After long consideration, I have decided to start writing about my progress on turning pro in Golf. I have never written a blog before, so I am not really sure how this is all going to pan out, but we will see.
I guess I should start by introducing myself, explain a bit about what I am doing and what I am expecting to achieve.
My name is John Angemi, I am 34 years old and live in on the Gold Coast QLD, Australia. I am self employed as an Mobile App Developer. I make games for IOS and I love it. I don't have any top hits, but most of my games are pretty cool. (I'll add a link at the bottom to my games in case your interested). Anyway, enough about that.
So, what am I doing? Well at the start of this year I decided I wanted to turn my passion for golf into a career. I mean I love making games, but playing golf for a living!, who wouldn't want that? At the time of making this ambitious decision, I was playing off a 27 Handicap (AGU), in February 2014. I was averaging 100+ gross score no matter which golf course I played. I lost on average of 6-10 golf balls every single round of golf I played. Sound Familiar? So why on earth would I even dream that something like this was at all achievable? I had passion. I love golf. And that was enough for me to make this decision.
I have read so many forums out there about guys/girls asking the question. Can I turn pro at 30? And so many responses are NO. Or people taking the piss. Well to those people who asked that question obviously have some passion and love for the game of golf, otherwise they would not have ever asked. Now I am not saying that all it takes is passion and love for the game and then all of a sudden you will turn pro. But passion and love for golf is an absolute MUST! So, to those people who have ever wondered can it be done, we are going to find out. Because from this day forward I will document as much as I can about my training, my competitions, my winnings and my failures. I am going to be completely upfront about it. Hopefully it will make an interesting read for all of you who get to read it, if anyone.
Ok, so what have I been doing since February? Playing lots and lots and lots of golf. Seriously, I play golf every single day. No matter what the weather decides to dish out, I am on the golf course playing, practicing (sometimes swearing :)- I am a firm believer that to learn to play golf, you must practice on the golf course. That's right, on the golf course. not the driving range. There will be so many people who are going to disagree with me, and that's cool, but this is what works for me. When you are on the golf course you are faced with real life situations. You learn to face all sorts of situations you would face in a competition. And you can't get that on a driving range. I have asked quite a few golfers, including golf pros what they recommend about practising, and I would have to say it's a 50/50 split between golf course and driving range. I much prefer the golf course for the reasons I mentioned above, but above all it's a lot more fun on the course than standing in 1 spot hitting hundreds of balls. I guess another good point would be it's so much cheaper. If you have a full membership on the golf course, it costs you nothing to go out and play, but most courses even with a full membership will still charge you $5-$10 for a bucket of range balls. So yeah, I am dragging this out too much now, but that's where I have decided to practice. And the results are speaking for themselves. More on the results soon.
I also spend quite a bit of time on YouTube, watching golf swings by Adam Scott & Rory Mcilroy, and this has also helped me tremendously. Because it gives me a great visual of what my swing should be like. Then when I am out practicing, I try to visualise the swing. People are amazed when they see my posture at setup, and get many compliments. All thanks to watching the videos.
At the time of writing this first blog post 23rd of July 2014 my handicap is down to 10.4 (AGU). I have to say I am very happy with my progress. That's a drop of 16.6 strokes in 5 months. Yes, I feel very proud to announce that, I think I have come such a long way in such little time. Seeing these results, I am feeling very confident I can achieve my next intermediate goal of reaching 4.4 handicap by the end of September 2014.
I just realised, I didn't mention what date I am trying to achieve my goal of turning pro. When I started this journey in February I had set a goal in my mind to enter QSchool in December 2014 for the Australasian PGA Tour. I have to say, I think it is slightly possible to still reach this, but if I can't, 2015 will be my back up date for turning pro. As you can imagine, losing this last 10 or so strokes off my round and playing consistently under par ( Which is what I believe needs to happen before I consider myself ready ) is not as easy as dropping the first 16.
Anyway, this post has gone on much longer than I had first imagined, so I am going to say goodbye for now. My future posts will just include small updates of my progress, I'll share some videos of my swing, share some photos of my scorecards and whatever else I think would be good to share.
If you want to make any comments feel free to do so, I will answer any questions when I have time. I hope you found this a little intriguing.
Bye for now
John
P.S: For those of you who may be interested in checking out my games here is my link to the App Store. I appreciate any support as it will keep me sustainable to achieve my goals. Enjoy!
https://itunes.apple.com/au/artist/john-angemi/id570903556
I guess I should start by introducing myself, explain a bit about what I am doing and what I am expecting to achieve.
My name is John Angemi, I am 34 years old and live in on the Gold Coast QLD, Australia. I am self employed as an Mobile App Developer. I make games for IOS and I love it. I don't have any top hits, but most of my games are pretty cool. (I'll add a link at the bottom to my games in case your interested). Anyway, enough about that.
So, what am I doing? Well at the start of this year I decided I wanted to turn my passion for golf into a career. I mean I love making games, but playing golf for a living!, who wouldn't want that? At the time of making this ambitious decision, I was playing off a 27 Handicap (AGU), in February 2014. I was averaging 100+ gross score no matter which golf course I played. I lost on average of 6-10 golf balls every single round of golf I played. Sound Familiar? So why on earth would I even dream that something like this was at all achievable? I had passion. I love golf. And that was enough for me to make this decision.
I have read so many forums out there about guys/girls asking the question. Can I turn pro at 30? And so many responses are NO. Or people taking the piss. Well to those people who asked that question obviously have some passion and love for the game of golf, otherwise they would not have ever asked. Now I am not saying that all it takes is passion and love for the game and then all of a sudden you will turn pro. But passion and love for golf is an absolute MUST! So, to those people who have ever wondered can it be done, we are going to find out. Because from this day forward I will document as much as I can about my training, my competitions, my winnings and my failures. I am going to be completely upfront about it. Hopefully it will make an interesting read for all of you who get to read it, if anyone.
Ok, so what have I been doing since February? Playing lots and lots and lots of golf. Seriously, I play golf every single day. No matter what the weather decides to dish out, I am on the golf course playing, practicing (sometimes swearing :)- I am a firm believer that to learn to play golf, you must practice on the golf course. That's right, on the golf course. not the driving range. There will be so many people who are going to disagree with me, and that's cool, but this is what works for me. When you are on the golf course you are faced with real life situations. You learn to face all sorts of situations you would face in a competition. And you can't get that on a driving range. I have asked quite a few golfers, including golf pros what they recommend about practising, and I would have to say it's a 50/50 split between golf course and driving range. I much prefer the golf course for the reasons I mentioned above, but above all it's a lot more fun on the course than standing in 1 spot hitting hundreds of balls. I guess another good point would be it's so much cheaper. If you have a full membership on the golf course, it costs you nothing to go out and play, but most courses even with a full membership will still charge you $5-$10 for a bucket of range balls. So yeah, I am dragging this out too much now, but that's where I have decided to practice. And the results are speaking for themselves. More on the results soon.
I also spend quite a bit of time on YouTube, watching golf swings by Adam Scott & Rory Mcilroy, and this has also helped me tremendously. Because it gives me a great visual of what my swing should be like. Then when I am out practicing, I try to visualise the swing. People are amazed when they see my posture at setup, and get many compliments. All thanks to watching the videos.
At the time of writing this first blog post 23rd of July 2014 my handicap is down to 10.4 (AGU). I have to say I am very happy with my progress. That's a drop of 16.6 strokes in 5 months. Yes, I feel very proud to announce that, I think I have come such a long way in such little time. Seeing these results, I am feeling very confident I can achieve my next intermediate goal of reaching 4.4 handicap by the end of September 2014.
I just realised, I didn't mention what date I am trying to achieve my goal of turning pro. When I started this journey in February I had set a goal in my mind to enter QSchool in December 2014 for the Australasian PGA Tour. I have to say, I think it is slightly possible to still reach this, but if I can't, 2015 will be my back up date for turning pro. As you can imagine, losing this last 10 or so strokes off my round and playing consistently under par ( Which is what I believe needs to happen before I consider myself ready ) is not as easy as dropping the first 16.
Anyway, this post has gone on much longer than I had first imagined, so I am going to say goodbye for now. My future posts will just include small updates of my progress, I'll share some videos of my swing, share some photos of my scorecards and whatever else I think would be good to share.
If you want to make any comments feel free to do so, I will answer any questions when I have time. I hope you found this a little intriguing.
Bye for now
John
P.S: For those of you who may be interested in checking out my games here is my link to the App Store. I appreciate any support as it will keep me sustainable to achieve my goals. Enjoy!
https://itunes.apple.com/au/artist/john-angemi/id570903556