[rvwink]

"Stay with it, rvwink. You're gainin' on it!"

You ain't kidding Yoda! Today was my best chipping day ever. Adding the combination of extensor action and much more meticulous tracing to my focus of using pp1 to ground the club after contact, and the continuingly improving piston action worked wonders. When Yoda talked about his chipping practice he talked about pole-ies. My chipping practice had as its reward barrel-ies in general. (When I hit 200 balls, I hoped to get 10 Barrel-ies as an example.) But today I was aiming for a flag about 63 yards away, and frequently ending up very close to the flag i.e. gimmie one putts. What made it tough was that the flag was at the top of the hill, and unless you were within 5 of the right distance, the ball would roll off either the front or back of the green.. Today my 3rd from last chip was a real live pole-ie. Made me smile.

I was hitting 100 balls today in about 29 degrees. I actually started getting bored because my chips were that consistent and that accurate and I felt that I had figured it out finally. So I started hitting a few acquired motion chips just to size up the journey that I had in front of me. I was astonished how improved my acquired motion chips became as a result of the progress I had made on my basic motion. The piston, extensor, tracing and focus on pressure points over clubfaces are all the same. I could be wrong but based on today's sample, it doesn't appear that I am going to need to spend anywhere near as much time on my acquired motion as I have invested in my basic motion.

I have finally figured out what problem I had that was causing me to hit the ball right. Unfortunately occassionally my piston package fires to the left instead of modestly to the right as it should. When it does that, two things happen. First, there is a tendency for my body to straighten up, and second as the result of the outside in action, I tend to leave the ball right. I don't think the problem is necessarily sloppy tracing. I need to really focus in the required feel on piston action that will eliminate the occasional outside in result. There was maybe 1 every 33 shots today, so not that big a deal any more. Sounds like if I concentrate on tracing a straight line and making sure my piston action continues on the straight delivery path, I should be able to beat this problem.