Things have been starting to improve quite nicely on the links this past week. After hitting it good but struggling around the greens, I was able to put it together quite nicely this week.

On Monday I played El Camino CC and was able to shoot an even par 72 on a course that was very odd and quirky. There was OB everywhere and the greens were pretty nuts. You could get at the course if you were really sharp, but I was just sorta average with everything which is OK in it's own way. I am starting to feel more comfortable on the course and dealing with the pressure of tournament golf. Anyway, I t10th in the event (just a 1 day event) that had a pretty strong field with some Nationwide and PGA tour guys (past and present) and earned my first paycheck of the year.

On Wednesday I played one of my favorite public golf courses called Brookside which is next to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. I always get excited to play there because the golf course is very hard and challenging, yet completely fair at the same time. It is a lot like Torrey Pines golf course (site of the 2008 US OPEN) in that regard. It is 7,300 yards and in January, it is playing every bit of that. In fact, I honestly think if someone were to pour a bunch of money into it for whatever reason, it has the makings of being the next Bethpage Black.

I was finally able to minimize my mistakes both mentally and around the greens and played a very nice round of 69 (course rating is 75.0) to t1st and pick up my first win of the year. It wasn't anything to write home about in that it was just a small field Pepsi Tour event, but nonetheless I treat pretty much every competitive round the same and it was nice to shoot a nice round out there.

One thing that was pretty cool about it was that I was 3 under par and standing on the 18th tee which is a brutally hard 470 par 4 that plays every bit of it's length. OB hugs the right hand side of the fairway and the green is as small and narrow as a 470 par 4 can come.
The last time I stood on that tee in a professional event was just a few weeks prior to my heart attack in 2004 and I sliced the ball OB and made a 7. I stood on the tee and stared at that OB fence (which is pretty intimidating) and just said to myself, "Things are a little different this time. Let's show yourself what you are made of." I hit my drive exactly where I was aiming and was left with a mid iron in. I hung my second shot out to the right but was left with a fairly easy chip shot. I had a sense that I needed a par to win since it felt like 60 just might take it home, but 70 would be marginal. I hit my little pitch exactly how I wanted to, but unfortunately when the ball went to check up on the 2nd bounce, it hit a pebble and skidded some 10 feet past the hole.

I was pretty jacked up to hit that putt. I just got really excited to hit it and just felt like there was no way I was going to miss it. I saw the line really well. Almost as important, rather than getting really nervous and freaked out to hit a big putt, I could see myself making it. I felt like the kid in the basketball game who was like, "Coach, give me the ball!" I knocked the putt right in the center and it was really a nice feeling to sense how far I have come since the last time I played that golf hole.

What is so great about playing competitive golf for me is that I feel "alive" in a way that nothing else can do for me. And it is great to feel alive. After playing so much poker and living in dreary Portland, Oregon, I have come to realize just how much I truly love that feeling. How I perform may not matter to very many people, but it matters to me in a way that is very special. Having grown up in LA area and then moved to Portland for the past half dozen years, I now have a true sense of appreciation for how amazing southern California really is. I can play and compete at golf against very good if not great golfers year round in absolutely perfect weather 15+ days a month. I literally can't play any competitive golf whatsoever in the state of Oregon and wow, that is really depressing. As much as I love this place in so many ways, living where there is zero good poker action and no competitive golf, is not my idea of a lot of fun. Anyway, thank God a place like this exists!

Today I played my first tournament of the year at Temecula Creek golf club on the Golden State tour. It was great to be back playing. It felt "right" being out there. The weather was fantastic as was the condition of the course. Unfortunately my golf game left something to be desired as a struggled to a 74 to finish in the middle of the pack.

I had a lot of things working against me today. First off, I haven't even played a single round of golf in over 2 months. I have hit less than 500 balls the last 2 months as well. I also am not used to waking up as early as I have to for golf, so I need to adjust my body clock. It was also hard for me to achieve the laser focus I often have on the golf course. It has been awhile since I have played of course, so I guess this is all to be expected.

It felt very weird playing a golf tournament having not played golf in awhile. Normally when I am playing golf tournaments, I play and practice every day and so when I go out there, I have a good idea what to expect and I am in the groove of playing, and more importantly, in the groove of getting the ball in the hole. One of my best attributes in golf is the ability to turn a 74 into a 70 or 69. And turn a 69 into a 65. Today I turned a 69 into a 74. I didn't strike the ball great, but I didn't hit any foul balls and the course was easy enough where I should be able to shoot in the 60s nearly every time I tee it up when I am in the groove of playing. But it's just going to take some time, no question.

I had a choice between taking a month to prepare to compete and just throwing myself in with the wolves right off the bat, even though I knew I wasn't playing a lot. I chose to just go for it and play golf tournaments A. because I am anxious to play and B. because I really think if you are not someone who is afraid to play with less than your best stuff, it is optimal to just play and compete right away because it will just help you get better quicker. For example, if I am working on things on the range and putting and chipping greens for a month, then I also need to test it out in competition and get comfortable with things. That process can take awhile. But if I just work on things while I compete, then I don't have to worry about seeing if the changes will make their way to the course. I think it is best to go out there and do what Nike tells you to do and "Just do it!" Heck, I am a 30 year old who hasn't competed in 7 years on a regular basis. There is no time to waste anymore. It is now or never! :) That might mean I struggle at the outset, but I am not afraid to post some bad rounds if it means it makes me better quicker.

The next few days I am going to work with some students in the morning on poker and then work on my golf game in the afternoons. I may play a few hands at night if I get bored as well. My next event is a Golden State Tour event at Arrowood and it is a 3 day event. The event is on the 10-12 of January and I am really excited about that because that means I can prepare for a few days and also get 3 more tournament rounds under my belt which should be very helpful. Prior to this summer, I hadn't played much in years and this summer I found a pretty good groove after about 20 rounds and was able to play some good rounds after about 6-7 rounds actually. I hope things come back that soon this time. That would be pretty cool and should set up some good opportunities to grab a win in February. I definitely want my game to be sound by then because the first week of February I play in a 3 day event at Pebble Beach. You definitely need your A game out there because obviously that is a US open course and it will expose you pretty hard if you aren't up to the challenge. God I love that place. I am already getting anxious to get out there and play. An argument can be made that there is no other place I would rather be on this earth than Pebble Beach.

I have spent most of this year post black Friday figuring out what I want out of life. I was also able to spend a great deal of time reflecting upon poker and what it means to me. The whole process revealed a lot about myself and I was able to learn a lot. I came to the realization that I love golf infinitely more than I love playing poker. With that, I have decided to return to golf and use all of what poker has taught me to try and become the best I can be (whatever that is) at the game of golf.

For those that aren't familiar with my background, I basically lived, breathed and slept golf from ages 8-23. It was literally all I cared about outside of friends and family of course. At one point I believed so strongly that golf was my only way to happiness that I once told my parents that, "If I had a crystal ball right now and it told me I would never play on the PGA tour, I would rather just die now than endure a life without a career on the PGA tour." It meant that much to me.

I was very inconsistent with how I played. At times it seemed I was a can't miss for the PGA tour, and at other times, no one would have given me even a fraction of a chance to make it. My golf game just never showed up day in and day out. Most of this was due to a lack of proper instruction and opportunity that other kids had. While they were getting lessons from folks who knew what it took to make it, I was often left observing their lessons from a distance and trying to apply it to my own game. And while my peers were playing in the most prestigious events in the country, I was often left at home despite being eligible to play due to a lack of funds. I simply lacked the opportunity. And unlike poker where the barrier to entry is small and literally anyone with an internet connection and a few hundred bucks can receive the very best poker instruction in the world, golf requires a lot of funding to really do it right.

At this point in my life, I am 30 years old and the chances of having a career on the PGA tour are fading fast, but it isn't over yet. My chances are infinitesimally small of making the big time, but I have overcome far longer odds before in my life. I won't let that intimidate me.

At 23 years old, I was finally getting some momentum in the game of golf. I was leading the money list on the Golden State golf tour (which is basically the equivalent of single A minor league baseball) when I suffered a heart attack that abruptly ended my career, at least for the time being. I remember distinctly laying on the hospital bed with my heart feeling like it was jumping out of my chest and thinking, "This can't be it for me. I can't die having achieved virtually nothing I wanted to achieve. This can't be the end of my story." Luckily I was able to survive.

I then channeled my energies towards poker. I couldn't believe that I was able to find something that could satisfy my competitive cravings from the comfort of my own home. Having competed virtually every single day at golf for 15 years, it was miserable having nowhere to channel that energy. Then along came poker and wow was I hooked. It took me a couple million hands to really get the hang of how to play at a high level, but in less than 4 years from the date of my heart attack, was able to look at a bank balance north of a million dollars and that was when the wheels started turning again about taking the game of golf seriously again.

Over the past several years, I haven't taken golf super seriously of course. But every summer I have been chipping away at making changes in my swing that would enable me to play at my desired level. I sought out the best instruction possible. I worked with 2 time PGA tour winner Brian Henninger for almost a year and that really opened my eyes to what I needed to be doing in my golf swing. It was like a light bulb went off in my head and while the swing changes are far from being completely ingrained, I was able to play a lot of golf this summer and found that while my best stuff was only marginally better, my worse stuff was miles better. I used to literally hit the ball crooked when I was struggling to the point where I just had no chance. But now my worst stuff is almost as good as my old B game used to be. Bad swings are now usually 10 yards off the fairway rather than 50. It feels like I have a chance now.

My short game has always been strong. In fact my good friend and PGA tour winner Kevin Na once told me that he wished he could be as good around the greens as I was. Kevin is now a perennial top 10 leader in up and down percentage on tour, so I took that as quite a compliment coming from him. While I do think he was probably being overly nice, there is a lot of truth to that. I have always been able to get the ball in the hole very well. I got so used to hitting the ball all over the planet (relative to PGA tour players anyway) that I simply had to be good around the greens to have any chance. Now that I can keep the ball in play much more frequently, I am excited to see if I can capitalize on that with my short game.

I did play 2 golf tournaments this past summer after a 7 year absence and was able to shoot rounds of 74-72-71 to win my club championship at Pumpkin Ridge golf club (site of Tiger's 3rs straight US amateur win) and then shocked myself and nearly everyone I know when I was tied for the lead with 13 holes to play in the Idaho State Open this summer. I shot rounds of 65-67 to reach the penultimate pairing and then birdied 3 holes in a row early in the round to grab a share of the lead. I struggled home to a 73 from that point, but I found out that I could play this game again, which was very exciting to me.

On January 3rd I am going to hop in the car and drive down from Portland, OR to southern California to start my journey. On the 5th I am entered in my first event back, which is the Golden State tour event at Temecula Creek. I have 14 tournament days in January alone, and 18 in February. I simply could not be more excited. While I am down there I am going to look for a place to rent a house and my family will eventually come down to join me down here while I am pursuing my dream of playing golf competitively day in and day out. I am not sure how long I will do it for since a lot depends on what transpires with poker and what kind of progress I am making with my golf game. Honestly, I actually hope this is the end of the road for me with taking poker as seriously as I have for the past 6 years, but it probably won't be.

I would obviously love nothing more than to make it to the PGA or Nationwide tour in golf. And if I do that, playing poker full time will be just a distant memory. But in all likelihood this will just be a break from poker. While I am pursuing golf, I will still be making videos as well as playing 20-25k hands a month of poker so that I be sure not to let my skills diminish. At the end of the day, golf is a long shot for me to really make a career out of it, and poker is what is going to pay the bills for me. More importantly, should my kids decide to take the game seriously some day, nothing will be more important to me than being sure that they don't lack opportunity the way I did. It would obviously break my heart if I couldn't support them in golf or anything else they may decide to do. I don't want them to struggle the way I did.

I honestly have no expectations for now with golf other than to practice and prepare as well as I can, and to give it my best each and every day. I guess you could say my goals are all process oriented right now. Even though I have practiced very little the past 3 months, I felt it was important to throw myself in with the wolves right off the bat and see where my game is at. Tournament golf will expose you like nothing else. So I should have a good idea by the end of January what I need to work on. And those experiences will go a long way towards figuring out how to keep getting better and better. My only expectation is that my leaks will quickly become exposed and then I can get to the real work.

The only thing that really matters throughout the year is how you play at PGA tour school. You can win every tournament and have a bad week at qualifying school (which will be staged in the Fall) and most players will consider their year a failure. Quite honestly, I am chasing the experience of playing golf competitively day in and day out with no financial barriers for instruction or opportunity, as much as I will be chasing a PGA tour card. I definitely won't consider 2012 a failure if I don't make it on the tour. The only way I fail is if I don't give it my best. And for those that know me, that means that my chances of failure are very low.

I will be keeping my eye on the pulse of the poker games by playing and of course the pending licensing and regulating of online poker here in the US will be of particular interest to me as well. My hope is that poker comes back as soon as possible, of course. Although, part of me deep down inside hopes it just comes back with a huge bang in about 5 years so I am not torn between big $ and my dream of playing golf. I really don't want to be in a position where I am making a ton of progress in golf, but yet the poker games online are good enough to make 7 figures a year. That would obviously be a an amazingly good problem to have, but wow, if I were in that position, Holy Shit I don't know what I would do! But of course, wow do I hope I am in that position!

For all those who have supported me in poker throughout the years and want to keep a passive interest in my golf game, I am still keeping my blog and will likely update it much more frequently. It will be a mixture of golf and poker, with maybe a slight emphasis on golf now since I will be doing more of that than golf. I will be sure to keep everyone posted on my progress as always.

I am also proud to announce that Scott Brown and I are making some wonderful progress on Treat Your Poker Like A Business 2. We have all of the publishing options sorted out, and we expect (and this time we mean it haha) a Spring 2012 release. Since it gets dark early in the winter months which means I can't play golf after 5 or 6 o clock, and the fact that I will be away from my family quite a bit for the next 5-6 weeks, I have committed to banging out the rest of the book in the evenings. We are about 50% done as of this exact moment, and our expectation is to complete the book and release it at least temporarily this Spring on my website. At this point I have literally received 1,000 messages from folks who have read Treat Your Poker Like A Business asking when part 2 was coming out. That has been inspiring, no question. Thanks to everyone for writing!

We have only 30 days at this point to sell the remaining copies of <a href="http://dustyschmidt.net">Treat Your Poker Like A Business</a> and  <a href="http://dustyschmidt.net">Don't Listen To Phil Hellmuth</a> at my website before they go out of print temporarily. Cardoza Publishing, the same group that did Super System, among others, will take over the rights in 30 days and then they will release them in bookstores nationwide later in the year. So please take advantage of the last opportunity to get these books. In fact, you can get them for 50% the already reduced price by entering code DUSTY at <a href="http://dustyschmidt.net">DustySchmidt.net</a>

Well, I am off to the driving range to get ready for the season. You can't ever practice this crazy game enough....

Well this month has sure been a mixed bag. On one hand it has been great. We had a great Christmas as a family. I was able to root on my Ducks to a PAC 12 title and a Rose Bowl berth. The weather here in Oregon was much drier than normal which was nice. I also got to go out with some buddies and there was a lot of good stuff overall.

On the flip side, I can honestly say I have never run worse at poker than I have this month on Black Chip. After my epic start building $200 into $18,000, I have only about $12,000 in there now. I have run 25 buy ins behind EV on the month, and it has been incredibly frustrating. Even though I knew I was running bad, anytime that happens, I always get an insatiable desire to improve because I guess I feel like I want to have better control over my results. So I watched about 25 videos this month and took over 8,000 words of notes. I broke down my opponents games, and just grinded on it very hard. I also drastically reduced the number of tables I was playing because I realized that I basically suck at multi tabling more than 6-7 tables. I bet some of my opponents were scratching their heads at some of the laughably bad decisions I was making from time to time when I was on 12 tables.

After a few bad decisions and once I realized I was missing some great bluffing spots and not correctly interpreting my opponents lines as well as I wanted, I dropped down in tables and felt much more confident and spotted a lot of opportunities that I was missing. It sucks that the only way to really make a lot of money in poker over the long haul is to play so many tables, because I much, much prefer to take my time with each and every decision. Mass multi tabling 100BB poker kinda sucks imo, especially since everyone has gotten so much better, mostly thanks to the HUD. I have said it before but I can't say it enough, the HUD is the worst thing to happen to poker and I really wish they would get rid of it through basically eliminating the hand history. But I have talked about that plenty, so I am not going to rant on anymore about that! If nothing else, I hope 200BB + poker is something we can look forward to in the future someday. I think the HUD will become much less useful in a game like that and I really hope we can see more of that stuff, although I think it is somewhat unlikely.

Yesterday was honestly one of the hardest days of my life. I was playing some tables and I heard a big thud downstairs followed by hysterical screaming. My wife ran upstairs and said our daughter needed to go to the hospital. I was in a bunch of hands, but my opponents got a little gift because I instantly logged out and through some street clothes on and took my daughter to the hospital. She spun around on the couch and landed on the edge of the end table and cut her lip wide open and injured her nose as well. She was a bloody mess.

I got her and put her in the car seat and went to the nearest hospital. On the way there, she was just staring at me and crying very hard. Her tears were running down her bloody face and she was saying, "Dada, it huwwwts." I tried to comfort her the best that I could while driving and mostly having to look away from her since her car seat is in the back. But there wasn't much I could do other than assure her she was going to be OK.

We got to the hospital and they were able to take care of everything thankfully. She was bouncing around and having a good time later that day, but man, it was really hard on me all day. I had nightmares all night and didn't get a lot of sleep. It is amazing how much you love your kids. I know almost every parent reading this probably knows exactly what I am talking about.

I want to also let everyone know that we only have about 1 month left before my books will temporarily be out of print. You can get some of the last remaining original copies of Treat Your Poker Like A Business and Don't Listen To Phil Hellmuth at http://www.dustyschmidt.net at 50% off the already reduced price by entering code DUSTY. Since the feds recently said the wire act no longer applies to online poker and it looks pretty good us Americans will be playing fairly soon, now is as good a time as ever to get a copy!

I used to only work Monday through Friday. Then I realized most recreational players are going to be on during the weekends so I started adding in a weekend day to my schedule. It has paid off pretty well. I don't have any data to back it up but my general observation is players are worse by a large margin. My mental state was solid for the entirety of the session. It's been a long time since I have had a breakdown episode. To be fair I have been running fairly hot lately so we'll see what my mental game results look like when I go on a downswinger!