If my lob wedge were a person, I would write it out of the will

Amazing what one little piece of swing advice can do to your game.

I have been reading "Harvey Penick's Little Red Book" and "Fundamentals of Hogan" for tips on how to swing properly, something I never really studied. For years I followed the model of, watch your friends swing and try to do what they do (only left-handed). I didn't notice any improvement until today, playing at Village Greens in Sinking Spring.

My advice to beginning golfers: Par-3 courses are better than driving ranges for practicing your game. Short holes, (usually) forgiving fairways and real-life pitching and putting experience that won't cost you much more than a bucket of balls.

Anyway, last night after getting home from work I watched an instructional video from on swinging where the pro stressed the importance of keeping your left (right) arm glued to your chest on the backswing. A minor lesson, sure, but I'm certain I never did that with any consistency. So today, that was my goal: Keep that right arm close to the chest.

I've said this before but it bears repeating: My golf game is so bad that it needs a million fixes. However, that one remedy improved my score more than I expected. I hit more tee shots that went straight and far, and was consistently within reach of a bogey or double bogey on almost every hole -- the exception being hole 18, which one day I will conquer.

Oh, yeah. That's a gimme.

No hole went better than No. 2, where I hit the ball well for three shots to get it on the green. My third shot got the ball less than two inches from the cup for an easy bogey. From there things got slowly, but steadily, worse: two 5s, two 6s and a 7 before I told myself to calm down and go back to enjoying myself. I three-putted hole No. 8 for a 6, but that meant I got on the green in par. Which was good enough. Hole No. 9 was another triple bogey, thanks to some bad strikes with my lob wedge. The good news was I was able to two-putt it for a 7, giving me 50 on the front nine — six strokes better than last week's round at the same course.

I was much more consistent on the back nine, but the lob wedge continued to give me headaches. The 10th hole was just a big white circle with the pin on the fairway – the green was being repaired. All I had to do was get the ball to land in the white circle and count that. But I kept skimming the ground with the lob wedge, overshooting the target over and over. What could have been a par* resulted in a 6.

On hole 13 I had a legitimate chance at a birdie but ended up three-putting for a bogey instead. The good news is I only three-putted two other times on the back nine. In addition to keeping my right arm close on my backswing, my other goal today was keeping the putts down.

Hole 18, at 305 yards, continued to be trouble. I hit the first shot straight down the fairway but my second shot landed under some trees. I shot it out with a 9-iron but lost it, resigned to take a penalty drop. As I hit my next stroke I found the original ball, halfway up a steep hill where the green sat on top. I played my original ball and managed to get it on the green, but an agonizing three-putt gave me the only 8 of the day.

I guess it's a sign of progress when an 8 on the scorecard is an aberration rather than an expectation.

What I like about golf is that the moment before the swing, you are all concentration and living in the moment. At those times when you can keep your mind still and follow it with a well-executed stroke, the game is sublime.

One final note: I finished the game with a 101 – still unable to break 100 on even a par-3 course, but that is 18 strokes better than last week. I call that progress.

Today's scorecard: