Rust and Relaxation

Yes I said rust. That's pretty much for me. Brian's been down here for over a week. I haven't hit a real golf ball since my last blog at Thanksgiving. Before that may have been October-ish. Needless to say that I've had a lot of excitement brewing up to get down here to Florida to get away from Iowa for a bit.

I'll back up briefly though. I received a text from Brian last Monday morning prior to going into work. It simply said "stay in the present, focus on the task at hand today, do what you do." Prior to his tournament rounds I usually send him words of encouragement and thoughts to keep in mind during his round. It's a long distance version of what I remind him while I caddy for him. Roles were reversed this time as I got the advice to approach my 4 day work week just as you would a 4 round golf tournament. After all I could have checked out pretty easy and coasted through the work week. I've read countless books on the mental side of golf but never had given serious consideration to how I could implement it into more than golf and especially into a work day. If you follow me on Twitter (@finsupgolfer) then you probably saw some curious tweets each day. Combining work and golf mindsets really worked. I did have some fun with some spinoffs on tweets I've seen from PGA Tour golfers.

Arriving at the wee hours of Friday morning Brian and I arrived at Shingle Creek around mid-morning after I was able to catch up on some sleep. But I'll admit that I was too excited to really sleep late. We put in some good work. The Shingle Creek course in Orlando is where Brian's "office" is during his prep for upcoming events. Short game. Putting. Long game. Most of the clubs in the bag had some attention paid to them. Needless to say my back was pretty sore. The one cool toy I bought early in the year at Brian's advice was the Pelz Putting Tutor. I probably spent about a third of time just using that device on the putting green. I'm telling my golfer friends if you truly want to improve your putting then this can help (no I don't get a kickback from Pelz). Or don't take my advice and I'll just take your money now!

Dinner was Kobe Japanese Steakhouse and Brian realized the potential of my sushi eating capacity. Brian usually will pick up dinner for me during tournament week but we have the unwritten agreement that I'm on my own for sushi. For him that's a wise choice!

Friday ended quickly. With mid to high 80 temperatures and 20 mph winds we were both sun and wind burned. I vaguely remember watching the NBA Rising Stars game on tv (and for the record it's generally the only time I watch any NBA action).

Day 1 was in the books. All in all a good start. I found it prophetic that I saw a quote from Marcus Aurelius prior to going to bed that said "When you rise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive; to breathe, think, to enjoy, to love." My reply - yes please!