Appleby "frees it up" en route to best finish of season

Stuart Appleby sent out the following message on his Twitter on the Sunday before the 2010 Verizon Heritage tournament in Harbor Town:

"Time, age, quality, coaching, competition, direction....many more. All of those but still to know how then play like a kid...swing away....Your direction, what you want.Paint the picture of how you want your game to be.To putt with confidence you need to be ok with missing putts...that's the most important thing. All good putters don't get wrapped up in missing only excited at the chance to make the next putt".

Appleby stayed true to those words all week as he "played like a kid" all the way to a t-8 finish at Harbor Town Golf Links, his best of the season so far.

Shooting rounds of 69, 67, 73 and 67, Appleby finished at 8 under par, 5 shots outside the playoff between Jim Furyk and Brian Davis, which Furyk went on to win. The 67's he shot in the 2nd and 4th rounds were his best scores of the season, one in which he has continued his struggles from last year.

Prior to this week, Appleby's best finish of the 2010 PGA Tour season was T30 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. This coming on the back of his worst season on the PGA Tour where he lost his playing privileges finishing outside the top 125 on the money list. For a man who is ranked 16th in career earnings on the PGA Tour, this was uncharted territory. In fact, he is using his one-time exemption for being ranked in the top 25 in career earnings to play on Tour this year.

For the likable Aussie's fans around the world, it has been a frustrating experience watching a player with such beautiful technique struggle this way. However even the best players in the world can sometimes get too caught up in being technically perfect and lose sight of the most important thing in golf: get the ball in the hole in the least amount of shots.

Judging from Appleby's tweets before this week, he understood the need to go back to having fun playing the game, like he did as a kid. His coach Steve Bann spoke earlier in the week about their preparation for the Verizon Heritage:

"Harbor Town is a course where even if you're in the fairway, you often have trees in your way and it just forces you to be creative with your shot making. Add to that the fact that these are some of the smallest greens you'll see on Tour all year, and you've got a course where you need all the shots....Stuart and I have been working on our 9 ball drill a lot in practice, i.e draws, fades and straight shots at low, medium and high trajectory. It really brings out your creative side and makes you visualize shots...he's had lots of fun with that".

The numbers tell the story: Appleby ranked T8 in Greens in Regulation and T19 in Putts per Greens In Regulation. That translates into lots of birdies and par saves, exactly what you need to do well at Harbor Town.

Appleby's legion of fans will be hoping this is just the spark he needed to kick off a run of strong play to get back to being a regular contender on the weekends.

Thanks to Pure Golf Blog for this article.

Choi contends, finishes T4 at Masters

South Korea’s K.J Choi has emphatically announced his return to top level form with a stellar performance in the final round of the 2010 Augusta Masters to finish T4.
Choi was tied for the lead heading into the business end of Sunday’s final round, however consecutive bogeys at the 13th and 14th holes put paid to his chances. Still, Choi has plenty to be proud of, having demonstrated that he is once again playing the kind of golf that saw him become a world top 10 ranked player earlier in his career. He has recently played his way out of a slump and his results have been very impressive already this year, having finished 2nd at the Transitions Championship and making the cut in every event he has entered.
Choi had the unique distinction of playing all 4 days at Augusta National with Tiger Woods, and contrary to many people’s expectations prior to the tournament that his game would suffer due to the distraction, Choi reveled in the spotlight and matched the world number 1 blow for blow. He might have come up a little short in his title challenge (eventually finishing 5 shots behind champion Phil Mickelson) however Choi will surely take many positives out of this week:
“I’m satisfied and it was gratifying for me this year and the fans were very supportive and just playing with Tiger for the last four days was a very good experience for me,” said Choi, who has previously won Tiger Woods’ event, the AT&T National.
The strongman from South Korea was trying to emulate the feat of his countryman Y.E Yang, who beat Woods at the PGA Championship last year to become the first Asian to win one of golf’s majors. Yang also finished inside the top 10 this year at Augusta, perhaps another sign of the growing influence of Asian golfers in the men’s game. Choi spoke about the increased belief amongst Korean and Asian players that they belong on the world stage:
“In the past … the mindset of the Asian players was that when it comes to the Masters, there was a fear factor there, that we can’t do it. Now I hope that this gives motivation for the younger players, other players, that they can do it at big tournaments like the Masters.”
His coach Steve Bann had been very pleased with the way K.J prepared for this year’s event, having spent a lot of time working on his short game and lag putting and trying to stay fresh by not playing too many practice rounds. “K.J has done a great job of balancing his practice routine to make sure his short game is sharp while his ball striking is the best I’ve seen it for quite some time” he said earlier in the week.
Choi’s game was certainly sharp for the best part of the tournament, and if he keeps playing this way it can’t be too long before he breaks through for his first major win.
Written by on April 12, 2010