Francis Gross Golf Course

Steven and I played Gross on Saturday.

Scott was on call, so it was just the two of us.

Or just the two of us out of our normal threesome - we did get paired up with two other guys, Andy and Jack, both Ameriprise financial advisers.

They were good guys and we were enjoying our round until a a-hole in the group behind us got a little belligerent. He thought we were playing too slow, which we weren't, but I'm not going to get into that whole deal here - except to mention that he was a real a-hole.

Anyway, I ended up hitting them pretty well off the tee for the first nine holes. Even with all the rain we've had, the fairways felt pretty hard and I got a lot of roll, so even though I was probably only getting 170 yards in the air I was ending up at about 230.

I was not hitting the ball well off the fairway, but still ended up with a fairly legitimate 96.

BTW, Steven was one over par for the round; I'm sure he would be consistently in the red if he improved his short game just a little. Actually, if he improved either his putting or his chipping he could probably get under par.

My drives started going south on the back nine.
Actually, my drive on 10 was 230 straight down the fairway, but after that they started fading to the right and my distance diminished to around 200 yds.

Why? I don't know.

I wasn't relaxed, I know that. And I was thinking about what I needed to do to hit the ball farther and straighter, which is never a productive mind set for me.

All of which makes me think I haven't really mastered the drive yet.
I'm getting closer.

I know there are bound to be good days, when everything just clicks, and bad days when it's just not happening - but I thought I was to the point where I could figure out what I'd just done wrong and immediately make the required correction on my next drive.

Also, went to the driving range with Scott yesterday, and that was not particularly productive.

Makes me wonder how much practice, how many hours will be required before I really have mastered the drive, or at least my simplified version of it.