Went through a small par 3 nine-hole course with Aaron on the week­end. I could­n’t hit a sin­gle good shot off the tee (the holes are in the 100 yard range so all tee-offs were done with irons), but my pitch­ing is fuck­ing spot on. I love the feel­ing of graz­ing tall grass with a half-swing and see­ing the ball make a per­fect arch to the green.

I can feel my game com­ing togeth­er, but almost all of my prob­lems are men­tal, just like my bad iron hits off the tee (I uncon­trol­lably lift my knees on the down­swing to avoid get­ting under the ball too much). I need to relax, loosen my grip, and pace my swing bet­ter, all when hit­ting the ball counts. I’ve got­ten to the point where stance and address come nat­u­ral­ly, so it’s good to know that all the sum­mers I spent at the dri­ving range actu­al­ly helped. Unfortunately, I’m still chok­ing down to the edge of the grip, even after hav­ing my clubs short­ened about two inch­es.

I must have been get­ting a good 250 yards off Aaron’s new tita­ni­um dri­ver, some­thing I could nev­er do with my steel shafts. Even though it makes me slice like crazy, it must have been the most sat­is­fy­ing club ever to use. It’s light, it’s respon­sive, it has a gigan­tic head, AMAZING torque, and it gives a loud, full, res­onat­ing chime on con­nec­tion. I think it’s time for a new set, maybe some sweeeeeeeeeeet Japanese brand tita­ni­um shafts, like the ones I had the chance to use while in Hong Kong. The next pur­chase will be a deci­sion between those and a DV cam, and that’ll be the end of my lux­u­ry spend­ing. Honestly.