By D.A. Weibring
If you are a regular reader of Tees2Greens, then you know that I've been off-tour for three weeks watching my son play on the Nationwide Tour and my daughters' dance activities. There was a little bit more of that this past week when my daughter Katey moved to Los Angeles to pursue her professional dance career and my other daughter Allie had her wisdom teeth removed, so I've been back and forth from the West Coast to Dallas.
As Tees2Greens' Publisher Mike Casson and Editor Sam Johnson can attest (we ran into each other at the TPC at Craig Ranch), I spent the week working on my golf game, trying to get ready to play. In what may be the most demanding part of the season, I'm playing in five tournaments the next six weeks and three of those will be major championships.
This week, I'm in Kansas City. It's a team championship format where you play with one amateur partner on Friday and Saturday; the amateurs have a cut, and then we finish up on Sunday. It's similar to the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and is great fun for everyone.
Even with all of the family activities going on, my golf focus has been on getting ready for this difficult six-week stretch. I've spent some time with Marius Filmalter who runs the putting studio at our practice facility in Plano, Texas – D.A.'s Spring Creek Golf. Marius has developed software technology that is being used by numerous players on the PGA and LPGA Tours, and now some of the guys on the Champions Tour. Players of all levels can see their putting skills and technique measured against the best players in the world and from that data learn how they can improve. Everyone's not going to have the same stroke, everybody's personality is a little bit different, everybody's rhythm is different, but using Marius' technology you can clearly see your own tendencies and which ones you might want to correct.
Although I've worked with Dave Pelz for many years with my putting and short game, I was able to work with Marius for a few hours and find out my trends. We then emailed the data to Dave so he could give me some feedback. It's the best of both worlds. We also did a little testing of some putters and hit about ten thousand balls. Hopefully I've done my homework during the past couple of weeks, and I'm ready to play.
After Kansas City we head across the state to Hutchinson, Kansas, where we play Prairie Dunes. It's supposed to be a great golf course for the U.S. Senior Open Championship. The following week we're off to Detroit for the Ford Senior Players Championship, which is another one of our majors. Then I'm off for a week before traveling to Scotland to play in the British Senior Open. That's a schedule that can wipe you out!
As a member of the Players Advisory Council Board on the Champions Tour, I promise you that we are trying to spread our major tournaments out, but for now at least, three of them are in July. So, needless to say, I have a busy month coming up, and hopefully I've prepared well enough. I'm looking forward to getting back into tournament play. Wish me luck and I'll let you know each week how I'm doing and how the courses are playing.
