Returned home from New York on Friday pretty exhausted after a week of meetings and conference calls.  There was no golf practice and I was yearning to get out there.  Without a tee time, I set off for Cordevalle GC on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.  I am a member of Cordevalle GC which is in San Martin, California which is 30 miles south of San Jose on the way to Monterrey.  I decided to practice and play in the afternoon and when I arrived, the place was pretty crowded for a Saturday afternoon.  The Club was having its Christmas trunk sale of all things golf as well as attire, wine and various potential ideas for gift-giving.  In addition, the Club was hosting golf equipment manufacturers with a demo day where experienced professionals were helping members with ideas to improve their game.  (In Golf Chronicles, we discuss the various vagaries of how equipment can improve your game–I’m usually a non-believer).  I met one of my close friends on the range and tried to find a swing and tempo that would work on this day.  I continue to fight with proper alignment which really effects ball flight trajectory, distance and accuracy.  I’m also trying to finish the swinger in a higher hand position just the way the professionals do it effortlessly.  It’s a continuous battle with wins and losses–another lesson is needed to reinforce the right behavior.  Golf requires consistency and you can’t make terrible mistakes.  In baseball, you can make 7 mistakes out of 10 and be a Hall of Famer.  In Golf, you would be a 30 handicapper.  As I nearly finish my warm-up, a representative of one of the equipment demo day companies approaches me and asks me to try the driver.  It’s something called “XX10” and I believe its made by Cleveland golf.  I’m pretty finicky about my driver (also discussed in Golf Chronicles) so I was pretty skeptical.  The first 3 swings were pretty awful with disastrous hooks with very poor trajectory.  I had to admit that I was being serious enough about this so I really started to concentrate–alignment and ball position, shoulders square, hunched body position and ensure staying on the ball through impact.  Well the results were very good–more distance, higher trajectory and consistency.  I know enough that equipment always works on the range and not so well when you start playing with it on the golf course.  This time I took the specifications and told the representative that I would discuss this my teacher.  (I saw my teacher after the round and he is recommending this club for me so we’ll see).

Teed off at 2PM and we completed the round in a cart by darkness at 5PM–not bad–both of us played pretty well with a round of 79.  No double bogies but only 1 birdie on the short par 4 eighth hole.  Still lots of work to do.  Had dinner there and moved south to our Pebble Beach home.

On Sunday, we went to the Pebble Beach retail shops that are right next to the golf course.  Of course, I had to locate Golf Chronicles in the stores and found it in the gift shop.  I have a few suggestions for the PB Retail to market the book since 1/2 of the profits from sales will go to the Pebble Beach Foundation.  We’ll see what they think.

Completed the weekend by heading to the Point Joe range at Monterrey Peninsula Country Club.  The Point Joe range has been completely redone in concert with the redesign of the Dunes Course at the Club.  The Point Joe upgrade is absolutely terrific. The practice ground faces the Pacific Ocean so the views are fantastic.  The range’s redesign includes a number of target greens that enable your practice approach where you can gauge distances that suit the irons/woods that you are trying to hit.  The range also has very good chipping and bunker practice areas.  It’s great for me so I can continue to try to improve my short game.  Practice today was acceptable–I don’t think I made any progress or discovered much of anything but I gained consistency from my short game and continued to hit drivers well.  I sprayed a bunch of mid iron shots 6-7 irons but hit the 4-5 irons almost perfectly–what a game-hard to figure out and back to the teaching professional.  As of December 4, handicap is up to 6.2 with 87 rounds posted in 2016.