Golf Basics Revisited

Had the chance to practice a little golf today. After several drives and several approaches and several chips and several putts, I decided to concentrate on finding out why I was repeatedly pulling the ball to the left on my approach shot, that 60 to a 120 yard finesse shot that is not all that hard and one that was made easier with my adoption of the David Pelz method several years ago. Since I was consistently pulling the shot to the left, I thought maybe my alignment was off. So I dropped a club on the other side of the ball and carefully pointed it at the pin some 115 yards away. Backing up and taking my stance, I was careful to ensure that my feet were parallel to that alignment aid, and then swung away. Same result - pull to the left of the pin. Darn. Tried it several more times, ensuring that my grip and my club face were in the right position and again and again pulled the shot to the left. Darn again and again. What now... From somewhere back in my memory of alignment, the image of two clubs on the ground popped up. One club near the ball, and another closer to the feet. Put a second club down and made sure that it was parallel to the first one. Stepped into position with my toes up against that second club and gave it a go. Wallah! Three shots, threes right at the stick, two close enough for birdies. So, my eye ball alignment was throwing me off; and my putting one club down, thus minimizing that eyeball, was also off. Moral of the story: keep going back to the basics. In this case, the basic was being parallel to your target line, something I thought I was but really wasn't. And that is pretty basic.