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I get the question a lot. Why don’t you use a driver? I get the question so much, it becomes pretty annoying. To get the answer, look no further than Scottie Scheffler this weekend at the PGA Championship.

Everyone on TV (and off) raves about Scheffler. He is the consensus No. 1 player in the world the past few years. He does things that astound us and defy imagination. He ran away with his third major title this weekend, despite being unable to hit a fairway consistently with his driver. Instead he repeatedly got lucky, bouncing drives off trees and still making pars and birdies.

If he can’t be more consistently on target with a driver, how can I expect to be? Coincidentally, the misses he gets with his driver are the same as mine. He either push-fades it to the right or pulls it straight left. So, I can take some solace in that sense, I am just like Scottie the Great.

I’ve played golf for 40 years and it took me about 30 years to figure out driver has ruined my game for decades.

The big problem is, when I hit a pull drive like Scottie did over and over on the front nine today, I used to think I made a bad swing. I would then get over my next 7-iron shot thinking my bad swing is pulling left, so I better adjust in some way. When the 7-iron shot would fly way right or in some other form off target, I would think I made another bad swing and the fight was on. I would spend the rest of the round playing army golf (left-right, left-right-left) with a head full of swing thoughts, all because of one bad drive.

About three or four years ago, I decided to do a test. I entered the Arctic Valley Open and played the entire 36-hole event hitting nothing more than a 5-iron off the tee. I hit every fairway for two days and that included the Creek Course in Round 2.

Some might say anyone could hit every fairway if they hit a 5-iron, but the successful experiment sparked some new experiments. I went to a tournament in Mesquite Nevada, a net event called the Mesquite Amateur. It’s a three-round event and I teed off with 5-iron in Round 1. I shot 78 and was in fifth place. Round 2, I allowed some fairway woods to enter the mix and shot 86. Round 3, I hit driver all around the course and shot 92. I should note those were my first rounds in eight months with no practice or warm-up prior to any of the rounds.

A few years prior to that, the State Am was at AGC. I only had irons in my bag and shot 77 in the first round. I added woods later and didn’t break 80 in either of the final two rounds.

Logic would say that all means I’m just bad with woods and drivers, but I’m not at all. All my life, I have killed drivers and fairway woods to great success. I’ve even had numerous people tell me they can’t believe how straight and long I drive the ball. So, how did I do that? When I was young and worked at golf courses, I hit at least four buckets of balls per day and played many rounds of golf per week. I knew every club in my bag very well, including driver.

Such an insane amount of practice is not an option for me these days, so for several years, I’ve been wracking my brain to figure out how to play well without practicing. A funny pattern started to surface.

I would go to a course, having not touched a club in a week or more. This was something completely new to me, something I was petrified to do all my life. How could I go tee off without warming up? Inconceivable. So, I would go to the first tee and tee off with a 5-iron and put it perfectly on target almost every time. No warm-up, no practice, just swinging away like riding a bike and boom, right on the money.

I would even play so well for the first five holes or so, I swore off the range altogether. One day, I birdied the first three holes at the Creek without hardly a practice swing. There was no need for practice or warm-up before a round. Golf was easy.

Then, a par-5 would arrive, like No. 6 at AGC or Settlers. I would pull out the driver, full of confidence, feeling loose and limber. I would aim the driver down the right side of the fairway, expecting a draw like every shot I had hit so far and instead get a push fade out of bounds. The rest of the day was done for. I was rattled and unable to get anything on target again.

I’ve taken lessons and read books to try to correct swing flaws that may be preventing me from hitting it well with my entire bag. I looked for swing mechanics that made it impossible to hit the ball crooked. The education worked and culminated with a great round one day in the Palmer Invitational. I shot 73, using a driver all day and hitting every fairway. I drove home that day vowing to quit golf if that was the correct way to play. It was no fun.

The swing changes I made allowed me to hit the ball straight with every club, but I lost all connection with the target. I was down the fairway and on the green, but never hit a shot that really made my day.

The next day, I went back to hitting the ball my way, shot 84, but left the course in a much better mood.

The joy of golf is in hitting targets, looking up and seeing the ball flying magically, right where you intended. The joy doesn’t come from a number on a scorecard. I shot a 90 in the qualifying round of the state match play event last year and left the course with the biggest smile, because so many shots were absolute bulls eyes. The next day I shot 73 with the only change being a course softened by rain.

Last Wednesday, I played my fourth round of the year. My persimmon 3-wood I had been teeing off with was falling apart, so I brought a hybrid to use off the tee. I couldn’t even make contact with the face of the club until the 10th hole. The only reason I could come up with for this was the drastic difference in the swing-weight of the club compared to my persimmon 3-wood. I’ve gotten used to the heavy persimmon with a steel shaft over the past few rounds and the switch to a graphite shaft with a light weight club head was too much of a transition.

The funny thing was, my irons were on the money right out of the gate. For example, I duffed three straight shots with the hybrid on the par-5 third hole. I was 200 yard out for my fourth shot and hit the most beautiful 5-iron you ever saw. I nearly made the resulting 10-footer for par.

I continued in that same vein to the end of the front nine, nearly acing my shot at the par-3 ninth. On the 10th tee, I made an adjustment to my swing for the first time. I tried a little more upright takeaway with the hybrid and boom, a much better shot. On the 11th tee, better still. My next two approach shots missed wildly to the right and it was clear to me the adjustment to the hybrid ruined my iron shots.

In the old days, I would just go to the range and hit 50 or 100 hybrids to get a groove going with that club. I would probably hit a dozen or so shots with all the other clubs too. Then, my next round, I would make subtle adjustments to each club back and forth and play a decent round. My solution these days: the hybrid goes back in the closet. I don’t have time to fiddle around.

When I read stories of Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, and Jack Nicklaus, I read about players who striped drives down the narrowest of fairways. I heard a story once about Lee Trevino showing up to a U.S. Open qualifying round with one ball in his bag. He knew he wouldn’t ever lose a ball. Now we have Scheffler spraying drives that would corrupt any round at the Creek and Bryson DeChambeau missing every fairway in his victorious final round last summer at the U.S. Open.

The modern driver is such a mess, they are now selling mini-drivers. I even saw a few guys using those at the PGA Championship this weekend. There would be no need to invent a mini-driver if the regular driver worked.

As an old friend of mine once said, “I can use a driver or I can enjoy golf.”

I’ll be going back to a bag full of irons for my fifth round of the year on Wednesday.

Funny thing tends to happen after a session at the driving range: I proceed to hook the ball like crazy on the golf course. This has happened for years and it happened again last week, in my third round of the year.

I visited the driving range on Saturday, five days prior to my third round of the season. I hit half a bucket and didn’t touch a club again until the first tee shot on Wednesday. To provide context, my first round of the year was mostly garbage, but the second round was surprisingly solid. I entered my third round full of optimism, until my first three tee shots hooked into the left rough, sparking a bogey, par, bogey, par start to the round.

These hooks weren’t of the variety that sail out of bounds, mind you, but they were poor enough shots that I had to fight to save bogey at times.

The other important piece of information is that I was striping it at the range. I was even hitting the ball so solidly, I was surprising myself.

So, by the time I reached the eighth hole at Palmer Golf Course, I had accepted my swing is in hook mode. I couldn’t stop. I decided to take the opportunity to experiment with a weaker grip, and I mean a minuscule adjustment of the left hand. The result: no more hooks, not one. The problem: I started losing half my shots to the right of my target. All of this led to basic bogey golf and an 89, my worst score of the season. Of course, score doesn’t matter to me, but it provides a frame of reference for those who care.

Final analysis: changing my grip is not a good idea, and I know from past experience the hooks will go away the more holes I play. So, no more trips to the range, where I feel two bad things happen. First, it screws up my alignment and second, it changes my release point in the sense that it makes my hand action more lively.

On a side note, a P.S. of sorts: My persimmon three wood, which I have been hitting off the tee for all three rounds is starting to come unraveled again at the ferrel. I’m convinced Louisville golf doesn’t put together sturdy clubs, as all of the three I ordered broke last summer. I’ve had them repaired over the winter and was hoping they would hold up for this entire summer, but it doesn’t look good.

The unraveling three wood led me to try a few driver shots, using my playing companions drivers. They thought the drives looked great, but I did not. So, I’ll be going with a three wood and a hybrid for my fourth round of the year.

When I woke up Wednesday, golf didn’t look like a good idea. Once I arrived at Palmer Golf Course, the small number of cars in the parking lot confirmed I was correct, but I went out anyway. Though it was too cold and wet, I’m glad I played, because my game was really starting to click.

To recap, Round 1 was pretty poor. Contactless play for half a round, meaning literally almost whiffing the ball, then decent striking on the back nine.

I began Round 2 without range warm-up. My first shot was my first swing of the day and I laced my tee shot right down the center. I went on to par the first four holes and was in position to par or birdie for the first 16 holes. I finished with a pair of sixes on the last two holes and shot 79.

When I replayed the round in my mind that night, it was clear I could have shot 65 real easy. I only hit two bad tee shots and they were on the last two holes in the worst of the weather and when this old man may have been getting tired. Eliminate those and I’m down to 77. The other 12 strokes to shave my way to 65 would have to come from short game.

For example, I hit a makable chip shot too hard on five and made bogey, just missed a short birdie putt at the sixth, failed to convert an easy up-and-down at nine, another at 11, another at 14. You get the idea. Were there really 12 shots to make up on and around the greens? absolutely.

The only alternative to making up the strokes within the short game is to find a way to hit my iron shots to five feet all day, on every hole. That’s not going to happen, for many reasons; the biggest reason being, there is no way for me to practice with ProV1s and a trackman for hours a week, determining exactly how far I hit each club in my bag.

So, if I’m checking boxes on technique alone, just two rounds in to the season, I can say putting is a check, chipping is a check, iron play is a check and tee shots are a check. The only thing to work on is touch and feel, primarily on and around the greens.

The greens were all open at Palmer, by the way, and the course has potential to be really nice this year. The weather should be a little warmer, maybe topping 50 degrees Wednesday for Round 3.

Two prominent, skilled Alaskan golfers punctuated my first round of 2025 with talk of the yips. This is worth discussing, because neither of the players are bad putters in my mind, but both seem to have zero confidence in themselves.

One of them invented a completely new grip designed to keep his thumbs off the club while putting, because the right thumb in particular seemed to be the cause of all his problems. The other yipster ordered a side-saddle putter from Billy Bomar, who still lives in Post Falls, ID and is still heavily involved in the professional golf world.

It will be interesting to see how their respective experiments go. We talked at length in the Palmer clubhouse about their issues, with one of them concluding golf just isn’t fun if you are afraid of eight-foot putts. Though not specifically expressed, it sounded as though the lifelong golfer would give up the game if his new grip doesn’t work.

At one point, I mentioned I enjoy myself even while shooting 87 and the yipster said he can’t do that. I thought about that for a couple of days, wondering why I enjoy golf so much more than him. Is it just because I don’t have the yips? I concluded it was because I still hit 80 percent of shots really well during a “bad” round. All my extra strokes come from the type of shots that are easily shrugged off, because they are just a result of not being sharp or polished. The vast majority of the time, I’m giddy with excitement over how well I am hitting the ball with all my clubs, so score doesn’t matter. I know if I played more often, I would score well.

Someone with the yips, however, doesn’t know what is happening to them. Having no answers to a puzzle is frustrating and therefore a source of angst. This forces a golfer to feel like giving up, because they are at their wits end and can’t take it anymore.

As for my own personal opening round at Palmer Golf Course, I didn’t keep score, but it would have been around 85. The first tee shot was my first swing of the year, and I couldn’t even make contact with most full shots until the eighth hole. I started hitting real golf shots by the 10th tee and even birdied 11 and 12. I finished strong and felt warmed up for the 2025 season.

Palmer still had some temporary greens, but there was a ton of grass on the greens from which tarps had just been removed. George Collum, who manages the course, was excited about how things look so far and said if we can get a warm May, the course could be in the best shape it’s been for many years.

One last thought about the yips. Lucas Glover of the PGA Tour, a U.S. Open winner, battled yips for years before discovering the problem wasn’t mental. Scientists have proven that yips in all sports are actually a physical problem created by overuse of muscles. Professional athletes who have repeatedly made the same physical movements at extreme levels of practice and play actually ruin the brain-to-muscle connection. Their body parts literally won’t listen to the brain’s command anymore. The solution for Glover was to come up with a new method for putting, one that used different muscles to fire the club through the ball. It worked and his career has been thriving ever since.

Said knowledge would indicate that both Alaskan Yipsters referred to in this post are on the right track. I expect their brand new methods will work and golf will be fun again.

I caught a glimpse of an interview with Ludvig Aberg, in which he states his hometown in Sweden has a super short golf season, one in which tournaments can’t be played until April and are done by October.

This made me laugh and served to remind me just how short our Alaskan golf season really is. I write this on Easter Sunday, as snow is still melting in Anchorage. Palmer Golf Course is open, but that’s it, and we won’t be holding tournaments until late June. You can bet the courses will still be in poor shape at that time. Alaskan tournament play concludes before we hit September. July and August are really all we’ve got for meaningful competition.

As for competitive significance, Alaska holds a special place worth paying attention to in the grand scheme of things. As I’ve said before, it is fair to categorize us as the least competitive golfers in the U.S., perhaps the world. As I have also said, we are not the least talented golfers, just the worst from a collective, competitive aspect. Our short season makes it impossible to keep up with those in warmer climates. In a game ruled by touch and feel, we are disadvantaged. If real life were like a video game, Alaska would be the first level of career mode.

Watching the Masters last week, it was easy to see how the best in the world are affected by touch and feel. Their scores rise and fall with their ability to judge wind or read greens. Amateur golfers spend a lot of time trying to hit the ball straight, when really we need to be working on touch and feel.

The problem is, working on touch and feel proves a difficult task in Alaska. Greens are basically sand until July, so you can’t practice your short game anywhere. As the grass does start growing, it grows rapidly. So, courses usually let it get rather shaggy compared to tournament conditions, understandably to let the greens fill in.

When competitive tournaments arrive, like our State Am, they shave the greens down and often roll them to make them relatively fast. There is no way to be prepared for that change in conditions, forcing us to adapt on the fly. This is not a complaint, as it is a welcome change and fun to experience quicker greens, but it does likely add three or four shots per round to the average score.

Having played golf for 40 years, my swing and technique are pretty well established. Going to a driving range doesn’t do much for me. I don’t have a digital measuring device to tell me exactly how far I hit each club and since I’m hitting range balls, it wouldn’t matter anyway. I’ve learned over the years that my best practice is playing on the golf course. In recent years, I’ve even started leaving my approaches short of every green on purpose, so I can practice chipping.

There are only two ways to make birdies in golf: You can hit your approach shots to gimme range, or you can hole long putts and chips. It serves me better, I’ve found to focus on the putts and chips as a method of scoring. If I play 18 holes of golf, I can practice that part of the game on every hole that day. The approach shots all tend to vary enough that it’s hard to dial in all my irons to gimme-range levels.

Aside from that, you just have to get off the tee consistently. I’ve found over the years that I am guilty of trying to fit my game to the clubs instead of fitting the clubs to my game. I am not talking about custom fitting services; I’m talking about being willing to discard any club that doesn’t work. I don’t fight it anymore. If a club isn’t consistently flying the way I like, I’ll just get rid of it and keep my swing the way it is. I’ve found that trying to change my swing to accommodate the club eventually ruins my ability to play the game well, with appropriate touch and feel.

I have reason to believe, I will hit the course for my first round of 2025 this Wednesday at Palmer. I’m hoping my injured left big toe heals in time and the temperature creeps toward 50 degrees.

I’m likely going to make this blog a personal journal of sorts this summer. It’s a selfish decision I don’t expect many to have interest in, but it sounds fun to me. My goals for the summer are to play at least once a week in pursuit of shooting 65 or better with no practice. It may sound impossible, but there are already people who do so, albeit while living in warmer climates.

Judging athletes is always subjective and the source of great debate, but based on my knowledge and what I saw with my own two eyes last summer, Marcus Dolejsi is the best golfer in Alaska.

Though he did win the state match play tournament, that doesn’t factor in my judgement. I knew he would win that event weeks before it happened, because of what I witnessed. Dolejsi’s game took a leap last year. He gained a control over the golf ball he never had before.

I’m so confident he is the best, I will pay $100 to the first person who can beat him in a challenge match, witnessed by me.

After a week of thoughtful meditation, I’m very unlikely to play in weekend tournaments such as the State Am. Weekends are too valuable to give up, and I don’t have the time to focus on competing at the highest level.

My golfing summer will revolve around playing once a week at Palmer in the Wednesday skins game and that’s pretty much it, with a few exceptions. I will continue a life without practice, choosing to just tee it up and go on Wednesdays.

Range time has few benefits for me anymore, and I’m not sure it ever had much benefit. As my sister said last night, practice needs to be done on the course.

The more you play, the better you score. It’s a simple equation. I wish I could play every day, but life doesn’t allow such luxury, so I’ll play the best I can, when I can and that’s it.

That takes care of my decision at this time, but there is still plenty of mystery ahead. Life and golf are always unpredictable. Can’t wait to see what happens.

Spring seems to have arrived earlier than normal in Alaska this year. After recent cold, snowy winters, we finally got a mild one and I even heard George at Palmer Golf Course has had to chase golfers off the course. The weather is so nice, people are just marching out and playing without permission.

While trespassing is usually a bad choice in life, let us be reminded we all have choices to make every day. In watching Sam Olson’s latest interview on Foretee9th golf, I’m reminded that competing is a choice. Rich Teders talks at length to Olson about the lifelong commitment he made to competing at golf and the payoff that took literally decades to achieve. Teders’ journey from struggling to break 120 at Eagleglen to becoming a state champ is full of educational moments.

The apparent questions: do you want to be a competitor? Everyone loves to win, but do we love to make the sacrifices necessary to compete?

It was 12 years ago that a friend of mine from work talked me into competing. We were playing a casual round and he said you should really try practicing and getting in tournaments. I resisted, but then gave in and started committing to my game for the first time in 20 years or so. I hit balls at the Eagleglen range every day and played 18 holes on each day off from work, so two rounds per week. The grind resulted in reaching the semifinals of the state match play tournament. I played in the final foursome with Adam Baxter, Greg Sanders and Marcus Dolejsi, who eventually defeated me.

It was so much fun, I quit practicing altogether and never returned to that level. Instead, I’ve been focused on seeing how well I can play with no practice, which has been an interesting journey of its own. I’ve started entering tournaments just to secure weekend tee times. Last year, I found myself not wanting to win my first match in the net division of the state match play, because I didn’t want to play 36 holes that day. I ended up playing one of my best rounds of the summer and had to walk another 18 in the rain.

I wasn’t there to compete. I was just there to play golf.

I only had one round in which I can say I was truly competing last summer and that was against Todd Santangelo in the Birdie Juice Cup. When he nearly aced the par-3 third hole to take the lead in the match, my juices started flowing and I honestly tried to beat a very worthy opponent. I barely won, 1-up, on what turned into one of my most fun days of the summer.

Even with that, I look ahead to this summer and don’t really want to compete, because it means total commitment. It means being exhausted all week from mashing work and golf together in an all-encompassing fight for glory that you are more than likely going to lose. Then, again, I want to compete for all those same reasons. Dare I say, it is the full on Shakespearean “To be, or not to be?” staring us all in the face.

Is it all worth it? Yes and no. It is your choice. We all have to make up our minds whether we want to attack this summer ahead and find out how good we can get, to find out what happens if we give it our all and play with passion. To do so means willingness to shed blood, sweat and tears all for Alaskan golfing glory that no one on the planet cares about. It’s amazing when you stop to think about it. It’s possible that Alaskan golf provides the most raw, real, honest competition experience on the golfing planet. Do you want to be a part of it?

A golfer with the initials MM has already been out playing on Palmer Golf Course this year. These are the kind of interesting things I learned while watching the foretee9th YouTube channel this week.

The special guest on the Sam Olson show was Nelly, who is listed as Rob Nelson on most official tee sheets. Nelly was full of stories about how good you really have to be to play golf professionally and about being clearly destined to be Alaska’s best golfer.

When he tried to become more than that, he literally got punched in the face and threatened by the presence of Irish Mafia, all while losing his luggage and being so sick he passed out in the hallway of his hotel and spent his last dime on Portuguese medical care.

There are more stories to confirm Nelly’s position in life was no accident, so check out the video when you get time. Nelly has played high-level golf for like a century or more. He details breaking par at age four and stuff like that.

There is hope of an early spring, as us Alaskans are having the best winter in at least a decade. Little snow and relatively warm weather, as in consistently more than 20 degrees outside, makes us giddy with anticipation.

Nelly and his friends have been practicing all winter in their ice shanty, as seen on the Olson show. Nelly says he still has a competitive fire, so look out Alaskan golf. This could be a good year for the older, wiser gent from Palmer.

If I could give golf flowers and a box of chocolates, I gladly would. Instead, I will continue my habitual Sunday blog posting in preparation for a summer that seems miles away here in Alaska.

Our wild winter has shifted from extreme cold to extreme winds to mellow, warm days. All we can do is allow our mind to wander and dream of what next summer might bring.

Plans change, yet we make them anyway. Mine is to play the Wednesday skins at Palmer next summer, as many of them as I can. I’m leaning toward not playing much of any other type of golf. Life has become comfortably busy. Golfing on the weekends gets more difficult each year.

Last summer, I started using my vacation time for a mid-week escape and it was awesome. Unlike the typical weekend, in which my hours become strained with life’s other tasks, playing on Wednesday allowed me to completely focus on golf and nothing else. I would tee off late enough to create stress-free mornings and early enough to allow a relaxed afternoon and evening.

After a lifetime of fitting golf in hurriedly wherever I could, I am allowing myself to make it more of the leisure activity it deserves to be. I hope some of my golfing friends will be able to join me along the way.