Point of Relief

Go to the website below. If you don't see what you are looking for, don't give up. Keep checking back as they update their inventory periodically. While they don't have the best selection of any online store, they still have a really good

Rock Bottom Golf

If you just can't wait, then I suggest also checking out Craigslist, EBay, and any second-hand golf stores in your area. But I can almost guarantee that you will pay more than you will at Rock Bottom.

I spent hours on the site last night and walked away with the following...

New Adidas Golf shows -$29.99
Tifosi sunglasses with a lifetime warranty -$19.99
Adams Golf 10-degree 460 Driver -$39.99
Taylor Made hat -$8.99
Adidas Golf Towel -free

While I didn't NEED most of that stuff, it is nice to have some stuff that is mine and was designed for the purpose for which I am using it instead of using old hand me downs and everyday items. I am also a TaylorMade fan and had to spring for the hat even though I can't afford the putter or driver that I want from them. Shipping was only around $13 and should be here in less than a week. I'm excited, but have chosen to not use my driver on the course tomorrow (assuming it gets here) and instead wait until I have some time with it at the range.

Look out for a new post sometime this weekend on my first experience playing a full 18-holes.

Below is a link to a great article on how to clean your clubs using what you have around the house.

How to Clean Golf Clubs -About.com

More content coming this week. I'm playing my first game of 18 holes on Friday and will be spending Monday at Harvey Penick to get ready for it.

Beginners' General tip -if the course you will be playing posts their scorecard online, try printing it out and carrying it with you to the driving range before you play. That way you will know how far you need to be hitting the ball before you are faced with the decision of choosing a club at the tee.

Date Played: August 17, 2009
Location: Austin, Texas
Overall Rating: 6/10
No. of Holes: 9
Course Par: 30
Personal Par: 60
Course Rating: 32.6
Slope: 112
Website: http://www.harveypenickgc.com/

Summary

Harvey Penick Golf Campus is a great course in terms of its focus. It is part of the First Tee Foundation and sits right next to a YMCA. I am out there at least once a week and have never NOT seen at least a couple of kids. The course is fairly good but only offers 9 holes.

Difficulty

Despite my dismal performance, the course is not that difficult. I believe there are only 2 holes that require shooting over a water hazard and I only saw 1-2 holes with bunkers. There aren't any Par 5's and playing from the whites only 2 holes (1 at 322 and 6 at 341) even break 300 yards. Most of the holes are in the low to mid 100-yard range.

Appearance/Facilities

A very pretty course but would help by having a few more water coolers out in the Texas summer. I would have also benefited with a course map as there was not one provided on the score card. I wandered around a few times trying to find the next hole and even had to ask for directions once (it turned out I was walking in the wrong direction).

Staff

This is where HP begins to earn its stars. The staff are knowledgeable and extremely helpful. I have had conversations with some of them about subjects beyond golf and they are all overall very friendly.

Practice Facilities

If the staff is where HP begins to earn its stars, then this is where it gains the rest of them. The center has an amazing natural grass driving range. Although the markers are not labeled, a quick conversation with the staff will let you know what they are. (FYI, each PVC structure is about 50 yards and then each barber pole is approximately 75 yards). In addition to the range, HP offers 2 putting centers; 1 large one with a nasty downhill turn and 1 smaller one that is surrounded by 2 bunkers. The smaller one has plenty of room for pitching and chipping practice. Although I have not tried it yet, HP also offers a 3 hole mini-course with low to mid 100 yard holes from the whites to blacks.

Wrap-Up Summary

Although the course itself is not amazing, the staff, purpose, and practice facilities are enough to make Harvey Penick himself proud. I personally use the course as my weekly practice facility but choose to play a full round somewhere else.

Why is the blog called "Point of Relief"?

When I was deciding on a blog name, I pulled up a glossary of golf terms and went through them to see if any stuck out to me. I knew that I wanted one that would relate to being a beginner of golf but couldn't really think of anything involving "High Handicap"that sounded good. (If you have a great name, good for you. Don't rub it in now.) When I came across "Nearest Point of Relief", I just kind of knew that was what I wanted to use. I used the Point of Relief when I played golf for the first time as a kind of "start over" when I sunk a shot into a water hazard or into the woods. Not really what it is supposed to be used for, but when I was already 20 over par and had 4 more holes, I didn't care.

Why did you create the blog?

Short answer: Because I was bored and classes hadn't started yet.

Long Answer?

If you insist... (a lot of this is repeated in my first post but this FAQ is for people that don't want to read through every post)
After 3 years of college, I suddenly found myself in a new situation. The majority of my friends had graduated and moved away, my girlfriend had moved across the state to attend grad school, and I was left with 1 semester before I graduated and did the same. Finding myself suddenly alone, I knew that I wanted to spend my time doing something productive. My goal was to be able to walk away from my Senior "year" saying that I had spent it learning something new. I thought of learning to play the piano or improving my Spanish but that honestly didn't sound like something I would stick with.
I spent most of my summer preparing law school applications and was on a law school message forum when someone wrote "before you enter law school, you should decide what kind of lawyer you will be. You can either be the drinking kind or the golfing kind." Because I was now living by myself, I had recently made a decision to not drink at home. So I decided why not give the golf thing a try.

You realize that the quote you mentioned was just a joke right?

Yes of course but I figured why not?

Who are you?

Short answer: A graduating college student from The University of Texas at Austin with plans on attending law school next Fall.

Why law school?

It was always something that I wanted to do from Jr. High on. When I got to college, I switched majors a couple of times trying to find one I enjoyed that would still set me up for law school. (FYI, what major you choose doesn't matter as long as you enjoy it.) By my second semester, I had fallen in love with advertising and for a while even decided against going to law school after. It wasn't until the Spring semester of my Junior year that I took a legal advertising class and decided to go to law school and eventually practice advertising law.

What law school are you attending?

Great question. Also one that I am tiring of answering. Instead, check out this site.

Sounds awesome! Should I go to law school?

No.

Why is there a "link" tab that doesn't work?

I don't know. It was there when I uploaded the original template and I can't figure out how to make it go away.

What are "labels" and how should I use them?

Labels allow you to view every post that I have made in a certain category. For example, do you want to see every practice method that I have invented or posted from another site? Check out the "Ways to Practice" label.

Have any other questions? Please feel free to email me.

After my humiliating double-over-par performance on 9 holes, I realized that I was not an instant Tiger Woods (I was holding out hope that I would be a natural at the game), and I would have to practice if I wanted to improve.

But how? I had already realized that simply hitting balls down the range wasn't going to help me much so I turned to my short game. I am very fortunate to have access to an amazing practice facility within a 10 minute drive of my apartment (Harvey Penick Golf Course). In addition to a great driving range (though I wish I could figure out the yardage markers...), Penick offers two putting greens. The first one has at least 4 holes on the top part, a nasty downhill turn, and then another 3-4 holes on the lower portion. The second is surrounded by two bunkers that allow great practice on approach shots and getting out of bunkers and onto the green.

What follows is NOT a tried and perfected method of practice, but it is one that makes sense. Not knowing exactly what I needed to practice (I haven't played enough to know for sure) and not being able to afford a few $50 /half-hour lessons to tell me, I chose to cover it all. Taking from a few things I had picked up in my readings I designed what is below. You can use it as a full-day of practice or shorten it somewhat and use it for a warm-up or cool-down. I plan on doing both. The overall goal to takeaway is an increase in patience. When out of the course, you want to have patience and the knowledge that you have made each type of shop hundreds of times before. This is why I am calling this post "Practice Makes Patience".

What you will need...

• The full set of clubs that you will be playing with. If you don't carry a 2-iron when you play, don't carry one now. The idea is to become familar with the clubs you will actually use.
• $5 to $10 dollars for range balls.
• Water! (possibly a snack if you have something that won't melt)
• (optional) a different colored ball or one that easily stands out from others

1. Buy a small-medium sized bucket of balls and head to the range. Immediately set aside 5-10 balls and don't use them. With the remaining balls, start with your smaller irons and work your way up. At this point you should be aiming for targets under 100 yards and working on consistency and aim. Finish with whatever you use off the tee most often (a 120-degree hyrbid for myself) and enjoy knocking the ball as far as you can without losing accuracy.

2. With the 5-10 balls you set aside head to the putting green. I like to start out at the green with the bunkers. If you don't have this, try to find a green that has a large amount of space around it. The goal here is to practice hitting onto the green from about 15-20 yards out. To get the most out of this, try setting up balls every couple of yards with increasingly difficulty. For this next part, I personally like to use 10 balls because it makes it easier to keep track of, but 5 will also work. Work on hitting the balls onto the green. The most important part is to set a goal! If this is one of your first times out, set a low goal like 40% (4 of the 10 balls make it to the green and stay on the green. Shooting over or bouncing off doesn't count. You are setting yourself up for putting.) If this is easy, make it a better goal. If you hit 100%, try making your landing zone smaller by only allowing balls that come to rest within 5 feet of the hole count as a success. Before you move on, hit your goal a minimum of 3 times to make sure you are learning what works and not just getting lucky.

3. If you have a sand trap, place your 10 balls on a line parallel to the green spaced out as much as possible. You will be repeating most of the same things you just did. Once again, set a goal and meet it 3 times before moving on. It doesn't have to be the same goal as before and likely won't be. For some people, hitting out of the bunker will be easier and for some it will be harder. Set your goal appropriately.

4. Finally, you will work on putting. Depending on the difficulty of the green, set your 10 balls out in varying yardage from easy to make shots and hard to make. Start from the closest and work your way back. Once again, you will want to set a goal and meet it 3 times before calling it quits.

That's it. Sounds simple right? You can tailor it to meet your needs and course opportunites. To make it a short warm up, just do the final workout. To make it even longer, increase the number of times you must meet your goal before moving on or repeat the entire thing. If your course has a small mini-course (Penick has a 3 hole essentially pitch-and-putt course for free roam) go out and play to see if you can perform what you just practiced. As you play more, you will learn what you need more practice on and can come up with something different that fits those needs. Remember, this is just a starting guide for structered overall practice.

In closing, I want to include a few additional things. These are either ettiqute points or just fun things I have discovered while doing this.

• Check with the pro shop before pitching/chipping onto the practice green. Some facilities are okay with this, others strictly forbid it.
• If the green is crowded, only work with a maximum of 3 balls. Make sure you don't tie up more than one hole (by standing in someone's putting line, etc.).
• Make the colored ball (listed as optional in the "what you will need" section) a bonus ball. For each excerise find a shot that you think is next to impossible. Place the colored ball there. If it hits your target, count it as 2. If it misses, it doesn't count as any of your 10. This adds a little fun to try crazy shots, stretches what you think is impossible, and makes you feel awesome if you actually make it.

Taken from VideoJug.com
Please visit their site here


This video easily explains how to hit your shots farther and straighter. It even gives some on-the-course tips so you can see if you are in the right stance. I tried them out today at the driving range and was hitting to my club's limits and most of my shots were straight too! Definitely worth a watch.

Technique Troubleshooting:
Golf: How To Hit Long And Straight Drives

Even though I hit the majority of my balls into the ground or so farright it made Bush look liberal, I felt prepared to actually play around. Some friends and I have planned to play 18-holes the firstFriday after school starts next week, so I figured I would just do 9for my first time out.

Taking from what I had read, I showed up an hour before tee-time to practice some hits. I bought a small bucket for $6 and took my time hitting. Sadly, most of my shots didn't go where I intended for them to go and a few didn't even make it 5 feet from the tee. Before heading out, I practiced a few putts and missed those too. Needless to say, my confidence wasn't at its highest as I walked out to the first hole.

It didn't build much either. Despite the holes being named encouraging things like "honesty" or "confidence", I wasn't feeling much of it. In fact, the irony was nearly lost on me as I dug through the brush on several holes. But I digress, my first shot lost my new TaylorMade ball into a creek and I quickly declared it a practice swing (I was playing by myself) and teed-up again. My next shot went approximately 15-20 yards and the pace was set for the rest of the game.

Not everything was miserable though. I could usually sink a putt within 2-3 attempts after getting on the green. Getting to the green seemed to plague me the entire time however and my score card shows the result (averaging about 7 strokes per hole, regardless of par.)

On the 7th hole, I had a breakthrough. Instead of going for distance (even though I was using a 120-degree hybrid so there wasn't that much distance to go for), I could pull back my swing and regain some much-needed accuracy. By doing so, I could usually stay within 5 strokes on a hole instead of 7-9. This epiphany came way too late as I ended up with a final score of a 60... which equaled double the original par. One of my biggest issues seemed to be getting onto the actual green once I was within 75 yards so I took this as a lesson to learn from.

I finished the round by sinking a nice mid-distance putt on the 9th hole to give me my only bogey for the day. Feeling better, I walked back up to the practice facilities knowing that I needed to work on both my drive and my short game. Having already hit the driving range that day, I chose to make my way to the chipping and putting green.

Now that I had my clubs and courses planned out, I was ready to take the first swing.

Let me clarify and point out that although I decided against taking lessons (likely a bad decision down the road after I develop horrible habits), I read every free instruction source that I could get my hands on. My 3 favorites were abcofgolf, about.com, and Golf for Dummies (which I found as an e-book).

From my reading, I realized that going straight out for 18 holes would be a bad idea. So instead, I chose to go to the driving range. Good idea right? Too bad I messed it up in practice. Not wanting to "waste" my time, I decided to get the large bucket. This ended up being about 150 balls which resulted in me just swinging carelessly to get through what I paid for and not taking the time to truly practice my swing. Not to mention I was incredibly sore the next day.

This would have all been worth it if I could have perfected my swing, but of course that didn't happen. I did discover that I have a strong consistent hook which gave me something to work on. After a couple of swings, I also discovered my "natural swing". A passage in the book The Legend of Bagger Vance makes the premise that the first time you pick up a club, you discover your "authentic swing," the one you'll have for the rest of your life. You can refine it, improve it, and do things with your equipment, physical conditioning, etc but that swing is stamped into your DNA. My swing involves a far-reaching back swing that likely stems from my days playing baseball in high school. Regardless of where it came from, it just felt right and I started to finally make a connection with the ball and hit consistently.

After a day at the range, I was too exhausted to work on chipping or putting so I decided to head back home. I figured my short game was good enough from what I could remember and what I really needed help on was my driving. Little did I know how wrong I was...

With all of my golf tools ready, I was eager to play. However, I didn't want to offset the money I had just saved from shopping smart by paying over-charged course or range fees. I knew that I wanted to stay away from country clubs and private courses for now, but where did that leave me? Were there differences between non-country club courses?

The short answer, is yes! As I researched, I discovered two main categories of public courses; municipal courses and simply public courses. Municipal courses may charge more for people who do not live in the area that the course "serves", but I haven't found this to be true yet.

My next step was to create an Excel spreadsheet that listed out each course and some defining details. I included the normal price, any reductions in price, phone number/physical address, if they offered memberships for high-usage, the course rating, etc.

I highly recommend doing this. My sheet has allowed me to compare the prices at every public/muni course in Austin and get the most for my money.

As of now, I have found that Harvey Penick has the best practice facilities but Riverside GC gives you the most for your money (they were one of the only courses that offered a student discount).

Knowing where to get the best deal, I was finally ready to pick up the club.

Golf can be an expensive game and that has always been one of the reasons keeping me from picking it up. Fortunately, I had a set of clubs already with a bag. Unfortunately, my bag was 2-3 decades old and weighted around 30 lbs without clubs. (I later found out this was an old cart bag).

After several hours spent online at websites such as a-b-c- of golf or about.com, I made the following shopping list along with the prices that I was willing to pay.

Carry bag -under $20
Hybrid fairway wood -under $30
MOI putter -around $50
2 piece low-spin golf balls -under $20
Lob wedge -under $15
Divot tool, towel, ball markers, and head cover -low cost (was not sure, these were all typically cheap)

I felt that these were all reasonable prices if I was willing to do the work of searching until I found each in good shape. For about a week and a half, I kept up with the latest postings on CraigsList looking for a bag. I was ready to expand the price I was willing to pay to about $50 but simply didn't have the money.

Then I got lucky. Living in a larger city certainly has its benefits and I was able to find 2 second-hand golf stores (PlayItAgain Sports and Instant Replay). Both were within 10 minutes of my work so when I got off early one day, I decided to drive by and check them out.

I ended up paying $15 for a used bag in fair condition (dirty but the pockets and legs are in great condition). I got a 21-degree hybrid for just under $20, a package of TaylorMade XD balls for $18 at Target, and a lob wedge for $5.99. I also picked up the towel, etc. fairly cheap, though it was all new.

I decided to hold off on the putter since I didn't have the money and I had a putter anyway. It is definitely going on my Christmas list though.

So for right around $65, I was ready to play. The only question, was where?

This is the first post of my new blog, "Point of Relief." In this post, I will explain why I am writing and a little bit about myself. Future posts will chronicle my process as a beginning golfer with a college-student budget and various tips, hints, and tricks that I pick up along the way. I also hope to do course reviews as I explore courses in the region.

How did all of this begin?

That is a really good question.

I have never really played golf. Besides hitting at the driving range with some friends once or twice, I have only attempted to play an actual game of golf once. My dad and I got asked to leave the course because we were playing so slow and they had a tournament about to begin. The course officials were very nice and even gave us a free voucher to play again... but we never used it.

Fast forward 5 years. I am now a Senior at The University of Texas at Austin. In my entire college career, I have been to the driving range once and returned with my pride hurt and a handful of blisters.

So why pick the game back up?

In the past few months, a lot of things have happened.

I have decided to go law school.
I now live by myself.
I want to cut down on drinking because A.) I want to avoid the pitfalls of dealing with the stress of law school by drinking and B.) I live by myself and also want to avoid problems arising from that.
I have 8 months between when I graduate in December and when I will start law school next Fall.
My girlfriend moved to attend grad school across the state.

With all of these happening within a short time of one another, I found myself in a new situation. I finally decided that the best thing to do was to take up a new hobby. I found a quote on a law school message board that said "in law school you have to decide which kind of lawyer you will be; the drinking kind or the golfing kind." Because I had already decided against the drinking kind (see reasons above), I decided to give golf a shot.

With just the clubs given to me by my grandfather before he passed away, I set out to not only learn the game of golf, but to enjoy it as well.

I am chronicling the entire process through this blog so that others can see the entire process and reach their own "Point of Relief".