cog Hill
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Weekly Post 7/15/2019

High Lights:

  • Downloaded a Stretching App
  • League Night
  • Biked Home From Work
  • Graduation Party In the Burbs

Low Lights:

  • My diet

Its time for me to start eating better.  Ive have been ona fast food and take out diet for the past 6 weeks.  Going to subscribe to one of those pre packaged meals services.  avoiding the the trips to the grocery store and and trying to manage the quantity of food needed is the main advantage of these meal servies.  Havibg all of the ingredients measured and ready to go like a cooking show will allow for a faster perp to table time.  Faster cook times will also help gain a couple moinutes of sleep each night with should pay divideds all around. 

My car also got a nail in the driver side rear tire which was a bummer but Costoco was able to plug for less than $20 dollars #Lovethatplace  This causeed me to Divvy(bike) the 4 miles home form work one day it was also the hoyest day of the year so far so I promblty counted that a workout first one also in 6 weeks.  I’m going to trying a bike more to and from work to get some light cardio in to get some fitness back in my life.  On this same note I downalaed a strecthing app to help meet one of my new yeers resoultions goals. If work settles down just a bit i shuld be ablke to carve out 15 minutes in the office to strech it out.

I also noticed that if I bring my own breafast I am not craving a mocha so the Mocah coutn for this week is down. Two thumbs up..we’ll see if it lasts lol.

Capped the week of with a rainy Sunday evening in the burbs to celebrate the gradulation of Highscool. Always fun to head out to the burns and walk barefoot in the grass without fear of stepping in grass and dogpoo. A few beers and some good tacos and old friends really hit the spot. 

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Season 1 Week 3 Golf League Night 7/9/2019

Total Score 103 with 39 putts

I am extremely happy with this weeks score. By far the best league round of the season and the casual golf as well. With a score of 103, that’s 4 strokes better than my last two rounds.

I achieved that by keeping the same ball all the way through the 15th hole. I was able to retrieve the ball from the water twice. I only lost the ball on great shot on the 14th, it was one of those lost balls that should have been smack dab in the middle of the fairway. That lead to me scoring a 9 on that hole that really broke my confidence for the rest of the round. It was a real fight to not let all the come off. But that manifested in 3 putting all the reaming holes and topping 2 of the 3 tee shots.

My putting on this was way off, I kept leaving them way short. I think it was the pressure of having a check to score some par and bogey that got in my head and through of my usual solid putting game.

I am starting to trend in the right direction and I feel that this weekly golf is helping a ton. Now if I could find some time and practice once a week maybe I could get another record low score. Time will tell but I’m gonna get after it as much as I can.

Shot of the day was monster 3 iron of the tee over a huge tree on the 4th hole which just missed both the fairways and the right-side bunker. I was able to get up and down and make par on the hole. This really catapulted my confidence for the next 11 holes until the 15th.

251 Yard 3iron on the 4th Hole
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Weekly Post 7/8/2019

High Lights:

Low Lights:

  • Staring to really feel exausted all the time
  • Missed most of the fireworks

Now that I’m 100% in full work mode sleep is, even more, a premium than I’ve been stating in my earlier posts. With the 4th of July festivities, I missed out some opportunities to catch on some sleep, which I paid for later in the week. I guess that is just got to get used to this new lifestyle.

I only was able to catch the last quarter part of the Navy Pier Fireworks show. Good counter pint to missing out on most of the fireworks was that I basically walked in on the grand finale so glass half full thinking here for sure.

Was able to get on the course twice this week, both of the rounds were at Jackson Park. First-round was with the league, showed some improvement from the first week. Full recap available here

Second round the week was last minute. My brother texted around 7:30 am on Sunday just as I was trying to figure out if I had time to hit the range and get some practice in while the family was taking their morning laps. We were able to make a 9:15 tee time and were coupled with a couple of good guys there were out there with the same mindset – golfing with a few beers and couple laughs. I shot another 107 for the second time this week. Definitely jacked up for next weeks league because I can feel my course management is starting to match my gameplay which should shave a few strokes even when my swing isn’t playing nice.

The shot of the day came on the last tee shot where I was able to drive the green on the 18th hole. The drive left me about 18 feet from the hole. Yes, I three-putted for par on that hole.

1st shot of the 18th Hole rolled up to the green

Hopefully, I can keep playing and improve at this pace for the rest of the season. Would really make this season that much more enjoyable and help with the staying on task during this offseason.