Trust Me - Get a Trainer - NOW!

I have never wanted to be good at something more than I want to be good at golf. So - this begs the question - if this statement is true, then how can I suck so bad? I take lessons. I put in the practice time on the range, the chipping area, and the putting green. I have not had the major break through I feel my work deserves...

Until Now!

If you have been following for a little while, then you know I have put a plan in place that I feel will get me where I want to be with golf. How did I arrive at this plan? How else? - following people on twitter.

Rickie Fowler is always with Coach Noss, Justin Rose is flying Justin Buckthorp to the Bahamas for a week of training, Christina Kim seems to be regularly sore from working with Andrea Doddato, and Jon Gidney is doing "the curls for the girls". Must be something to this training thing, or they wouldn't do it, right?

I shared a couple posts ago that I began working with Mark McCoy in Apopka, Florida on both physical and nutritional training. Mark is a former professional hockey player, and he focuses on training your core.

I have been working with Mark for a little over a month. This time and focus has yielded a bigger improvement in my game than anything else to date. If I did not have a great PGA Professional Instructor, then these improvements would not be helping to the extent they are, so I don't want to slight the importance of professional golf instruction; however, my improvements over the past month are nothing less than astounding(to me anyway).

My biggest challenge has been distance. A 180-210 yard driver and a 6 iron that did not go much more than 135-140 yards, made it very difficult to come into a green on the second shot. Forget it if the green was protected by a trap where I had to fly it in and stop it. My short game and putting got decent, because if it didn't, my scores would have been 110-120.

Why am I so excited about the results of this physical training?

I have had to lose 2-3 clubs, due to yardage, in the past 3-4 weeks!

My 7 iron is now going 155-160 yards. 6 weeks ago I would have had to hit a 4 hybrid to achieve the same distance. My drives have ranged from 235 up to 299. I can finally hit it long enough that when I miss - I can actually get into trouble - funny how I see that as a victory. Now I understand why people need different wedges, since the distance on my pitching wedge has jumped 30 yards to 120-125 which used to be a 7 or 8 depending on wind.

I had my best round of golf ever today! It was not my lowest score - but it was my best round. I shot an 89. The score reflects my mental collapse that resulted in triples on both 17 and 18. My mind wandered to the glory of shooting an 82/83 rather than focusing on each shot to get there. I started out the back nine with 4 pars and 3 bogeys.

My game today was a driver and an iron to the green. Made such a difference. By the way - one day does not a pattern make - but this started 2-3 weeks ago. I have played a round of golf for each of the last three days, and I have had the same results. Today was the first day I was able to adjust to the new distances.

Struggling with your distances? Already working with a PGA Professional? - then I highly suggest giving core training a try.

Want to learn more - here are some folks to follow on twitter - they tweet great articles and blogs about physical training:

@JustinBuckthorp
@CoachNoss
@ShapeandSport
@CoachJoeyD

Seems to me the below goals I set forth in January are well on their way to being met for the year:

• Improve physical flexibility for better execution of golf swing
• Improve nutrition and lose 35 lbs for better stamina during rounds (lost 10 pounds so far)

Now - did I mention the mental collapse on 17 and 18 that cost me 5-6 strokes? That's this goal:

• Understand how the mind effects your golf game

Looks like I will be looking into the above goal really soon!

But until then - long and straight!