Got up at 6 a.m., met Jack and Kenny in the parking lot at 7 O'clock and drove to Bay Hill. By 7:30 a.m., I was sitting down in the player-family dining room with DJ having breakfast.
Done by eight and on the putting green. Putted for about 45 minutes and headed for the driving range where we were standing right beside the other DJ on Tour, Dustin Johnson. Then, headed to the first tee to play with Dustin Johnson, Pat Perez and Jason Gore.
When I met Dustin on the range and shook hands with him, my medium large cadet, average size hand, mine was absolutely surrounded by his hand. It's unbelievable how big his hands are, and he's got really big forearms. It's obvious those are two of the advantages he has of hitting the ball so far.
Let me tell you, Dustin Johnson can hit it. He can hit it really far. On average, through the whole 18 holes he was 30 yards past DJ with his driver. A couple times he must have hit it somewhere in the 50 yard range past him.
The most unbelievable one was on the 16th hole. They have a bunker down the right side, they've turned it back into a par 5, and were playing into a slight cross wind. I heard Dustin's caddy say to him that is was 340 to carry the bunker on the right, so he should hit it left. But when he hit it, the wind blew the ball a little bit. He missed carrying that bunker by about 6 to 8 yards. This guy can really smoke it.
The thing that's amazing about him is that he's got an extremely good short game. Around the greens, his chipping and pitching are really accurate. His distance control is phenomenal for a man with his length, and to top it all off, he's a really good putter. That's why he's already won three times on the Tour.
While we were playing, DJ was swinging well again today. His irons where extremely good and, what I really liked was his T-Finish. His irons were right on the spot. His right hand was close to his left ear where we want to see it with a good T-Finish, and his torso was square to the target.
But, with his driver, he was tending to get a little wide, with his right hand finishing with as much as six inches away from his ear. The means he's wide and that was actually causing his shoulders to turn out a little bit past the target. It was giving him a little problem with some soft blocks and pulls, but overall, driving relatively straight. I wanted to tighten that up. I didn't mention anything to him and decided I'd wait for the range.
We had a good 18 holes and DJ and I went to lunch. When we walked into the family dining room, it was basically empty except for one table by the front door when we walked in. It was a big table and had about 8 or 10 people seated at it. We sat down at the next table and I glanced over there.
The first think that popped out at me was the NFL Lombardi Championship trophy that was sitting in the middle of that table. When I glanced to the right of it, there was Arnie. It was obvious that the owner of the New Orleans Saints was there and they were having a nice conversation. After a few minutes they got up and started to take pictures inside the dining room. Then they all went out and were taking pictures on the putting green.
That was quite an experience. You don't expect to walk into the dining room at Bay Hall, or any golf tournament, and have the Lombardi championship trophy sitting right there on the table. That was pretty cool.
After lunch we went out to the putting green, working on the putting. The big thing we worked on putting in the morning, and I was really pleased to see in the afternoon, was that Jack and Kenny, my brother, both are phenomenal putters and Jack works with DJ and me on our putting, he felt that DJ's putter was coming back a little too fast in the backswing and had a tendency to get it back too long. So we worked on it in the morning, did very well on the golf course, then we went back to the green and worked on that again. Take it back low and slow so you can accelerate with the upward stroke to get overspin on the ball.
We spent about 45 minutes doing that and went back to the range, I told DJ I wanted to get his hands finishing closer to his left or front ear. We got it tightened up and he was really smoking it, getting really solid straight drives, and a very tight flight pattern. That's was I was looking for. I'm pretty confident that he's got that nailed and it will be with him this week.
We went back to the putting green where we putted a little bit more, then off to the side where he hit some pitches over the bunker, not really flops, but high soft ones. Then we did bunker shots, then chipping and pitching and wrapped it up with about ten more minutes of putting. By about 6 o'clock, the day was over.
As we were walking back to the club house, I ran into my best friend, Anthony Netto. I wrote an article about him a couple months ago, “Meet My Friend, Anthony.” Anthony is a paraplegic golf professional who has invented a “super wheel chair,” the Paramobile, a three wheeled chair. He helped start an organization called vets-help.org. It's to help U.S. veterans who've come back from the war who have been injured, especially those who are disabled. The goal of vets-help.og is to introduce these vets to the activity of golf so that hopefully they can use golf with his wheel chair and get out there and get on with their life because it's got a lot of great things to help them get back to being active people again, as well as physical activity is good for their well being. You can read about all this at www.vets-help.org. There's a video there of Anthony. You can see him hitting golf balls.
He is the epitome and poster player for the Peak Performance Golf Swing because Anthony is strapped in, just below the chest down. All he can swing with his arms. He has no rotation, because he's strapped in. Anthony can hit a ball at least 120 mph, which is very close to 300 yards on average with a driver, strapped into the Paramobile. I believe he gives more credence to the fact that the Peak Performance Golf Swing is a limited turn, lot of arms, 3/4 golf swing. He can do it. He does everything from putting to chipping and hitting, as I said, drives that can go 300 yards in the air.
It ended up being a pretty good day. We got done with everything and DJ left at 7 o'clock. He had to get back to his condo and let Buckley, his dog, out. Jack went back to North Carolina, where he lives, and Kenny and I headed down to Port. t. Lucie where we're going to start a Peak Performance Golf School.
We had one heck of a day and a lot of unusual situations we bumped into, like the trophy and, best of all, Anthony Netto.
The Surge!