That Friday Feeling

UK Handicap; 3.4 USGA Handicap; 4.0

I am a lucky person, and I should remember that when I’m moaning about trivial items like my wedges not being as crisp as I would like. I have a job that allows me to work from home most of the time, and appreciates that sometimes I’ll work lots of hours at unusual times. But the flexibility works both ways and sometimes I’ll be able to shut down my laptop, go and play golf, and maybe catch up with work again later in the evening.  When I was younger my dad would take every Wednesday afternoon off work during the summer to play golf. I loved that concept, of playing golf when everyone else is working, and always wanted to have a similar situation. Whilst not happening every week, I now have a similar situation, and it seems to have fallen on Friday afternoons. Over the next 6 months I’ll probably work less than 50% of Friday afternoons and be playing golf on the rest. A Friday afternoon playing golf is probably my favourite time of any week.

The first of these Fridays was yesterday, when we played a fourball better ball match. Readers with good memories will recall that myself and my partner lost our first game with a fairly abject display, but this time we managed to sneak a win by 1 hole. What made this match very unusual was that 17 of the 18 holes were halved (15 in pars, 1 in birdie and 1 in bogey), only the 6^th hole was won. I have never played in a match where anywhere near 17 holes were halved. I don’t know what caused this bizarre run, I suppose when you get four low handicappers (2 x 3 versus 2 x 5) on poor greens then most holes can be expected to be halved in pars. I was round in 75, which I was quite pleased with, especially as the 4 dropped shots were all for daft reasons, and there were also a couple of birdie putts that went awry too. Our final group match in this competition is a week on Sunday, a win there and we will be right in the mix for qualifying from our group.

Today was the next stage of the Mail on Sunday competition, and we had been drawn away at the course that borders our course. Despite being literally next door, I had never played it, so was shooting a bit blind. After a nervous start, I really started to find my range, and played my best tee to green golf for a long time. There was a spell for about an hour where I felt invincible, I knew exactly where the ball was going before I hit the shot. This coincided in a 4 hole run of birdie, par, birdie, birdie which took me from 2 up to 6 up. I eventually won 6&5 (on another day it could easily have been 9&8), unfortunately I was the only player to come in with a win and we lost the overall tie 4-1. I was 1 over par for the 13 holes of the match, 2 under par from the 4^th tee onwards.

The last couple of weeks have reminded me how important state of mind is on a golf course. Last week I felt terrible about my game, now I feel great about it. Looking at the stats, I hit as many greens last week as I did this week, but this week I was hitting the greens a bit closer to the flag, and as a result I wasn’t taking 3 putts to get down. My irons were also going where I wanted them to go, rather than 20 feet left or right of where I wanted them, and that boosts confidence with every shot.

I read a Bob Rotella book called Your 15^th Club over the winter, I think I need to read it again this week to reaffirm what I learned and keep it in the front of my mind.

I still have a lesson booked for tomorrow morning, as even though I’m hitting the ball exponentially better than I was a week ago, there is never a good reason for cancelling a lesson, as there is always something I can learn, develop, or tweak. If I’m serious about getting down to scratch then I need to call these sessions with a pro ‘coaching sessions’, for all states of play, rather than ‘lessons’, that only happen when I’m not playing well.