A load of games and a load of balls

You can study as much theory as you want in order to perform a specific task, whether it be football, physics, or sheet-metal work, but the real improvement comes from practical experience.
This is why I come up with a plan for how many times I’m going to play golf over the course of a year.

I’m not a great fan of playing between November and March, and until 2009 my clubs used to go away when the clocks went back at the end of October, and come out again sometime during March. From monitoring my handicap, I found that after these 5 month spells of not playing, the first 2 months of playing again resulted in my handicap going gradually upwards, before a sustained period of dramatic reduction started. If I didn’t play until the middle of March, then it was the middle of May before my handicap started to reduce, and by that time 25% of the season has already passed. So in 2009 I decided to start playing at the start of February, so that by the start of the golf season (start of April) I was primed and my game was where I wanted it to be.
And you know what? It worked. My handicap was cut in the last week of March, I won a competition in the first week of April, and the handicap was cut again in the first week of May. So I’m going to do the same again in 2010, play in the colder months when I really have to force myself to do it, knowing that it will really benefit me when the warmer weather arrives. And believe me, it really is a struggle to drag my sorry backside out of bed when it’s minus 3 degrees, to go and hit 100 balls in a soggy field when I could be sitting inside watching football on the tv. But it has to be done if I want to get any better.

Overall for 2009 I planned to play 140 times, and I actually achieved 112 games. I count a game as a full 18 holes, or at least 9 holes playing multiple balls per hole, or a minimum of a 90 minute practice session. Okay, so I didn’t play as many times as I had planned, but the bar was set deliberately high; there will always be a time where due to travel, work, or illness, I am not able to play as many times as I would like. 112 games in a year is just over 2 a week, which doesn’t sound much, but bearing in mind I have a full-time job that takes me all around the country I am fairly happy with it.
Without this plan I wouldn’t have even made it to 100 games, and the constant knowledge that I pay £1,500 a year to play golf on my home course reminds me that it makes sense to try and squeeze as much value as possible out of it; that’s the Scottish gene kicking in there.
The captain of my golf club last year played 161 rounds, so my 112 rounds stands up to scrutiny considering that someone who is retired and gets invited to every golf day going, played less than 50 rounds more than me.

The 2010 schedule has 150 games in it, starting at 1 per week during the winter, slowly building up to My Majors where it is either 4 or 5 games per week, then winding down again from the middle of September onwards. If I actually play 150 times I’ll be delighted, and I’ll be trying to achieve it, in all reality if I play 130 times or more then I’ll have given myself every opportunity to achieve the season’s targets.

I reckon that in these games & practice sessions I’ll hit in the region of 15,600 golf balls in 2010, and I’ll be keeping track of this with the little counter on the right of this blog. This is where the whole day job thing gets in the way. Tour pros probably hit at least 15,600 golf balls in a month, it will take me a whole year to do it. However, until I get 6 numbers in the lottery, or manage to get myself fired, it looks like the job is here to stay, so I’m going to have to work around it. The weather is harder to work around though; I couldn’t even get to the practice nets last week as they were covered in 4 inches of snow. A nice, mild, January – March will really help me get up to speed for 2010, especially as I’m going to need at least 2 months to get used to my new irons. Weather gods – despite your previous track record, please take note of this request and do your best.

Scratch = 0

It’s estimated that about 0.5% of golfers play off scratch or better, so at the moment, playing off 3 I must be around the top 2.5% of players.
That’s no mean achievement, and is better than most players can dream of. As delighted as I will be if I get that handicap certificate that tells me I’m a scratch golfer, I am under no illusion that I will somehow turn into some sort of god of the fairways;
Scratch is nothing, both numerically and in terms of achievement.

I make no apologies for stating a very similar argument to Tom Coyne in his book Paper Tiger (first half of the book is an excellent read by the way), especially pages 51-57.
Golf exists in the shape of 2 pyramids. A scratch golfer is at the top of his club pyramid, the player that everyone in the club wants to play with, so that they can try and beat him, or pick up some tips, or say that they once played in a fourball with someone who broke par. Below the scratch golfer in this pyramid there are various other categories, I would put them in this sort of order;
- The Nudger; plays off 3 or 4, always unspectacular but never seems to return a score worse than 5 over par.
- The Good Weekender; single figure player, thinks that if he had more time / money and less wives / kids he could play a lot lower.
- The Enthusiast; A solid player, but has been stuck on the same handicap for years now, has the time and money, but doesn’t have the skill or body to move his game to the next level.
- The Budding Star; could be any handicap, but is under 18 years old and his handicap is reducing at a rate of knots.
- Everyone Else; I class Everyone Else as a category, basically if you’re not good enough to be classed as one of the above categories, then it doesn’t really matter how often / how good you play, you are just another member of the golf club who hopefully enjoys his golf but isn’t going to get anything more than enjoyment out of it.

So that’s the club pyramid, and accounts for 99.5% of golfers, but the top 0.5% have their own pyramid;
- Tiger
- Multiple Major Winners
- Tour Regulars
- Tour Wannabees
- Development Tour Players
- Q School Candidates
- Plus Handicap Amateurs
- Club Pros
- Assistant Pros
- Scratch Amateurs
The gap between a couple of steps in this pyramid is so mind-blowingly enormous, that it’s difficult to comprehend. As Tom Coyne bluntly states, “Scratch is shit”. You have absolutely no idea how good the players from Plus Handicap Amateurs and above in this pyramid actually are. A scratch player is at the very bottom of this very steep, and sometimes greased, pyramid.
As an example, in the 2009 Scottish Amateur Championship (open to those born in Scotland, or with a Scottish parent, or having lived in Scotland for at least 5 years, although 99% of entrants met all three criteria), 129 of the 256 players had a handicap of +1 or better. That’s over half the field were better than scratch. Of the remaining 127 players, 90 of them were off scratch. And that’s only the players who were logistically able to play in the event. I checked the entry list and none of the 3 players I know who play off a plus handicap played in the event. If time / money / work / geography weren’t barriers, the entire field could have been filled by players better than scratch.
And that’s just Scotland, with a population of 5.5 million. Imagine how many players better than scratch there are throughout the entire UK?*
You think scratch is good? It may be good, but it’s certainly not great. To achieve greatness you have to finish the climb to get above the tens of thousands of people above you in your new pyramid.


*Hopefully with the advent of the National Handicap Database it will be a lot easier to find out the answer to that currently rhetorical question. I would love to see a percentage breakdown for each handicap, e.g. If you are off scratch you are in the top 0.5%, if you are off 1 you are in the top 1.1%, if you are off 2 you are in the top 1.8%, and so on.

Targeting targets

I watched an interview with Padraig Harrington towards the end of 2008, reviewing his amazing previous 18 months where he won 3 major championships.
He was asked about what his targets were going forward, and he said something along the lines of ‘You always have your targets, but I don’t make them public. If I say I want to win all 4 majors next year, and I win 3, people will say I’ve failed against my targets, where in actual fact I’ll be the happiest man alive if I win 3 majors next year.’
Now I think Padraig Harrington is a fantastic golfer to model yourself on, mainly due to his mental aspect and the methodical way that he looks at things. In his world he is under intense media scrutiny, but there is a key element that he has missed out in his statement.
Any targets, whether in golf, work, or life in general, should be SMART. For those of you not familiar with management or training jargon, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Based (although there are a few different variations of each of these).
Padraig’s example of winning 4 majors in a year may be specific, measurable, achievable (in theory), and time-based, but it is not realistic.
To that extent, I am going to deviate from my usual mantra of ‘Do what Padraig does’, and set out my targets for 2010 publicly.
I wrote yesterday about my Majors in 2010, and I now have targets set for each of them, which are as follows;
- Worman Sword – top 12 scratch (out of about 72)
- Forfar 36 Hole Open – top 6 scratch (out of about 90)
- Middlesex County Championship – top 16 scratch (out of about 72)
- Club Championship – win (out of about 60)
- Montrose 5 Day Open – last 16 matchplay (out of about 150)
- Monifieth 18 Hole Open – top 10 scratch (out of about 150)
- Craw’s Nest Tassie – last 32 matchplay (out of about 350)
Whilst they are all individual targets, the overall target for 2010 is to achieve 2 or more of the above statements, or 1 or more if the 1 is the Club Championship.
Anything less than that would be an unsuccessful season, hitting the overall target or better would be an ultimately rewarding season. Hitting them all (which is theoretically possible looking at each one on its own), would be an absolutely fantastic achievement, and in the process would help me get a lot closer to the goal of playing off scratch. But like every other golfer in the world, form comes and goes over the course of the season, it is not realistic to expect to perform to the top of my game for an entire season.
Looking at each target in isolation again, most of them may not look that inspiring, top 10 here, top 16 there, and to that extent I can understand why Padraig doesn’t make his targets public. He would get slaughtered by the press if he was to be targeting top 10 finishes instead of aiming to win every tournament he enters.
But with my targets, they are realistic, and if someone was to tell me now that I’d achieve two or more of them, then I’d be happy. All 7 would make me happier though.

My Majors

Most people will be aware of the 4 Majors in the professional golfing calendar; US Masters, US Open, The Open Championship, and the USPGA. These are the tournaments that all golfers strive to win, and indeed the whole success of their careers is often defined by whether they win any of these titles.
They still put a lot of effort into the other regular tournaments, but the 4 majors are the performance peaks of the year.

Likewise, I have my own majors. They aren’t going to change my life if I win them, nor make me famous, but they are the tournaments that carry more importance to me than the regular Saturday Medal.
In 2010, I am going to have 7 Majors. I've already booked 3 weeks off work to play in them all, these are the tournaments that are effectively my holidays for 2010. I'm going to do whatever I can to ensure that I play to the best of my capabilities, which in turn will help me enjoy them even more. Playing in tournaments in great, but playing well in tournaments is absolutely mind-bogglingly fantastic. My 7 majors for 2010 are;

The Worman Sword – 8th May 2010 - a 36 hole strokeplay competition at Wyke Green. Last year; 15th.
Forfar 36 Hole Open – 30th May 2010 – another 36 hole competition over 1 day. 2010 will be my first appearance.
Middlesex County Championship – 4th June 2010 – 36 hole strokeplay followed by the top 16 playing knockout matchplay. To be held at Bush Hill Park in 2010. Last year; 39th.
Club Championship – 26th June 2010 – 36 holes strokeplay over 1 or 2 days (TBC). Last year; 3rd.
Montrose 5 Day Open – 26th – 30th July 2010 – 36 holes strokeplay over 2 days, followed by knockout matchplay over 3 days. 2010 will be my first appearance.
Monifieth 18 Hole Open – 1st August 2010 – 18 holes strokeplay over the course I grew up playing. Last year; 7th.
Craw’s Nest Tassie – 6th – 11th September 2010 – 36 holes strokeplay over the Carnoustie Championship and Burnside courses, with the top 64 playing knockout matchplay over the Championship course. 2010 will be my first appearance.

The first challenge, like professionals and their majors, is to actually get into these tournaments. There’s no problem from a handicap point of view, a 3 handicapper won’t be balloted out of any of them, but some of them are on a first-come first served basis, and can fill up very quickly.

I’ll have my targets for each of these tournaments, but I’ll share them, plus my theory behind targets, in a few days time.

The start of a journey

So, my first post on my first blog, after months of procrastinating I've finally taken the plunge.
Over the coming months / years / decades, I aim to keep this blog updated with my progress in my aim to get a golf handicap certificate that says '... and his playing handicap is ZERO.' on it. During that time, I'll post about games I've played, people I've played with, quite a few statistics and articles relating to golf in general, my hopes, targets, and results against those targets. My starting point at the moment is a handicap of 3.2, so I need to shave 2.8 off to get a playing handicap of scratch. Sounds easy, a 24 handicapper can reduce his or her handicap by 2.8 with one good round, however doing it at the other end of the handicap spectrum is going to be one of the hardest challenges I've ever undertaken.
There are literally tens of thousands of golfers that think they are good enough to play off scratch, and over 95% of them never achieve it. What's different about me? Well, to be honest, I don't know, maybe 2.5 is the lowest I can ever get, however with the progress I've made over the last 3 seasons, a regimented plan, and above all a bit of experience, I'm more confident in my ability to achieve the target now, than I was when aged 18. I maybe hit the ball better back then, but I didn't have the psychological nous to be able to manouvere my way around a golf course.
One thing I definitely won't be doing on this blog is posting about golf instruction, there is so much information on the net about how to hit a golf ball, that me adding a bit more will not make a blind bit of difference. The only thing I will say is if you want to play better golf, go and see your local PGA pro!
With it being winter the handicap graph on the right of the page won't be updating much, but there will still be things to talk about, including the battle to get into the tournaments I want to play next year, a new set of irons I'm getting that will hopefully shave 1.5-2 shots off my game, and a few interesting calculations that I've done over the last few months.
By the time we reach March / April the competitions will have started and we'll then begin to see if the new clubs / prayers / winter practice have helped.