Maybe all the playing and practice is having some effect; at least for a while. This morning I shot 39 over the front nine holes at Mt. Si and added a par on the 10th hole. So I was just three over par through ten holes. Unfortunately, I pulled my tee shot on the par three 11th hole into the woods then hit two poor chips to record a triple-bogey six. That broke my concentration and I had just one more par and three double bogey’s over the final seven holes to end up with a so-so 87. Still, that 39 on the front and seven pars over eight holes was really fun.

I ended June with 16 rounds of golf: 288 holes, 1,413 stokes, 487 putts. That’s a scoring averaging of 88.3. My handicap improved from 17.3 to 15.2. So my first month of concentration on golf has been a success. Now the challenge is to continue to improve in July.

One of my goals for this summer is to dedicate significant time to my golf game, to see if I can improve my scores and get more consistent. The week of June 13-19, I played three times and practiced on two other days. This past week, I played every day, twice on Friday. So six rounds in five days. By Friday night, I was a zombie. Those six rounds equate to 520 strokes, over 25 hours on my feet, and 20-plus miles walked. With one exception, the quality of play was ok, certainly better than I’ve been doing over the prior year or so. I shot 88, 96, 82, 88, 85, and 90 with pars on 31% of the holes. Putting was generally poor, however. I’ll work on that later. Right now, I’m focused on developing a consistent pre-shot routine and sequence of thoughts prior to and during the swing.

I’m planning on using the rest of June and July to try to improve my golf game. That means practicing and playing more regularly. I played Mt. Si yesterday and shot an 87 (43-44). Ball-striking with my irons was perhaps my best ever. Today, irons were just so-so but I did hit 11 fairways–extraordinarily good for me–and shot 88. But I ended up with just 24 putts for the round including 12 one-putt greens. The bad part was that most of those putts were to save bogey. Still it was satisfying to sink putts of 16, 16, 12, 10, 9 and 8 feet in addition to several 1-2 footers after a good chip.