48 + 43=91.
11 fairways hit.
One birdie, four pars, eight bogeys.
36 putts.
And that’s going +1 on the par 5s and +7 on the par 3s.

A nice way to kick off the 2014 golf season 2013 on a sun-splashed, drop-dead gorgeous, 75-degree day at Bear Creek Golf Club in Chandler, AZ. The father-son twosome I was playing with were here on vacation, so it was OK with me that they wanted to play from the white tees going off 22 yards shy of 6,000 yards instead of the 6,400 yard blues – especially since my pre-round warm-up was so awful and I was planning for another grind-it-out round. As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered to me had we played the blues because there was no way I wasn’t going to be hitting fairways today no matter where they placed them, or how narrow or wide they made them. That’s because from the very first tee shot of the day (a 3-wood shaped perfectly right to left, the only 3 I would hit all day before taking driver and sticking with it all day long), I was in a place I had never been before: confident, accurate, and long – so long, in fact, that I spent most of my day waiting for the others to hit while my little orange Wilson 50 sat anywhere from 10-40 yards in front of all their drives. They weren’t sticks for sure, but they weren’t dumb hackers, either.

And that 91 could have been a whole lot lower, and without too much effort, either – for the greens were murder for everyone to play, being tricked up with ridiculous “hit it in the clown’s mouth” settings all around the fringes to save the more sober pin placements for a tournament they were having over the weekend. I three-putt four times – once from six feet – but actually had a good day in and around the greens.

What’s most important is that the new move instituted several weeks ago continues to result in very consistent hits off the tee, allowing me to grow with confidence the more I take it out to the course. There is still work to do on and around the putting green, of course, but I feel like my game has really turned a corner. I won’t likely play next until my Las Vegas weekend in late February, but that’s OK, it’s a great way to start 2014.