Alright, so folks have been asking me a bit about what I was up to with this “Chris Patton golf” stuff I mentioned. It’s not like I discovered some ancient secret or anything, let me tell you. It all started because, well, my golf game was pretty much a dumpster fire, especially anything inside 100 yards. Seriously, I could sometimes smack a drive okay, get it somewhere near the green, and then the real horror show would begin. Skulls across the green, fat chunks that went about two feet… you name the bad shot, I was an expert at it.
Figuring Out What to Even Try
I was getting seriously fed up. Spending all that time and money to just, well, suck. I’d read a bunch of magazines, watched a ton of videos, but nothing really stuck. It was all too complicated, too many things to think about at once. Then, I stumbled across some mentions of Chris Patton – not sure if it was a specific pro, or just some approach people were calling that, but the gist I got was about simplifying things. Keeping it real basic.
So, I thought, “Okay, what have I got to lose?” My pride was already in tatters on the golf course. The first thing I decided to focus on, based on what I pieced together about this “Patton” idea, was just a super simple chipping motion. Like, ridiculously simple. Forget all the fancy wrist hinges and body turns for a bit.
The Actual Grind – Getting My Hands Dirty
I went to the practice green. Man, those first few attempts were ugly. Still duffing it, still blading it. It felt weird, trying to do less. My brain kept wanting to add all the old, bad habits back in. I remember thinking, “This is never going to work.” But I stuck with it. I literally told myself, “Just this one simple thought, this one simple motion.”
My “practice” involved a lot of this:
- Picking a spot about 10 feet away.
- Trying to just get the ball to land there with a very basic, almost putting-like stroke with a wedge.
- Not worrying about backspin, or trajectory, or any of that fancy stuff. Just… connection.
- I spent hours, no joke, just hitting these tiny little chips. Over and over.
It was boring. It was repetitive. But slowly, and I mean S-L-O-W-L-Y, something started to click. I’d hit one, and it would actually pop up nicely and roll towards the hole. Then another. Then a bad one. Then a couple more good ones. It wasn’t magic, it was just brute force repetition of something simple.
So, Did It Work? My Takeaway
Here’s the thing. Am I now a short game wizard? Heck no. Golf is still hard, and I still hit plenty of lousy shots. But that focus on simplification, what I kinda dubbed my “Chris Patton experiment,” it definitely helped. My chipping is way more consistent than it used to be. I’m not terrified of those little shots around the green anymore. At least, not as terrified.
What I really learned was that sometimes, you just gotta strip everything back. Find one tiny thing that makes a bit of sense, and just hammer away at it until it becomes second nature. For me, that was this super basic chipping idea I associated with Patton. It wasn’t a miracle cure for my whole game, but it fixed one leaky part of the boat, you know? And that made the whole experience a bit less frustrating and a bit more fun. It’s a small win, but I’ll take it.
It’s like anything in life, I guess. You wade through a lot of noise and complex advice, and sometimes the simplest path, the one you just commit to grinding out, is the one that actually gets you somewhere. So yeah, that’s my “Chris Patton golf” journey. Nothing revolutionary, just good old-fashioned trying stuff until something sticks.