9, Smartphones, and the Royal Open
Prior to my 9 this morning I decided to forgo a pencil paper scorecard and use a golf app. Why not join the 21st century? I used Swing by Swing's app.
About the App: I like it. It has my 9 hole course on it, which is impressive, and seems to read GPS and the course really well. Score imput is a breeze and comes up automatically after it reads you've left the hole. You also get pretty accurate range readings, so no range finder. I don't use it for my 9 hole course, but it will be nice on full 18s once I get good enough to have a significant yard difference between irons.
The bad? It crashed on my second 9, and I didn't have all day to mess with it after blowing the previous hole with another single player finishing off the previous hole. When I got it rebooted, it brought me back in on the scorecard on the next hole since it read that I had moved on. I pocketed it and moved on.
About the round: Pretty rough. I decided today to use no driver, fairway wood, or 1 Iron. I only used my 4 hybrid once or twice, and decided to focus on my five iron. My score reflected it. I also seem to have lost about a dozen Calaway Hot X balls I must have left in the cart on the last roumd, and my club brush. So I played conservatively, trying not to throw too many into the woods/ water.
After the Round: I replayed the first 5 holes, hoping to show a little better game than I did the first time around, but the stench of bad hits clung to me and I called it a day.
Royal Open: It's on, and I'm watching it right now. I'm studying swings, thinking about how to develop mine. There's something reassuring about watching the pros go through some of the same things you go through, albeit it on a much greater scale on a much more difficult coarse. It's like "Yeah, I've done that. Putt, miss by about a foot, get pissed, try to just tap it in and move on, miss from within a foot, and force yourself to focus on a seven inch putt because you just added to strokes due to frustration." And then they tee shot on the next whole and remind me of the miles of skill they conjure effortlessly while I struggle on the 9 hole executive.
And, of course, that short game.
For next time: Try to emulate these better swings, remembering some of the basic stuff I've conveniently forgotten. I've grabbed three other bad golfers from work and we'll be doing a charity tournament in mid-August.
