First, I must apologize for not writing a blog during my recent journey to Florida to play in a tournament and attend the PGA Merchandise Show.

It was my one-year anniversary of blogging, which has been fun. I’m looking forward to continuing this feature in 2009.

Let’s start with the golf. I teamed up again with the veteran Larry Ziegler for the Winter Senior Junior Championship at PGA Village in Port St. Lucie, Fla. We got a couple practice rounds in, and the weather was great. But as we looked toward the forecast for the tournament, a cold front with high winds was heading our way.

The first round of the tournament started out slow for us as we made the turn only 1-under par. The winds were really starting to pick up as we had an afternoon time, which means that our second round would be in the morning, when the cold front arrived with stronger winds.

We finished the second round with a 4-under-par 68, and we both felt good about the round except for not making any putts longer than 8 feet. Our ball-striking was pretty good, and we just didn’t make any putts.

The next morning was absolutely brutal. The high temperature for the day – 62 degrees – was recorded at 7 a.m., and the wind was whipping at 30 mph with gusts over 45 mph.

Needless to say, it was tough.

We started OK, making pars on the first three holes. Then some unfortunate events happened. We had things like our balls ending up in divots, started three-putting, and before you know it, we were 3-over par on our first nine and really struggling.

Larry started the back nine with a birdie, and I thought that would be the turnaround. Wrong. We proceeded to bogey the next two holes from about 100 yards or so.

At that point, we just tried to keep it under 80 and finish the round with out hurting ourselves. We ended up shooting an embarrassing best ball of 79 and obviously missing the cut.

I must say I enjoyed playing with Larry. As I told him, I think we were probably the oldest team in the field at a combined total of 117 years.

But I will not miss those back tees, as this was the last time that I would be playing as the junior member of the team. So goodbye back tees, and hello Senior tees next year.

As always, Larry kept working with me on my short game, and he also emphasized how important it is to stay in shape and, more importantly, maintain your flexibility. So my goal now is to continue working on my short game as I struggle with wanting to flip the club head at the ball to help it up in the air, which is just totally wrong.

The other important thing I will work on is regaining my flexibility, which will help me with some distance.

Next week I will talk about the PGA Merchandise Show and the happenings from Orlando from last week. Till next week, you just might see me in the gym.

Jeff Schroeder

PGA Head Professional

Brickyard Crossing