Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Day 3 - Focus,Target, Visualize, and Breath



I woke Thursday with a sensation of excitement in my stomach. Sunday’s practice went well and I took a break on Wednesday from my golf strength training class to prepare for the final day of the club championship. I was excited to see what would happen, mostly with my game, and what the result would be. I was feeling better with the speed on the greens and I seemed to have worked out the kinks from last week with a great practice on Sunday. I wanted to arrive at the club an hour and a half before my tee time so I would have enough time to thoroughly go through each one of my clubs on the driving range and work out somethings as well as warm up my chipping. But, I ended up running around the house getting things ready and organizing my desk, so I ended up only having 45 minutes to warm up and schlep my butt up the hill to the tee box. Once I got to the driving range I tried to calm my mind and just forget the frantic morning and just concentrate on having a smooth fluid swing. I started with my wedges and worked my way up to my driver. For whatever reason my irons were not feeling good, but I was bombing my drives on the range. So, I just came to the conclusion to not think about the mechanics and just do what I know how to do. I saw my coach walking to the range as I was packing up and asked her for some words of wisdom, which I will repeat before every single round from now on. She said, “ Focus, target, visualize, and breath.” Of course! Why didn’t I think of that! I got up to the first tee and I was the first one to tee off. I grabbed my four hybrid, took a few practice swings, repeated what Kris said, and took a deep breath. I hit a great shot down the center of the fairway which lined me up perfectly for the next shot. The rest of the women hit and we were off. I got to my drive and hit a six iron and it was a great shot, but was heading towards the green side bunker, but it got a great bounce over the bunker and rolled to the back of the green pin high. After a birdie on the first hole I knew it was going to be a great day. The rest of the day was pretty good, I still made some unforced errors, but I finished my round with a 91, which is a better score than what I shot on the first day which was a 95. The two goals I had after the first round were to shoot a better score than I had on the first day and to not finish last. I ended up finishing 5th out of eight players who competed in the championship flight, which in my mind was a great accomplishment. After my round all of the ladies from the 18-hole club sat on the 18th green and watched the final group come in. It was a really great experience to watch all of the women get so excited to see who the champion was going to be that it made me want to work even harder for next year to secure a spot in the final group of four.

The results were posted and I ended up winning lowest net score! I was really excited and my big sis as well as the other women were really happy for me. All in all it was a great experience and I can’t wait until next year! Next up...trying to qualify for the Golf Channel Amateur Tour (GCAT) National Championship!

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