Consistency & The Anti-Handicap

UK Handicap; 3.6 USGA Handicap; 2.6

Back in London for a few days, and my parkland home course is more burnt than any of the links courses I played in Scotland, despite being 49 miles from the nearest beach. Generally, although it’s warmer in London, because it is inland and there is soil under the turf, the courses retain water better and don’t burn up so quickly compared with the sandy links turf which doesn’t retain water so well. Apart from this year, that is. It doesn’t bother me either way, it’s just unusual playing on lush links course and burnt parkland courses.

I went out tonight and played 18 holes in 2 hours 1 minute, narrowly avoiding thunderstorms and playing through some of the first rain showers in a very long time. All I need now is some snow and I will have completed the entire spectrum of weather during July.

My swing feels like I’m chopping up dead bodies. Okay, maybe a bit of a drastic and macabre simile, but it doesn’t feel like my swing at all. Because I’ve been playing very short courses over the last week, I’ve barely hit a full iron shot in that time. Tonight I actually scored alright, 15 pars, 2 bogeys and a double bogey for a 4 over par 75, with various stupid dropped shots. This is a theme that I’ve touched on before, the only shots I dropped tonight were because of a bad wedge shot and two bad drives. How much longer can I call them silly dropped shots before I have to come to recognise them just as bad shots?

Although it’s yet another 75, I’m actually quite encouraged by it, as I didn’t play anywhere near as well as I can. I have competitions tomorrow and Saturday morning before getting the train back up to Scotland on Saturday afternoon, so if I keep my head, and if tonight has sharpened me up a little bit, then hopefully I can start to make some serious progress with my handicap.

For all the talk and the theory that has gone into this season, there is absolutely no getting away from the fact that my handicap is higher now than when I started this blog. The goal of being a scratch golfer by the end of September 2011 is slipping away, unless I can turn all of this talk and theory into results, and that means breaking par on a regular basis. I got over the mental block of breaking par last week when I had a 2 under par round, I’m praying and hoping that now I’ve reminded myself how easy it is, the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th under par rounds will come a lot easier than the first one did.

Part of the ‘problem’ I’ve had this season is that I’m fairly consistent, not necessarily within a round but in terms of my final score. As mentioned when looking at the UK handicap system earlier this year, I will have my handicap reduced more by shooting a 70 and an 85 than if I shoot two 75s. One way of looking to see if a player is consistent or not is to calculate their ‘anti-handicap’. Instead of taking the best 10 net differentials of the last 20 rounds, you take the worst 10. The closer the anti-handicap is to the actual handicap, the more consistent they are. At the moment my USGA handicap is 2.6, and my anti-handicap is 6.7. This is a difference of 4.1; generally anything under 5 is considered a very steady player. A difference of 15 or over indicates the player is on the inconsistent side. Unfortunately, you don’t win any prizes for having a good anti-handicap, it just means that I am more likely to beat someone with the same playing handicap but a higher anti-handicap.

The Forfar 36 Hole Open, which was postponed in May, has been rescheduled for this Saturday. The only way I could play in it would be to get the London – Dundee sleeper train on Friday night, but the cost and prospect of 8 hours on a sleeper train before playing 36 holes straight afterwards was enough to make me not go through with it. So I’m going to settle on the 2 rounds on my home course, then hopefully an Open competition somewhere in Perthshire on Sunday, before heading up to Montrose for their 5 Day Open starting on Monday.