I feel complete again

After a long, cold, snowy winter the golf season is finally here and I took full advantage ofit this weekend.

Started off on friday when I took off work early to meet Preston and some friends out at Rattlesnake in milton for my first 18 of the year. Have to say, this is probably the first year that I was in shorts for the first round of the year. side note, wow I'm using "first" a lot so far. Weather was like mid july in the 20's without a cloud in the sky, couldn't ask for better conditions. The course was in awful shape, typical for a clublink course. No need for putting out there cause ther greens were so bumpy and covered in divots still from last year. Not sure why i even go out there. Not a huge fan of the course, and it's only really a slight step above a public course as far as conditioning. But it's still a decent track. Can't complain about the round. I shot an 83, with 4 double boogies. Aside from those 4 holes I played well. Hit a lot of good drives and my iron play was pretty good. Lost most of my strokes around the green, short game was awful.

Saturday morning I got out with Matt and Cal early in the morning back at St. Catharines. I have to say this round was one of my most satisfying rounds I have ever played. I shot a 79. It's not my top score ever or anything, but how i got to 79 was what made it such a good ronud. I started off poorly on the front with 1 birdie on number 6 and shot 41 on the front. I made the turn and went boogie, boogie, boogie, boogie for the first 4 holes. Usually I would have just kept falling and giving up. But this time I took a few deep breaths and got into a grind mode. On 15 I hit a decent drive down the left, 6 iron layup, and a nice wedge to about 3 feet for a birdie. Made a nice par on 16, hit an amazing rescue cluvb 222 yards on 17 to about 8 feet but missed the putt. On 18 I hit my drive onto the side of a bunker so I had a difficult uphill lie hitting to a back left pin location. I struck maybe my best 8 iron ever to about 8 feet this time making the birdie putt to go 2 under for the last 5 holes and shot a 79. I was ecstatic with this cause I batteled back for the first time instead of giving up and blowing my round. Great day for me.

Sunday was another beautiful day on the course. The weather was just perfect all weekend. Played with the normal sunday groupings. Getting sick of playing with these guys cause there old getting old and want to play the blues everytime there is the slightest chance of there not being the most perfect conditions out on the course. It's not 85 degrees, play the blues, it rained 3 days ago, play the blues, the sun is at a point in the sky where is shines on the club house from a 60 degree angle, play the blues. What bothered me the most was just 24 hours before Cal, Matt, Bernie and myself all said we don't care what they play we are playing the blacks. I get there in the morning and the first group on the tee, Bernie inclucded, are getting ready to tee off from the blues. Ok, so i declare I'm out of the skins for the day cause I'm not playing the blues. Of course this becomes a big deal with everyone, but after a little complaining they move back to the blacks. This causes everyone to blame me, i'm sure Andy, Gary, and Joe complained about me the whole round, even though Cal Matt and Bernie wanted the samething I did. Oh well, i'm still not playing the blues this year. It's a waste of a round as far as I'm concerned. Anyways, onto the golf. I played awful on the front, just couldn't put it together. Shot a 46. I did again keep my composure. I shot a 37 on the back to shot 83.

I was hitting the ball nicely all weekend. Starting to really find my tempo which is helping to control my shots better and have confidence to hit the shot I want to hit. I also managed my club selection better. Opting for a 3/4 swing and clubing up one club from where I used to be and finding that control everyone tells me about. I found myself choosing the wrong club a few times and overswinging causing me to push it right, so hopefully I can get over that and blub myself better going forward.

Still a good start to the season. 79 in the handicapp index is a good start to getting down to a 2.

Strong Finish

As mentioned earlier I had my squash league championships on wednesday. Just leaving a quick post on how I did.

I'm happy to say that I dominated Denise this time around for the D league championship. It was a quick and easy game. I took the first game I think 9-4, or something like that. All the work I've done on my return to serve and drop shots have really been paying off. Again my drop shot was deadly against her. To the point she got really pissed at me and says in the middle of game 2, "Are you going to hit drop shots all night or play some squash?" Normally, I would have been all over a comment like this but I held back due to gender. So instead of talking shit back and hitting drop shot over and over again, I turned my strategy and started hitting deep lengths into the corner on her backhand side. Over and over again. No matter where I was hitting from every single shot she took was from the backhand corner. Lets just say she needs some work on her defensive backhand returns. So i kept this up through the second and third game and just for good measure I finished off the last point to win 9-2 in the last game with a perfect drop shot. It was classic. I even knew as soon as I hit it she didn't have a chance cause she was cheating to the back corner, so i hit, turned my back to the ball before it even hit the wall and stuck my hand out to shake her hand, that really pissed her off. Regardless, I am the champion and I get to move up a division. So i should have some good games to tell you about in the near future.

I was also asked to play as a spare for someone elses league, this was the D2 league for wednesday nights (I played D4). So i played some guy I had never played before right after my match. First game I struggled hard. In about 5 minutes I lost 9-1. I then figured out his play. He served acording to where I stood in the box. So i backed up all the way to the wall so he would have to serve lightly and infront of me. I killed ever return he didn't have a chance. Also after the first game I figured out my serve and started killing him with that too. Next thing I know, its 9-4, 9-3, 9-1, and I'm a double champ.

Very good night of squash. It must have been the new raquet I got.

Whats going on

Last weekend I had my second squash tournament. It was the club championships and again I was playing the D division. Since I'm still considered a beginner at the club I really had no choice on this, I would have prefered to play in the C division. However, it is what it is, and this is how it went.

My first match was on friday night. Of course, as usual, it was against and older gentleman. Not sure exactly how old, but he had gray hair and looked to be maybe 50? just a guess. Anyways, while warming up, this is where i size everyone up, it looked like it could be a decent match. The first game was a good one. I was a little nervous so that might have helped to keep it even. We battled back and forth for a little while. I was up in the game and he made a come back to take it to 8-8 and eventually I won the game 10-9. This is good, I haven't had a good match in a while. Then my serve started to work. I got in a vrey nice groove with the serve and the next thing I know I win the game 9-2. Took the next one 9-0, and my night is over. The guys that I'm playing against can't handle a certain type of serve, which I have been working on, and this proved it. Nice, i'm on to the semis.

Next match was against a guy I had played for my very first match months ago. He kicked my ass then. Not this time. I made sure I beat this guy just for my own head. If i lost to him I would have considered the last few months a bust with no imporvement. Again, my serve was on fire and he didn't have a chance. The games went 9-3, 9-1, 9-0. What a joke. Every point was the same as my last match. Basically my great serve, a defensive return from the other guy, then i just hit a easy drop shot that had no chance of being picked up. My serve would freeze the guy in the back corner and then i would just drop in the front opposite corner, no chance for him.

So i'm into my first finals. This match i knew would be a good one. I was playing someone I played in the last tourny I was in, and we had an amazing match last time. Both of us have imporved since so I was looking forward to this one. Now i'm playing a guy who was in his late 30;s maybe and actually athletic, finally the competition I'm looking for. I'll mention this was my second match in a day, never realized i would be so tired for the second one. We had a good match. Back and forth every game. Unfortunatly, I lost. I lost the first 2 games, won the third game, but couldn't pull out the 4th to take it to 5. Just didn't have the energy, and honestly, He out played this time. I was controlling the "T" the whole game, thats a good thing. Except my drop shot wasn't working for me so I couldn't take advantage of it. I resorted o hit long lengths to his back hand over and over again in an attempt to get him to make a mistake. Unfortunatly, his hbackhand was pretty good and he was making good defensive returns. I've spoken with my intrusctor about this. Next week we are going to work on volley drop shot. Had I been able to drop from the back or middle of the court I could have killed this guy, but i don't know how to do that very well yet. Of course I'll work on this and get good at it, but it will take some time. I will defintly need it cause I'm going to be moving up a division now that i can out play that division. So progress was made even though i finished second.

Tonight I play in another finals. My league that I was so excited about is finished tonight. I am playing the girl I beat for my first game, Denise, for the championship of the monday night d league. I never really mentioned this league cause it was to easy. I went 9-1 for the year, and lost 5 games including the one loss I had. Aside from my 2 mathces against the girls, every other one was a waste of time. I'll give an update tomorrow with how I do tonight.