Progress, Closure and USGA Scratch

UK Handicap; 1.9, USGA Handicap; 0.8

I thought it was about time for a bit of closure on this blog, seeing as my last post back in June was a negative, depressing tale of woe.

The last 5 months have been an overall success, and whilst I did not make it down to scratch on the UK handicapping system, I did get down to a low of 1.6. Although not the original target, on 19th August 2011 I made it to becoming a scratch golfer based on the US system. I managed to maintain this over the following 3 months, reaching a low of 0.0, and it has recently crept up to 0.8 as a consequence of winter golf being a bit more tricky to score in.

In the three weeks following my last post, I played in 5 qualifying competitions at my home course and got cut in all 5 of them, moving me quickly from 3.7 to 2.5.

The target of a playing handicap of 2 eluded me for a couple of weeks, but eventually I made it to 2.4 with a round at my second course of Monifieth in advance of playing in the Montrose 5 Day and Nairn Dunbar 5 Day opens.

Montrose was a good week, I made it to the last 8 out of 195 players, before losing in extra holes in the quarter final. I played well throughout the week but the strain of solid competitive golf every day, moving to 2 rounds a day later in the tournament, took its toll.

I then went up to Nairn Dunbar the following week and, after a nightmare 1st qualifying round where anything that could go wrong did go wrong, managed to put in a good second round to qualify in 25th place. In my first round match I played a home player, playing off a handicap of 4. I played to my handicap but he was 4 shots better than his handicap, resulting in a 2&1 loss. It was just one of those things, playing Nairn Dunbar was a pleasure in itself as it is such a fantastic course.

A couple of weeks later, back at my home course, I made a real breakthrough.
Sitting at 2.1, I was round in 3 under par 68 (net 66), getting me down to 1.6. This round was also an achievement as it was the first time I have ever gone round 18 holes on a full length course without dropping a shot. The scorecard of 15 pars and 3 birdies is now framed in my house, as it has long been a goal of mine to have a blemish free scorecard.
I milled around for the next 3 weeks before going back up to Carnoustie to play in the Craw’s Nest Tassie.

I played the Championship course on the Monday, going round in 72. Yes, that’s right, 72 shots round Carnoustie Championship course. Later in the same month, world number 5 Dustin Johnson and Open Champion Darren Clarke would take more shots to go round the same course. I played really well, and finished with a delightful 4 pars on the toughest finish in golf.
The second round was on the shorter Burnside course on Tuesday, and the weather was just horrific, especially on the second nine holes. The wind was incredibly strong, which resulted in me putting from 70 yards short of the green as it was the only way I could get the ball to stop in a reasonable amount of time. I was round in 75, which was pretty good considering the conditions, and when the overall scores were added up, I qualified in 4th place out of 338 players.

My first knockout match on the Championship course on Wednesday was played in quite a strong wind, and I had the biggest win of the day, 6&5. I was round in 75, which although 3 shots more than my round on the Monday, was one of the best rounds I have ever put together. I was striping the ball as well as I have ever done at this point.

My second round match was played in beautiful conditions, and was virtually over by the turn, I was 2 under par after 6 holes which put me 4 up, and I coasted around from there, eventually winning 4&3.

In the last 16, played in a drizzle and breeze (you may be getting the whole concept of the weather changing every day on the east coast of Scotland), I just didn’t turn up. I was struggling all the way round, and made 3 or 4 cardinal errors from no danger at all, and went down 3&2. I was really disappointed with this, as I know I am capable of much better and the person who beat me, who eventually won the tournament, was playing off a handicap of 4 compared with my 2.

Having said that, if at the start of July I had been told that at the end of the Carnoustie tournament I would be playing off 1.7, would get to the last 8 at Montrose and the last 16 at Carnoustie, I would have said thanks very much.

Since Carnoustie I have lost a little momentum, going up 0.1 on 5 occasions, coming down 0.1 on 3 occasions, and making buffer zone on 5 occasions, however maintaining a handicap of 2 is pleasing in itself as it proves to me that it was not a temporary peak in form, I am a solid 2-handicapper who, now I have maintained it, can focus on getting to the next stage.
This year I played in 72 qualifying competitions, and went up in 36 of them, made buffer zone in 15, and was cut in 21 of them. This compares with being cut on 12 occasions in 2010.
The graph below shows my handicap adjustments in 2011, compared with 2010 in the shaded areas.

Split out by category (up, buffer zone, and down) it looks like this;

My average score at my home course this year has been a record low since I took the game up again in 2007, and has continued my decrease every year (2007; 78.63, 2008; 77.95, 2009; 76.54, 2010; 76.26, 2011; 75.83).

I don’t think it is any coincidence that my golf has significantly improved since I removed the pressure of updating this blog every week. It’s a paradox; I want to share what I am doing, but by sharing it I am making success less likely.
The graph below demonstrates just how my form has turned since the last update;

To that end I am going to close this blog now, and give it one more year to get down to the ultimate goal of 0.4 or lower. As much as I love playing in the week long competitions in Scotland, I am going to cut back on them next year as a) I’m struggling to have enough holidays to play in them and b) the greens at my home course are starting to get better after 5 years of being appalling, so I am going to focus on my home course as this gives me the best opportunity to get cut.

So there we have it, getting down to scratch in the UK handicapping system is a monumentally difficult achievement. Whilst there are still people who think it is fairly easy (see any number of ridiculous ‘novice to scratch’, ’18 to 5’, ’10 to scratch’ blogs where people are simply deluded in what they think is achievable), I hope most people have seen by the progress of this blog just how difficult it is. I was starting at a handicap of 3, and am happy with progress in “just” getting down to 1.9. Hopefully next year I can take it to the next step and reach the ultimate goal.

June Update

UK Handicap; 3.7 USGA Handicap; 2.0

It’s been 11 weeks since I last updated, and there aren’t too many good news stories to fill that gap with.

I have played 3 of my major competitions in that time.
The Forfar 36 hole Open was abandoned after I had played 19 holes, due to extremely high winds. Trees were falling over which made it unsafe. I had carded an unspectacular 9 over par 78 in the first round.
The County Championships saw me fail to return a 36 hole score. Had I putted out I would have scored 83 and 85 for 47th place, my worst finish in this tournament.
My Club Championship yesterday again saw me fail to return a 36 hole score. I shot an awful 79 in the morning, and was miles over par in the second round when I unexpectedly lost a ball on the 8th hole.
So Abandoned, No Return, No Return aren’t particularly great results.

I am not enjoying playing golf at the moment. I feel that I need a break, like Sergio Garcia took, to take a step back and focus on why I play golf. In the cold light of day I can think logically. There are many worse things I could be doing than playing golf. I have all my limbs, don’t work 7 days per week, can choose what I do of my own free will. There are literally billions of people who would love to be able to walk around a golf course in the sun at the weekend but can’t because their life doesn’t allow them.
However, whilst on the course I cannot see this and am ruining my, and other peoples, game by insisting that everything is absolutely perfect, and when it deviates from perfect, as often happens very early in a round, my game goes mentally.

I may not get a break because of the number of tournaments I have already committed to, but I really don’t want to play in situations where I am not going to enjoy it.

There is also the wake up call that I have recently seen that I am not nearly as good a player as some of my peers. I am used to being at the top, or within reach of the top, and at the moment I am miles behind the people I used to contend with. This isn’t just in scoring, this is also the quality of strike, and general short game ability. I was outclassed and embarrassed in the club championship as my two playing partners could, put simply, hit a golf ball much better than me. It’s not a nice place to be.
The obvious solution to this is to work harder to get myself up to their level, but I’m not sure I have the desire to do that anymore. This ties in with the reduction in posting frequency on this blog.

So hopefully I will gain some perspective over the coming months, and if I choose to update this blog again it will be with happier tales.

If you wish to follow me on twitter I can be found at here.

Catch Up Time

UK Handicap; 4.0 USGA Handicap; 3.0

Adjustment required; 3.6, Competition rounds; 71, Ratio; 0.051

Blimey, it’s been a while. Just over 3 weeks to be exact. As I mentioned then, I was going the best part of two weeks without playing, due to being out of the country.

When I returned, I played a couple of evenings shortly after my return, a mixture of garbage followed by some decent stuff. It always seems to be one of the fundamental things in my game that goes. A few weeks ago it was my alignment, so I spent some time working on that, and fast forward a little while and suddenly I was making another diagnosis – this time that my hands were too vertical at address, and they should be a couple of inches in front of the ball. When I suddenly work out what I’ve been doing wrong, invariably it is something so basic that I feel stupid for not figuring it out earlier. This is where the pros are different. Apart from having several people to diagnose these things at a moment’s notice, their setup is just a standard, they don’t even need to think about it.

My first competitive game back was a Tigers match away from home, and a combination of me playing decent but not spectacular, and my opponent not having the best of days, ended with me winning 7&6. I’ll certainly take that for the opening match of the year.

The following day was a chance to put my new found confidence towards getting my handicap reduced. The first nine holes backed this up as I turned in one under par. I hit the ball as well as I have in a long long time. In the back nine I still played some holes okay, but to be blunt I collapsed. I actually only hit four bad shots, but they were absolute stinkers (two shanks and two fat wedges) which cost me 7 shots in total. I finished the obligatory 1 shot over buffer zone, meaning another 0.1 to be added.

The weekend past followed a similar theme. Saturday was a competition, 2 over after 13 holes then I inexplicably double bogied 14 and 15, and once again finished 1 shot over buffer zone.

Sunday was another match which resulted in a fairly comfortable defeat, having said that our opponents were 3 under for the last 8 holes which turned the game.

So far this year I have played in ten qualifying competitions, and the results paint a frightening picture. One reduction, one buffer zone, eight increases. My handicap is now the highest it has been in 22 months.

You may remember the graph below, showing my competition performance coded green for cuts, yellow for buffer zone, and red for increases.

I have overlaid my 2011 adjustments against the final 2010 breakdown with a lighter background. I am falling down on exactly the thing I identified last season I need to stop – narrowly missing buffer zone. Four of the eight increases this year have involved missing buffer zone by only one or two shots. You can click on any graph to enlarge it.

The next graph puts these scores into categories, and although it is early days in 2011, I need to start playing better, quickly.

I went out tonight and started playing quickly, and started playing better.

2 hours and 3 minutes later, I’d putted out 18 holes as if in competition conditions and shot 73, my best score of the year. I hit 15 greens in regulation, which is a year high as well.

Where does this leave my game? I don’t know, to be honest. I’ve gone from having 6 good holes per round, up to 9 good holes for a while, and I’m now up at about 14 good holes per round, but it’s still not enough.

Where does it leave this blog? It’s not difficult to see that the blog posts have been more sporadic this year. Second season syndrome I suppose. Most of the things which were new to write about last year aren’t new any more, and I’m getting a bit fed up of saying “I’m not far away but I need to start making it count”, every time I say that I become a bit more of a parody of myself. I’m also identifying that in order to be off scratch by the end of September I need to take the next 6 months off work as I’m not going to do it without spending several thousand pounds on coaching.

Add in other factors such as; work taking me away from home quite a lot, taking over the running of a golf league and website that requires a bit of my time, and the fact it’s less fun to write when my handicap is ballooning, means my posts are going to be a bit less frequent than in the past. Otherwise I’ll just be writing for the sake of writing.

Putt It Out Of My Mind

UK Handicap; 3.8 USGA Handicap; 2.4

Adjustment required; 3.4, Competition rounds; 73, Ratio; 0.047

I’ve played 3 competition rounds in the 2 weeks since I last updated, and I don’t have any good news to report from any of them.

Last Saturday I played in the morning, and the only positive I can think to take away from the round was that I played the first hole well. If the peak of the round is the first hole, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of it. I started hitting everything completely fat. That is, I was hitting the ground before the ball. The most worrying aspect of this was that it was happening even with my tee shots, where the ball was teed up off the ground and I was using a driver. I rely on my driving quite a lot, I’m not the longest hitter by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m normally fairly consistent with it and the more fairways I can hit the better. To put it more accurately, the more fairways I miss the more trouble I am in, as I’ll be struggling to hit the green if I’m off the fairway or get an impure strike (like a fat shot).

This week I had competitions on Friday and Sunday, and I didn’t get the best preparation by being ill all week. I felt better by Friday, but I was still a bit energy sapped.

I’m not going to detail each round individually, but the grand total of the 36 holes was that I was 17 over par, and went up 0.1 in each round.

In total I dropped 20 shots (as I had 3 birdies), so I had a look at what club cost me each of those 20 shots.

Shots with my driver cost me 3 shots, but none of these were in the last 8 holes I played today. I figured out my stance was too narrow again so I made my feet a bit wider and started hitting the ball much better off the tee. If I can keep doing what I was doing towards the end of today then it’s not a problem.

2 of the dropped shots were caused by hitting a 3 wood off the fairway. I’m not unduly concerned about these either, both were from well over 200 yards from the green and they weren’t particularly bad shots.

Iron shots up to a 9 iron cost me 3 shots, which over 36 holes is quite good. In fact, I hit 19 of 22 greens where I was hitting a 9 iron or more into the green. For a change I’m happy with this part of my game.

Wedges cost me 2 shots, with a wedge in my hand I hit 8 out of 10 greens. That is not very good, there isn’t really an excuse for missing a green with a wedge in my hand, and some of the greens I did hit weren’t particularly close to the hole.

1 shot was dropped where there wasn’t a bad shot that caused it, it was just one of those things.

So that’s 11 of the 20 dropped shots accounted for, with the only concern being wedges (on the basis the driving is sorted).

The remaining 9 dropped shots were all caused by 3-putting. Having 9 occasions where I take 3 putts to get down once the ball is on the green is suicidal golf. That’s one every four holes. Although I missed a few short ones, the underlying cause was my distance putting. The greens at my home course, which have long been criticised, are in the best condition in the five springs I have played on them, but I seem unable to judge the pace of anything. A 30 foot putt for me is more likely to go less than 24 foot or more than 36 foot. I’m not overly bothered by the line at this stage, I’d just like to be able to hit it the right distance. I spent 30 minutes practising my distance putting on Saturday, having seen it cost me 3 shots on Friday. After 30 minutes I thought I had it sorted, I was able to putt 3 balls 30 foot and get them to finish within 2 foot of the required length.

Fast forward 24 hours and instead of having three 3 putts, today I had six.

I’m not quite sure how to resolve this. Practice seems like a good idea, but in a live environment you only get one opportunity at each putt, and that involves reading the pace of it. Practising invariably involves hitting the same putt several times on the same line, and getting used to the pace of that putt. I don’t have access to a putting green where I can practice many different putts without getting a rhythm for that putt as opposed to the stroke.

All this is going to have to go on the backburner anyway, as I am out of the country with my work next weekend, so I’m not going to be able to play for 12 days now.

The weekend after next is all systems go, the clocks go forward, at least two competitions every week, practising before breakfast every morning.

The last 3 months have just been a warm up.

The Main Pain Is Rain

UK Handicap; 3.5 USGA Handicap; 2.1

Adjustment Required; 3.1, Competition rounds; 74, Ratio; 0.042

Another week, another baby step closer to scratch.

Nothing changed Monday – Friday, it’s still too dark to practice in the evening, so it was another weekend where I had my only opportunity to play.

My plan to practice all day on Saturday took an early blow when I woke up to quite heavy rain, but I spied a break in the clouds at lunchtime so decided to wander along to see if I could get some practice in.

Fortunately the rain did go off, and I managed about an hour’s practice before it came on again. A 45 minute hiatus in the sanctuary of the clubhouse allowed the shower to pass, and I went back out, but onto the course this time.

I mentioned several times last year that I often play two balls, and have a match between the two of them. This helps me to treat everything as if it was a competitive round, and play everything as it lies – it’s too easy otherwise to give myself good lies, and get out of serious play mode. I just need to remember to use two golf balls with different numbers on them.

I played 11 holes on the course, 22 holes with the two on each hole, and finished 6 over par in total. Nothing spectacular, but my first ball was level par and my second ball was 6 over par.

The *plan* for today was to go to a local range, which has excellent short-game practice facilities, and spend several hours honing my skills on everything 50 yards and in. However, I’m not the most assertive of people, and eventually caved in to playing a round of golf instead, on about the fourth time of being asked.

The weather was much better this morning, and I decided to put in the first of my ten available supplementary cards for the year. I’d been playing half decent yesterday, and with the drier weather I thought I could knock it around in a decent score.

After 9 holes this was looking like an extremely good decision, and I reached the turn in 3 under par. This is massively better than anything I have managed so far this year and, although I sank 3 very good putts along the way, that doesn’t detract from the fact I was hitting the ball very, very well.

Just when you think you have it mastered, something comes up and bites you. Towards the end of the first nine holes it started raining, and by the time we reached the 9^th green it was very heavy, and the temperature had dropped by about 10 degrees.

I ended up playing the back nine in 6 over par, to finish one under my handicap, and to get a reduction of 0.1 to take my handicap back to 3.5. As traditionally happens, the rain stopped just as we were on the final green.

Of the six shots I dropped, four of them could be directly attributable to the weather, which for most of the back nine was utterly miserable. One of the par fours became out of reach, despite two of my best shots, and I hit a tee shot on one hole where pitchmark was actually further than where the ball finished.

There has been quite a bit of rain recently, and the course has been saturated. It didn’t take much rain to re-saturate it again, which made playing very, very difficult. In four years playing at my home club, today was the first occasion I have ever seen water lying on any of the greens, they can normally take as much water as mother nature can throw at them, and they will drain straight away. I also had several lies where the ball was lying directly and wholly on top of mud. People generally imagine playing a golf shot off of grass, but playing off mud, especially around the greens, is a whole different ball game.

There are several attitudes I could have to today, including;

- I blew up, I could have got 0.7 or more off my handicap

- I was only in a good position to start with because I sank some putts

- I was unlucky

- I was lucky

- I played well, but the weather accentuated any loose shots that I may otherwise have got away with

- I played brilliantly considering the conditions

The attitude I will take away is the second last one. I did play well, 2 over par for the back nine, taking out the weather affecting shots, would have been very good and would have got a 0.5 reduction for my handicap, but the conditions meant that any shot that wasn’t bang out the middle of the club, and even some that were, was an instant bogey. These things happen, nothing I can do about it now.

A very quick analysis of my round tells me that in my eyes I hit 22 good shots, 9 average, 6 bad, and 5 that were affected by the underfoot conditions. I hit more good shots than everything else combined. During the week I finished off re-reading the Bob Rotella book I often go back to, and it reminded me that the mechanics of a good golf shot are nothing short of a small miracle. Watch a beginner try and make contact with the ball and you’ll soon see what I mean. For me to hit more of them well than anything else is something I should be proud of, regardless of my standard and the score I end up with.

We’ll give it another go next week, maybe I’ll be 3 under par after 9 again, and the weather will stay fair.

Anyone Got Any Good News?

UK Handicap; 3.6 USGA Handicap; 2.2

Adjustment required; -3.2, Competition rounds; 75, Ratio; -0.043 per round

I don’t have a great deal to say this week, only the one game of golf has taken place and that hasn’t exactly inspired me to wax lyrical about my game.

I had a lesson on Sunday morning, followed by a competition in the afternoon. Now normally I would absolutely advise against having a lesson just before playing a proper game, but with the lack of daylight time available, and the general state of disrepair I found my game in, I didn’t see what alternative I had.

I got quite a lot out of the lesson, which focussed mainly on my setup. As a result, I have changed quite a lot, and to be honest at the moment it feels quite uncomfortable. I am now standing a lot further away from the ball, am doing some checking that my feet and the clubhead are facing towards the target, and am trying to get more of a turn in my hips when swinging. Standing further away from the ball is the most uncomfortable part of it, as it feels like I am miles away from it and have to reach to make contact with it now. The alignment of the clubhead is the most difficult part for me. I normally address the ball with the clubhead open (pointing right of the target for a right-hander like me), when I line the clubhead up correctly with the target it feels like it is pointing dramatically to the left. If I don’t change my swing then I will end up hitting everything left, but the other two aspects of standing further away and getting more of a hip turn should help sort them out.

The next thing I need to do is to groove this in, so I am planning on reluctantly spending all day this coming Saturday hitting golf balls. It will be boring, it will be a war of attrition, and I need to keep regularly checking that I’m still doing the right things, and haven’t either slipped back into old methods, or as often happens overcompensate. But if I can put in the spade work now then I will reap the benefits long term.

As for the game I played after the lesson, I scored 30 points, which is 6 over my handicap. Considering that I missed 4 putts of less than 3 foot, and the course was playing incredibly long due to the extremely wet ground and amount of mud on it, actually isn’t too bad. But you get an idea of whether you’ve played well or not, and I certainly didn’t play well. Had I not missed the short putts and scored 34 points, it would have felt like robbery. As often happens after a lesson, there was a real mixture of shots. I hit 5 really top drawer shots, 2 of which were chips (the putts of which I then went on to miss), 2 were mid-irons, and 1 was a fairway wood from 210 yards onto a green. However there were some absolutely abysmal shots, we’re talking beginner shots here. When I get my new setup right it works, but it’s few and far between at the moment until it becomes second nature.

In my vain (bit negative there, who knows what will happen this year) attempt to get to scratch by the end of September, I’m going to start tracking how much I need to reduce by, and how many competition rounds I have left. If this ratio becomes higher than 0.1 for every competition round, then it’s goodnight Vienna, ideally I want to keep it at 0.05 or less. This should be a laugh.

A Four-gone Conclusion

UK Handicap; 3.5 USGA Handicap; 2.2

As was odds-on to happen, I have slipped back up to 3.5, meaning I am now playing off a handicap of 4. As much as I didn’t want it to happen, in a perverse way I like playing off something-point-five, as I feel the extra shot I now get gives me a good slingshot to get a significant cut.

I can’t pretend that I put up any sort of resistance to the inevitable rise to 4, I did it in the most miserable style.
The first game I played after my last post didn’t count for my handicap, which is just as well, because it was absolutely awful. Any time where my first par comes on the ninth hole isn’t going to end up with success. In the end I had one par in the first 13 holes, then 5 successive pars to finish, meaning I at least finished on a positive.

The following Saturday was a handicap counting round, and once more I turned a potentially good round into the obligatory 0.1 increase. After a shaky start, back to back birdies around the turn saw me 2 over par on the 13th tee. I can’t really remember what happened for the next hour, I think I just lost concentration completely, but I know I dropped four shots in four holes. A couple of pars to finish resulted in a 77 net 74, which wasn’t a disgrace, but was two shots too many to avoid a handicap increase.

The following day I had my first club match of the year. For the first time since I started playing golf again 4 years ago, I was the player receiving shots, as I was up against a 1 handicapper. By the end of my round, I had a touch of the Worman Swords. All bad golf is measured on a scale, with the Worman Sword being the absolutely worst golf I can possibly play, so named after my performance at the said named competition last year. It was embarrassing playing as I played, against a 1 handicapper who must have thought there was a 2 missing from the front of my handicap, and I was actually a 23 handicapper who had delusions of grandeur. Anyway, enough said, it was miserable, I was well beaten, the team lost, there is always next year.

The round in which I eventually went up to 4 came Friday past, and once more it was ridiculously bad golf. I totalled 23 stableford points (11 on holes 1-6, 1 on holes 7-12, 11 on holes 13-18), the equivalent of at least 16 over par. It was particularly disappointing as I was playing with two people who will push me this year to be the low player in the club. Going on current form, swing quality, temperament, attitude, natural ability, and just about everything else, you would get long odds on it being me being the low player at the end of this year. However, there is plenty of time for me to reverse this prediction, and I am literally counting down the days (42 currently) until the clocks go forward, and evening practice can commence.

In fact, evening practice might not happen, as in line with a broader lifestyle change, I am contemplating getting into a routine of getting up early every morning and practicing before breakfast. Going to bed at 1am and getting up later isn’t good for the mind, body or soul. I’m not typically a morning person but if I can get into the habit of being an early riser it will make me feel better, more productive, and hopefully a better golfer.

After the major downer of Friday, a couple of people gave me some hints as to why I may be randomly firing the golf ball in all directions.
I got a quick chance to put them into action, as today was the club “3 club and a putter” competition, so I took out a 3 wood, 7 iron, pitching wedge and putter with no expectations.
These lack of expectations look well justified when I was 5 over par after 6 holes, but from somewhere I actually found a bit of my game, and played the last 12 holes in level par. For the first time in several months, I can actually genuinely say without lying to myself that I played pretty well. The fact that I can play with 14 clubs and score 23 points, then two days later play with 4 clubs and score 35 points, is not lost on me. For the first time this season, I was absolutely solid with my putting. I didn’t miss anything inside 8 feet. By the end of the round my confidence in putting has risen dramatically, so I was standing over a putt knowing I was going to hole it, rather than thinking about which side I was going to miss it on. Sounds simple, confidence breeds confidence, but it’s absolutely true and is something I already know, but maybe need to remind myself by taking part in my annual read of various Bob Rotella books.

As things stand, my results show that I am playing stinking stuff, and there is no doubt that I need a lesson (when I can find the funds for it), but there is also an element of confidence simmering underneath, once I can get a few tweaks made in my swing I’ll be back in the game.