37th birthday

For my 37th birthday, my buddy Jay gave me a golf practice net to replace my old raggedy one.

I gave myself the gift of a trip to the family physician for a good ol' check-up. Better safe than sorry some times, after all.

The golf pro also noted that abdominal weakness is one of the challenges I face in my golf swing. So I've programmed my Treo to nag me on weekends to work on that a bit.

I'm not one of those "couple of hours in the gym" kinda guys. But here lately I've been veering more toward the lazy end of the spectrum, so a bit of balance seems in order. Trekking is harder when you're out of shape.

golf lesson update

This week's lesson was pretty upbeat. My daily practice has enabled us to continue moving forward.

We spent some time fine tuning my full swing, working on:

• stable knee flex
• rear end up into a more stable position
• ending my backswing when my chin is touched by a certain spot on my left arm/shoulder

Then we moved on to putting for the first time. I gravitate toward a dragon claw grip, which he told me to keep, because it seemed to work just fine when we made a few changes:

• ball position more forward in my stance
• eyes not so far back from the ball
• feet square inside the width of my shoulders instead of so wide

These are just the highlights, of course. We touch on a a variety of points in the lessons, but make it a point not to leave with me having to focus on "the 97 simple steps to ideal ball contact" or anything.

He told me to plan on bringing in at least a 3W & 5W next time.