A Supplementary Bonus

First of all, happy 100^th blog post to me! It’s taken less than a year, and although I’m well behind my target golf-wise, I’m pleased with my persistence with this blog, as many other blogs on a similar subject have come and gone without a trace. Here’s to the next 100 posts.

I have started planning for next year already, which has thrown up some interesting logistics, and an unexpected bonus.

As has been previously detailed, after my last qualifying competition for 2010 which takes place tomorrow, I will have played in 56 qualifying competitions. This is quite a good number, but I need to really ramp that up next year, together with a lot of hard work, if I want to progress. There are several ways I am going to make this happen.

Firstly, I am going to join a golf club in Scotland that has qualifying competitions every Saturday and Sunday. In fact, there are two on a Saturday as there are two courses, and you can play on each. So if I am in Scotland playing a Monday – Friday tournament (of which I have 3 of these planned), I can travel to Scotland the Friday evening previously, play in 3 qualifying rounds on the Saturday and Sunday, then play in the Mon – Fri tournament, then another 3 qualifying competitions the following weekend, before heading back to London on the Sunday evening. Very tiring, but it gives me the opportunity to bookend my week long tournaments with 6 qualifying rounds.

In addition to this, I have already gone to extreme lengths to maximize the number of qualifying competitions I can play in. There is one particular weekend where I have a 36 hole competition in Scotland on the Sunday, followed by a bank holiday Monday competition at my home club. So I have bought a 7am flight from Dundee – Birmingham, then train to London, then underground train to my golf club, so I can get there by midday and play in an extra competition.

Secondly, the golf diary at my home club is a lot better for 2011 than it was in 2010. When I first joined this club I was baffled by the lack of qualifying competitions, 23 between April and September, next year there are 39, and are much better spread throughout the calendar. With these club competitions, and week long tournaments, I have already submitted my annual leave from work for 2011. Before the year has already started, I only have 2.5 days left from an entitlement of 28 days. So I’d better hope I don’t need any more time off work in the next year, as I’m not going to have the availability to take it. I also did a check of Friday afternoons, and from mid-April to end of September, I am going to work on 9 of them, and be off for the other 14. So if any work colleagues need me, don’t need me on a Friday afternoon!

Thirdly, I heard today that CONGU, the UK handicapping body, have made some amendments for 2011. In 2008 they introduced a system called Supplementary Scores, where players with a handicap of 6 or higher (i.e not me), who played less than 6 qualifying competitions in the previous year (i.e. not me), could submit up to 10 extra qualifying scores without a designated qualifying competition taking place. There are additional rules, such as a maximum of one per week, and you need to designate before starting that you are submitting a Supplementary Score. The good news is that as of 2011, they have opened Supplementary Scores up to players with a handicap of less than 6, and have scrapped the rule about having played less than 6 qualifying competitions in the previous year.

So that means that every player, including me, can now submit up to an extra 10 qualifying scores per year.

The end results of these 3 changes are that my diary now shows that I currently have 83 opportunities to play for my handicap in 2011. Even I have to admit that is quite a large number. It’s worth remembering that I played in 56 this year and didn’t reduce my handicap, so the number of competitions and handicap reduction are not directly correlated, but if the goal of my journey is to get down to scratch, then the vehicle that can help me get there is the number of qualifying competitions. And I’d rather be travelling in the Porsche of 83 competitions, than the Astra of 56.