Right now it is in so-so shape; a bit of disarray. I made a swing change at the beginning of the year in an attempt to get more consistency with the irons, particularly with direction. Swing changes take time. I was just beginning to see the desired results, or was getting close to when I expected to see the desired results when I screwed up my right knee.
The injury led to a lay-off of more than a month. Saturday's round with Jeremy was my first round since July 5th. Iron play was not too bad, though.
My real problem this season has been consistency off the tee. Occasionally I have had a good round where I was putting the drives in play and getting decent distance, but I've hit some real stinkers, too. On Saturday I only pulled driver out of the bag once, going with 3-wood the rest of the way except for short par 4s that required shorter shots. Even the 3-wood was not very consistent. A few good shots and then about an even split of weak sliding fades and strong pulls.
So, I have some work to do. Last year I was consistently in the low 80s with one round in the high 70s. Right now I'm probably at least 5 shots worse. I didn't keep score on Saturday (just happy to make it around without hurting my knee), but I suspect I was in the very high 80s to low 90s. I had a run of about 3 or 4 pars in a row in the middle of the round. In the past I've avoided "blow-up" holes almost completely, with double bogey being my worst score, and then usually only one per round or so. Saturday I had a couple or maybe 3 doubles and one short par 3 that I completely messed up. (I hope this is attributable to my lay-off and my concern about my knee. I expect to get back to mostly pars and bogeys with a rare double bogey soon.)
I also went with a putter I hadn't used in years; putting is usually my strong suit. I feel like I left at least 3 or 4 strokes out on the course because of the putter change (although I was also trying to read greens I'd never played before).
I keep a positive attitude, though. I'm sure that my next round will be better than my last one, and I'm definitely not going to wait another month before I play again!