The Late Eight - Rounds 6-8

UK Handicap; 3.2 USGA Handicap; 1.3

The last three main competition rounds of the year took place over the weekend just past, with mixed results.

Friday saw a steady start, 9 pars and a bogey in the first 10 holes, and 80 yards short of green on the par 5 11^th in 2 shots. Looking to get a birdie, worst case scenario a par. One monumental full-blooded shank later, closely followed by two hacks out sideways from terrain where it would be difficult to locate a Chilean miner, and my round was taking a slightly different perspective. I steadied myself to have another 6 pars, before a minor calamity on the last where I missed an absolutely tiny putt to end up with a 4 over par 75. It looked as if this may have an impact on my handicap, going up instead of staying the same, however when the results were published today I managed to scrape by with no adjustment either upwards or downwards.

The rounds on Saturday and Sunday were very similar; poor start, great middle, mediocre end.

On Saturday I was 5 over par after 5 holes, before a little run of birdie, par, birdie, par, birdie around the turn got me back to 2 over. I blew up a little on my 15^th & 16^th holes, dropping 3 shots over the 2 of them, including a wasteful short putt that bounced all over it’s path. It was this putt that cost me in the end, as my 76 meant I missed the buffer zone by 1 shot and moved back up to a handicap of 3.4.

Sunday didn’t have quite as bad a start as Saturday, but I was 2 over par after 8. This time I got three birdies again, but they came consecutively instead of in the space of 5 holes. Once again I got a bit wasteful, missing a very short putt on the 13^th and 3-putting the 15^th (have you noticed a trend here yet?), but ended up with a one over 72, getting 0.2 off my handicap, and once again returning to 3.2.

My 6 rounds over the last two weekends have been 75, 71, 72, 75, 76 and 72, yet I’ve only managed to get 0.1 reduced from my handicap. I’m reluctant to call it luck, or karma, maybe it’s just fate, but I consider myself a bit harshly done by to have scored fairly well and consistently, and not seen much rewards for my efforts in terms of my handicap moving downwards.

Part of the problem, and a big elephant in the room, is that the greens are in pretty poor condition. I appreciate that they require maintenance, and occasionally this will require them to be cored or tined, but when the ball is bouncing all over the place, even from short distances, then it makes a huge difference to everyone, but moreso to the lower handicap players who have less shots to play with during the course of a round. A non-golfer reading this will probably think ‘typical golfer, blaming the greens when he misses a putt’, but there is some quite scathing criticism of the green conditions coming from various parties at the moment, it’s not just me making up excuses.

Over the 3 rounds I missed 9 putts of 6 feet or less, 3 of which were within 2.5 feet. I’m not claiming that I would have holed all 9 of these putts on better quality greens, but I would expect to hole at least 7 of them. Plotting that into my database, 7 of the 9 putts being holed would have seen me playing off 2.6 instead of 3.2. Now this is all hypothetical, I’m aware that I scored what I scored, and I can’t change that now, but the purpose of saying all of this is to demonstrate that there are some factors that can hinder the quest to get down to scratch. I can accept playing poorly and not being rewarded for it, but I’ve been playing well, hitting lots of greens in regulation (13, 12, 11, 13, 11, 12 in the last 6 rounds), but these 2 or 3 short putts per round are the difference between static and progress. I would love to putt on greens where I know exactly where the ball will go, and until I can do that more consistently it’s going to be an uphill battle, but one I still believe is achievable, to get down to scratch.

Although this is the end of the main season, there are a couple of competitions over the next month, which may or may not count for handicapping purposes. However, as far as I’m concerned a line has been drawn under the 2010 season, and I have plenty of interesting pieces of analysis to share over the next few posts regarding what has happened over the past 9 months.