Just about to head out for my latest installment of my “30 balls a week” program. Since next week at this time I’ll be traveling back home for a week of vacation and preparation for the Goodboys Invitational, the 30 balls I hit for next week I’ll do this coming Monday instead.

Today’s session will focus a little more heavily on my sand wedge play, in an attempt to work on a shot that has haunted and bedeviled me since Hector was a pup: a 10-20 yard shot from the rough that carries a bunker and lands safely on the green where I can two-putt and walk away quietly.

Here’s the situation: your approach shot to the green goes wide left or right. It might be short of the green, it might be long, but the problem is, you have a big momma sand bunker between you and the green ten yards or so away that you have to carry in the air and land somewhat softly so you keep it on the green.

Typically, what I’ll do is either hit it too hard and not high enough (so I end up off the green in another direction), or duff it and end up in the same freakin’ bunker I’m attempting to carry. Before you know it, that par or bogey you were in good shape for becomes something ugly, and a crooked number gets added to your scorecard.

The keys to this shot are focus and flawless execution: you can’t be thinking of screwing up, that bunker, or sexy red-headed Russian spies, or what you’ll be ordering at the 19th hole. You have to clear your head, carefully gauge where you want the ball to land, open up the club face, choke down on the club as needed, come through cleanly without de-accelerating, and keep your damned head down. If you do all these things, you’ll end up safely on the green and you can focus on your putting.

And that’s what I’ll be working on today. There are no bunkers where I’ll be practicing, so I will instead lay a blanket down to simulate one. Like I said last week: I’m deadly serious about my preparation discipline this year, and committed to practicing right.

I know, I know, I can hear the other Goodboys snickering and shaking their heads in disbelief. But here’s my thinking: in 15 days Goodboys will be over and I’ll probably be so sick of golf by then that I won’t want to even look at a club for months afterwards. God willing, there’ll be plenty of time for non-golf related stuff then, so I’m using the time between now and then wisely.

Pool temp: 94 degrees (last night), 89 degrees (this morning)

89 degrees is the purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrfect temperature for a morning swim before it gets too hot. Which, BTW, I just did.