Entry 25.27

Apparently, golf is boring. There are four people and two cats in my house right now. Everyone was awake when I turned on the John Deere Classic and now there is only one person still awake. Even the cats are asleep. I don’t get it. This is prime time to learn from professionals. How can you be sleeping?! Of course, I jest. Not everyone has the same interest in golf or passion to learn that I do. So, to everyone else, this is probably boring and if I can teach my cats to golf, I’m going to go on America’s Got Talent. Many people watch Tour events for the entertainment factor, but I’m an oddball. I’m watching to learn. How do they manage their game? What kind of lie is this player facing and what is my prediction for how the ball will react at impact? I’m paying attention to pre-shot and when possible, post-shot routines. Unfortunately, the broadcasters jump to other players too quickly, so I often miss out on the post-shot routine. We are starting to hear more about post-shot routines, but most players don’t have one when we start working together. Often an athlete will have a great pre-shot routine. Which makes sense. They see professionals go through their pre-shot routine all the time on television. But they rarely see their post-shot routine and since they often are copying professionals they see on the varying broadcasts, they don’t even know they need one. But a solid post-shot routine is vital to playing well.

For me, the post-shot routine answers one question; “Why?” Why did that shot or putt do what it did? Everyone will have different abilities to answer that question. Ball started left of your line? Face was pointed that direction. That may be the extent of your answer. But as you play more, you will learn more about why certain things happen in your swing. Your tendencies. Then you can answer the question more specifically. The number one reason I see players get frustrated about? It’s not a missed putt. Not blowing it right and ending up in the trees instead of the fairway either. It’s not even the sixth chunk of the day. While all of those things are certainly frustrating, the number one reason is not being able to answer the question of “Why?” Not knowing why these things keep happening. Not having a clue about what is going wrong. Once you know why, you have a chance to do something about it. You may not know the right adjustment, but you can do something. Anything is better than swinging blindly and guessing. Because once you can do something, you gain back a semblance of control. And having some inkling of control is extremely important for your confidence.

Now I’m not saying that you need to know all the answers to the question “Why?”. That’s my job. I need to be able to answer that question for each and every one of you, no matter what happens. You need to be able to answer the question for you. Know what your tendencies are. Know the things that you have to feel to be able to play well. Know what creeps into your game that cause issues. Notice that I said “the things you have to feel” and not “the mechanics you need to execute”. That is an important distinction. We work on mechanics, but I don’t want you thinking about mechanics on the golf course. In his book The Golfing Machine, Homer Kelley says “Mechanics produce feel and feel reproduces mechanics.” At the end of lessons, I create a lesson wrap up post in that player’s space on CoachNow. My entry can only be based on mechanics, as feel is different for each person. I encourage my players to add their own comments with any thoughts or feelings that they found helpful. Not just from last lesson, but from every practice session. This accomplishes several things. It creates a historical record of what we worked on. I go back and read prior lesson wrap ups before your next lesson. If you have added any of your own comments, I read those as well. Actually, I’m rereading them. I get notified every time you add something to your space. I make it a point to get to those as soon as I can. It’s one of those things that’s included in the laundry list of things that keeps me busy that I wrote about in last week’s entry. Many times, your entries also include questions. I don’t want you to have to wait until your next lesson to get an answer. That’s frustrating. It’s also frustrating when someone has a question, but they can’t remember what it is by the time they get to their lesson. That’s part of the reason I stared using CoachNow. So, you don’t have to wait to get an answer.

CoachNow isn’t there just for me. It’s there for us. We are a team. We have a common goal. You playing better golf. You adding information to your space between lessons helps decrease the time it takes for us to get you to your goal. But sometimes your additions include feels. Those descriptions are probably more important than anything that I can add. Because you are telling yourself something I can’t. I can tell you the proper mechanics, but I can only tell you what I feel which is not going to be the same as what you feel. Having the ability to go back and read your own description of a feel that was working is more powerful than you can believe if you have never done it before. Now you don’t have to search for your swing as much since you have a record. But it only happens if you make it happen. I have my own space on CoachNow that I use when I find something new. Like all of you, I have tendencies that I go back to when I don’t play well. Sometimes, they are swing issues. Others are poor decisions. I may have faced a gnarly lie and found a new way to play the shot successfully. If I don’t document those things, poof! Gone. I used to keep handwritten notes, but now with the use of tags, I can sift through information so much faster that flipping pages looking for some chicken scratch from 4 years ago. You can do the same!

Now if you aren’t one of my students, what are you to do? You don’t have a space on CoachNow to add information to. Just shoot me a message. I will create a space on my CoachNow for you. Free of charge. That’s how committed I am to helping players play better golf. But I am a small business owner so I can’t be giving everything away for free, as much as I want to. I will still read your additions, and you may get comments or answers to your questions, but don’t expect them. Boom! Now you have a space to record your thoughts, feels, practices and rounds. In exchange, I get a new avenue to learn. I have probably learned as much, if not more, from all the players that I have worked with than I have learned in all the formal and informal education I have done. But I do have to leave some incentive for you to take lessons from me (finally learning how to be a better businessman, but I’m still so bad at it. I mean, I just gave away something I could definitely make money off). I have a very expensive piece of technology that I have my eyes on and it’s going to take saving a LOT of pennies to get it. I think this particular motion capture technology will be extremely beneficial to my athletes, so I’ve put it on my list to purchase. But don’t expect it any time soon. (Side note: I am interested to see how many people take me up on my offer. I came up with it in the moment so I have zero reference on how it will be received.)

I can’t believe that I have written almost two pages and not touched the topic that I was going to write about today. I intended to write about why 03 July is such an important date in my life (the day I’m writing this entry). I guess I finally made it so I can’t be too upset at myself. That’s why I led off with four people being in the house (they are all now awake if you care). First and foremost, on 03July2021, I proposed to Shelby. That’s definitely the most important thing that has happened on this date. Neither Shelby nor I are big into fancy, elaborate events so I knew the normal storybook proposal as many people think of it wasn’t the way to go. But coming up with something that would be our storybook proposal was much more difficult than I anticipated. One thing I knew was important was her getting to celebrate with family. So, I knew at some point over that Independence Day weekend, I was going to propose. Why? Because her parents were in town. For the same reason an hour ago they were napping on the couch while the golf tournament was on. Shelby was getting promoted. On 03July2025, Shelby was promoted to Staff Sergeant. Besides the four of us, I don’t remember who else was at the ceremony. What I do remember is my wife, then girlfriend, choking up talking about the support that I had given her since we had gotten together. The only word I remember is that she called me her “rock”. I’m not sure if that was because I had a rock burning a hole in my pocket or not, but I remember that word. I don’t like that kind of attention, so I was glad when it was over. But it doesn’t mean I don’t remember how it made me feel. And how I knew even more that question I would ask her hours later was the right one.

Shelby’s dad enjoys tasting new beers and we have plenty of those opportunities in this area. So, we began trekking around to the difference brewery’s and ended up at Southern Pines Brewing Company. The one where they do a majority of their brewing. Why all of a sudden I knew that I was about to pop the question I’ll never know but an idea suddenly came to me. So, under the pretenses that I was going to look at the shirts they had hanging on the rack, Shelby and I went to look while her parents headed out to the car. We perused through the merchandise, and she started to see if they had her size (which I knew they didn’t since I checked first). While she was flipping through the hangers looking for her size, I stood back and got the ring ready. When she disclosed that she didn’t think anything was going to fit her, I produced the ring and said, “Maybe this will fit.” While she stood there gawking, I quietly asked her to marry me. No fanfare, no hoopla. She said yes. If she had said no, I’d probably be telling this story differently. Then the thing that definitely isn’t what you want in your storybook proposal. The ring didn’t fit. But for us, it was perfect. Her parents are once again in town for her promotion. Shelby was promoted to Sergeant First Class this morning. This time there was a much shorter speech. She spoke to her comrades thanking them for welcoming her to this unit and how much she looks forward to the rest of her time there. For me there were three words. Words that speak volumes and encompass so much more than what you hear or read. “I love you.” I will never tire of hearing her say that to me.

Now we are going to jump backwards in time from today. Just one calendar year. Shelby was deployed so it was just me at home. I was waiting on materials to arrive as I was going rebuild our deck, so I headed down to the golf course to practice and play. While I was warming up, Mr. Hogge and his son Nathaniel walked in as Nathaniel wanted to get his dad to look at his swing. After a while, Mr. Hogge asked if I was willing to take a look. It was the first time I had met Nathaniel, so wasn’t sure what I was walking into. It didn’t take long for me to realize I had just walked into a new friendship. We didn’t just work together that afternoon. We worked together for quite a few hours over the next couple of days. While we worked, we talked. Nathaniel is a collegiate football coach so from that connection our conversation flowed. We must’ve talked about fifty different topics always connecting them back to teaching, coaching or golf. Then Nathaniel started something that at the time he nor I could have expected. His comment was something along the lines of “They should stop calling you the Head Professional and start calling you the Professor.” I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But for some reason it stuck in my head. It was compliment and a title that I never expected. I mean I have zero interest in ever teaching in the classroom. So much so that whenever my boss jokes he’s going to give me a class to teach, I reply that when that day arrives, I’ll have my resignation letter waiting. He knows I have no desire to teach in that forum. When I was trying to come up with what to call my ramblings, knowing they were going to cover a wide variety of topics, that memory popped up. It was harder for me to come up with “Ponderings” than it was for me to decide to pay homage to a compliment from a friend. And so, The Professor’s Ponderings was born. I’m thankful for the friend who unknowingly helped make it possible and I’m thankful for all of you who read it. I mean as far off track as I got today, you stuck with me. So thank you! I look forward to sharing many more Ponderings with you. Hope your Independence Day weekend went well!