Played my final round of Arizona golf for a while at Stonecreek Golf Club as a final preparation for Goodboys Invitational week which starts next week. And as I started writing this post I tried to think back to where I was last year at this time, getting ready for the 2014 Goodboys Invitational, and Voila! I found this post. I can barely remember that round of golf, but I can tell you that where I was last year and where I am this year are two very different places, even though the results appear (at least to date) to be the same.

The saying goes that as a golfer you are what you are. But that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t strive to improve and try to find areas here and there where one can better one’s self. And I know that even though next week is Goodboys Invitational week I’m still working through the changes Alex Black wants me to make, both with my swing and my approach to the various parts of my game he’s sure will improve if I just stick to his wise counsel. Some of his ideas (for example, using the markings on the ball to aim my tee shots) I’ve found easy to adopt and incorporate into my overall set-up. Others, like trying to draw the ball and use the markings of the ball to aim my putts, I’ve found a little more difficult. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to take them to Goodboys weekend and try and put them to good use.

Today at Stonecreek I ground out a 50/53=103 on a positively ten-bell day for golf. It wasn’t overly hot and I had the course virtually all to myself so I put in all the necessary work I wanted to in preparation for next week. As usual, some very poor decisions course management-wise killed me, and two 8s on the front and a nine on the back killed what actually could have been a pretty good round. I hit nine of fourteen fairways (a plus) but had 38 putts (not so plus) and actually fought off a couple of instances of the shanks during the round – something I don’t think I could have done before this year. In both cases, I went back to the fundamentals Alex is trying to get me to do, and while I wasn’t entirely successful, I definitely had the right idea going forward.

If today validated anything, it’s the importance of getting off the tee. Even if I don’t bring my “A” game (as if I ever had one), if I can find fairways I can usually (usually being the operative word here, given that on the holes I shot a collective 25 were holes I hit all three fairways on) get around a course. If I can’t, I really don’t have the kind of game that allows for incredible recoveries, so my performance at Goodboys weekend will only go as far as my driver and 3-wood take me.

With just a week to go there is still much work to be done. I still have to learn to trust my swing and set-up that allows for that magical draw trajectory, but there’s still time: sometime this weekend you can be sure I’ll be out somewhere with a small bucket of balls and my 5, 6, and 7-irons. Unlike last year, where I was really operating on feel and tempo alone, this year there’s a lot more technique involved. It’s actually exciting and frustrating to see such mixed results, but I also understand that the swing changes are long-term; it’s just that the 2015 Goodboys Invitational happens to be in the short-term. So we’ll see how it goes.