Time Available < Time Required

UK Handicap; 3.5 USGA Handicap; 3.1

Another day of aching limbs after 36 holes the previous day, and the prospect of 6 hours sitting on a train as I head back to London.

After leaving Strathmore yesterday, we headed to Kingennie, a 3 year old 9 hole course on the outskirts of Dundee where a friend is a member. It was another course I hadn’t set foot on before so this was another blind experience, at least for the first 9 holes until we went round the second time for the “back nine”. Playing a nine hole course all of the time would drive me nuts, it must get so repetitive having to play each hole twice to get an 18 hole score, although the one advantage it does give is the knowledge of flag positions etc the second time around, as well as the motivation of improving on the first nine score. 18 holes and 72 shots later, and I was absolutely done for. The wind at Kingennie was extremely strong, and the hard ground, coupled with the new turf not being fully mature yet, made scoring very difficult. Par and SSS are both 68, so my 72 net 68 would have got me cut back to 3 had I been a member of the club playing in a competition. From looking at the scores from a members competition being played, the CSS increased to 71 due to the conditions. I would have counted this score towards my USGA handicap, as my rules for this handicap are that any round at my home course, and any round at another course which has been USGA rated (generally rounds in Scotland, where all courses have been rated), count towards my USGA handicap, but I cannot find the Kingennie Course and Slope Ratings anywhere so I’m unable to calculate it.

The CSS at Strathmore stayed at 72, so I have been cut 0.2, back to 3.5. This is still higher than I started the season at, but I’m starting to come into a bit of form, 4 of my last 5 rounds have been in my best 10/20 for USGA calculation purposes.

It’s getting to that time of year where there is not enough time available to do everything I want to. There is a competition today at my home club, but I can’t play as I’m up in Scotland. The County Championships are on Friday, and I won’t have time for a practice round beforehand, meaning I’ll be playing yet another course blind. The Forfar 36 Hole Open has been rescheduled for Saturday 24th July, which I can’t play in as I have a competition at my home club that morning, and have already booked a train up to Scotland that afternoon in advance of a competition I have starting the following Monday. If they had rearranged it a day later everything would have worked out perfectly, I’m going to have to just accept I’m not going to be able to play Forfar this year.

The next item on the agenda, as mentioned above, is the County Championship on Friday. It’s kind of crept up on me this year, however maybe that’s not a bad thing, as yesterday showed that the less time I have to mull things over in advance can work in my favour as I don’t have the opportunity to over-analyse things.

Strathmore 18 Hole Open Update

Having a short notice change of plan can work to an advantage on occasion. That certainly happened today, as I played Strathmore blind. It is a tough trek, well worthy of it's rating, and the greens were in good condition with some really heavy but subtle breaks. It was quite windy as well, which didn't help playing conditions. I found myself hitting the first 7 greens in regulation, and being 2 under par on the 8th tee. The next 7 were fairly poor, resulting in 2 three putts and 5 bogeys to put me 3 over par. But the ship was steadied and I finished with 3 pars then a birdie on the last, for gross 74 net 70. I hit 14 greens in regulation, which is really pleasing for the conditions, the 36 putts wasn't great, but the greens were quite contoured.
As things stand, with about 85% of players in, I am tied 2nd overall, although there are 5 players on 74 and I don't expect to win anything on countback as my back nine was poorer than my front nine. I have the 5th best net score in the clubhouse too. The best thing, other than playing really well, is that I will get my handicap cut by at least 0.1, possibly more. Makes up for the early disappointment of this morning's cancellation.

Change Of Plan

So, the day of the Forfar 36 Hole Open. Except I won’t be playing in the Forfar 36 Hole Open as it’s been cancelled due to torrential rain last night. I got the call just after 8 o’clock, and was surprised to say the least. I know it rained last night, but never in a million years did I think the competition would be cancelled because of it. It will be rearranged for another date during the year, but that’s not much use when I have a 1,000 mile round trip to play in it, and have already shelled out for said trip this weekend.

So as not to waste the weekend, the internet was quickly consulted, and we are now playing in the Strathmore 18 Hole Open in about 90 minutes time. The power of the internet is brilliant, 10 years ago you would never have been able to know, at 5 minutes notice, what competitions were on. So we’re going to try and make the best of a bad situation and enjoy the day. I have never played Strathmore before, it is par 72 SSS72, so I expect nothing, but sometimes that’s when magic things can happen. We shall wait and see…..

Forfar 36 Hole Open Preview

The Intro;

The second of my major competitions of 2010 is the Forfar 36 Hole Open on 30^th May.

This is a 36 hole strokeplay event played at Forfar Golf Club.

The Background;

I haven’t played Forfar in about 13 years, but it was always a really popular venue when I was a junior golfer. I won the under 15 years old handicap prize of their Junior Open in nineteen ninety *cough* something. With the day after this year’s tournament being a bank holiday, it means that I can travel up to Scotland on the Saturday afternoon and travel back down south on the Monday, without using any holidays from work.

The Location;

Forfar is a small market town in Angus. The nearest major city is Dundee, 15 miles south. The famous links of Carnoustie is 13 miles south east. The course itself is located to the east of the town, and is contained within a square area, in keeping with the farming area that surrounds it, and the way land and fields are split up between owners. Despite being inland, the setup makes it play like a links course, but with a lot less wind. Because it is inland though, it doesn’t get the same reputation as other courses nearby, as the Angus coast is famed for its seaside courses.

The Course;

Although housed within a square area, the course itself has quite bit of variety. Square shaped courses can easily get caught in a trap of playing one hole one way, then the next hole in the opposite direction, so you spend 18 holes going up and down and up and down. There are some small hills on the course, and there is an abundance of scots pine trees. 10 of the 13 par 4s are under 400 yards, so it is very much a course where if you can get your driver and short irons (8, 9 PW and SW) working then there is a chance to shoot low. By my reckoning, if the driving is reliable, then there are only 4 holes where an iron longer than a 7 iron will be required. The par is 69, and the SSS is 70.

Because of the relatively low profile, the course is absolutely a hidden gem, a day ticket costs £42 ($61) during the week. If I ever move back to anywhere within 60 minutes of Forfar, it is the course I will try and join. A full membership costs £420 ($608) per year, for a fantastic layout in fantastic condition.

The Competition;

The maximum field is 90 players, and 10 of them will win prizes. The prize fund is £780, with the overall winner receiving £130. 43% of the entry fees go back into the prize fund, meaning that the green fees for 36 holes cost around £11 to each entrant – it’s value for money regardless of how you play.

The winning score is generally 138, which is level par.

The Target;

I’ve never played in this event before. Going on the basis that the winning score is around 138, I would like to finish in the top 6 places, as that would represent a solid performance.

I am really looking forward to playing in this competition for a variety of reasons; I haven’t played the course in years, I generally play well on it, it is fun to play, it is always in great condition, and I have been paired with a friend of mine so it will be quite a relaxed atmosphere. Updates will appear here at about 4pm and 9pm (UK) on Sunday.

Look Back To Look Forward

A couple of posts I made last week got me interested in how I am playing compared with previous years, and the difference in play between the start of a year, and the peak of the season, which is normally the June – August period.

I have played 23 rounds on my home course this year, so I have taken those 414 holes and split them into how I played them in relation to par. I then took the first 23 rounds in each of the previous calendar years I have data for, and completed the same exercise. Finally, I looked at the 23 rounds in the peak of the season for each year.

The first graph shows the comparison between the start and the peak of the season.

Unsurprisingly, it confirms the theory that there is a peak in each season. The number of pars or better is 13% higher in the peak of the season than in the start of the year. Interestingly, over the 3 years, the rate hasn’t been a consistent 13%, it has been 8% in 2007, then 12% in 2008, then 19% in 2009. This is a good trend for me at the moment as it shows that, regardless of the difference in standard at the start of each year, the better I get the more of a difference it makes in the peak.

So where am I this year? 

Looking at the next graph, this compares the first 23 rounds of golf in each of the last 4 calendar years. From 2007 to 2008 the main improvement came from turning disaster holes (red) into bogey holes (orange). From 2008 to 2009 the main improvement came from turning bogey holes into pars. From 2009 to 2010 there hasn’t been a significant difference, the only thing that shows up is that there is more inconsistency; the number of birdies (green) and disaster holes (red) have both gone up; although the birdies have gone up by more, giving me a slightly lower score average.

The peak of each season gives a much clearer picture of how I have progressed. The number of birdies and pars are both up year on year, and the number of disaster holes is reduced year on year. As my 2010 start is similar to my 2009 start, I can expect the graph for the 2010 peak to look similar to the 2009 peak, but with a slight improvement.

The last thing I looked at was a comparison of the average and median gross scores from the first 23 rounds of each year, and the number of those 23 rounds that contained a disaster hole.

This shows a very clear indicator. In previous years, there has been a direct correlation between the average gross score and the number of rounds containing a double bogey or worse. This year, the number of rounds with a double bogey or worse is vastly higher than the trend in previous years suggests it should be (trend would suggest 10/23 rounds so far in 2010 would contain a double bogey or worse, actual figure is 17/23). My overall average scores are reducing year on year, but the number of disasters are increasing. What does this mean? 

Well, previously, I would have either a good day, or a bad day that might contain several disasters. Now, I’m less likely to have multiple disasters in one round, but in each round there will be the odd one. I don’t know what is causing this, but if I had to guess I would suggest it is to do with putting excess pressure on myself. At the start of previous years I have been playing off a higher handicap, so I was expected to drop more shots. Now, playing off of 3 or 4, if I get into trouble I am taking more risks to try and salvage a par, as every dropped shot counts massively. However, when the risk doesn’t pay off I am dropping at least 2 shots. I need to get back to the stage of only taking calculated risks, and being prepared to drop shots, knowing that I have the ability to make a birdie to get it back later on.

Frequent Flyer

UK Handicap; 3.7 USGA Handicap; 3.4

It’s been a busy week, on and off the course, meaning that a) I have a lot to update and b) I am absolutely and completely shattered.

Knowing I was going to be away from Tuesday to Friday, I took the opportunity on Monday to get a quick 18 holes in. I used to quite regularly go out and race around 18 holes in about 2 hours in the evening, but hadn’t at all in 2010 as I’d opted to practice instead. The golf wasn’t exactly stunning, but it got better in the 2^nd half, and it was good to play 18 holes for a change with no pressure, no company, and no waiting.

The most exciting thing about Monday was that when I got to the club I was told my new putter had turned up, so I used it for the first time. The most important thing for me was that the putter was the right length and lie angle, my previous putter was too long at 36 inches, this putter is 33 inches and feels much more comfortable. A couple of photos of the new putter are below;

Tuesday saw my meeting about my knee. I met a very amenable physiotherapist, who after looking at my knee and doing tests from every angle imaginable, came to the conclusion that my knee pain is caused by the joint of the femur and the patella, and the best course of action is to build up muscle around my knee to hold my kneecap better in place. So I still have anti-inflammatory tablets, and now also have these exercises to do, and we’ll review the progress in 3 weeks. The diagnosis ties in with something I have been working on in my golf lessons, namely my weight distribution. Because I use my right leg to bear more weight during my (old) golf swing, the muscle in the right knee was built up more than in the left knee. The swing changes I’m currently trying to perfect should even this out, and build up my left knee in the process.

So bearing my knee in mind, spending over 14 hours on trains over the next 3 days wasn’t the best treatment, but unfortunately I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

Arriving back in London already extremely tired last night, I then went and played 36 holes today. Sometimes I get so tired that I don’t think I could walk another 100 yards, but the weather in the London area was absolutely beautiful today, and it would have been a shame not to spend all day in the sunshine playing golf.

This morning was a stableford, and I managed to get 37 points, which should get 0.1 reduced from my handicap, although I’ll have to wait until the results are published and the Competition Scratch Score is generated to find out for sure. I played the difficult holes very well, and dropped 5 silly shots on some of the easiest holes on the course. The 18^th (which was my 9^th as I started on the 10^th) saw me get a flyer with my second shot. This means that grass gets caught between the clubface and the ball, and grooves on the club do not take effect. The effect is that the ball goes further than expected and doesn’t have any spin on it so will run further too. It can’t really be pre-empted, it just happens occasionally. Unfortunately, the 18^th hole at my course has out of bounds about 7 yards off of the back of the green. I’ve never seen anyone hit the ball out of bounds in that spot……… until about 11.15am this morning. So there is 2 shots gone just like that, without even hitting a bad shot, and ultimately the chance of having my handicap reduced by another 0.2.

This afternoon was a match for the Tigers team, and I lost on the last hole. My opponent birdied the last hole, I only managed a par after getting another flyer. My shot was dead down the line of the hole, the extra flight and lack of spin took it 20 feet past, much to my surprise. I had two flyers all day, and each one was extremely costly. Looking at my stats, I have only won 2 out of the 8 matchplay matches I have played this season, surprising as I had won 14 out of 21 in the 3 years previously. Despite losing, I hit a fantastic 16 out of 18 greens in regulation (29/36 for the day), and only dropped shots on 2 holes. My putting wasn’t great, but I’m going to practice with my new putter this week.

I am hitting the ball really well now, but I have noticed a worrying trend. When I hit a bad shot previously, I generally recovered to only drop 1 shot. Now, the number of disaster holes (double bogey or worse) is crept up dramatically. In my first 23 rounds of 2009, 12 of them contained a double bogey or worse. In my first 23 rounds of 2010, a frightening 17 of them have contained a double bogey or more. I’m playing really good stuff for 95% of the time, but the remaining 5% is costing me lots of shots. I’m going to go into more detail about this over the coming week (I have graphs and everything, bet you can’t wait for more graphs!), but for the meantime I just need to sleep. zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Not So Sweet Sixteen

UK Handicap; 3.9 USGA Handicap; 3.7

Another two competitions this week, and guess what? Another 0.2 on my handicap. Both competition rounds were gross 78s, which again, is not a disaster, but is still some way off the pace I need to be setting. My last 8 rounds at my home course have actually all been between 74 and 78, I need to maintain that consistency but about 4 shots less.

The Friday round carried on the thread from last week, I struggled to hit my irons and relied on a good short game. The anti-inflammatory tablets are still working brilliantly, so I had virtually no pain in my knee at all. However, I still only hit 7 greens in regulation out of 18.

I had a lesson first thing on Saturday, and it was the best lesson I’ve had so far. I don’t want to bore anyone with the technical details, but as opposed to the previous lesson, I just “got it”. I stayed out for a while after the lesson and after another hour I was pinging 7 irons at will towards my target.

I came to today’s round with renewed confidence over my irons, and I did hit them a lot better generally, hitting 13 greens in regulation. I was about 6 inches from a hole in one as well. Unsurprisingly, as I have mentioned before, the plate spinning means that as soon as I sorted one aspect of my game, another part went. This time, very unusually, it was my driving that went. I dropped 10 shots in total today (3 birdies got it back to 7 over par 78 in total), and 8 of those 10 dropped shots were caused by 3 poor tee shots. I am normally fairly solid off the tee, I generally don’t have to worry about, or practice, tee shots. I am convinced that, having made changes to my setup / swing for my irons, these same changes are influencing my driving, although this time having a negative effect. I sound like a broken record here; but there is very nearly a good score in there just waiting to get out, hopefully with a few more tweaks, this time to my driving, I can get to where I need to be.

This is a part where I need to remember how difficult it is to improve at this level whilst holding down a relatively responsible full time job. I’d love to play or practice every day, but in the next 10 days I have to be in Newcastle, Liverpool, Newcastle (again), Doncaster and Belfast. There is at least 5 days where golf is totally out of the question. This puts me at a massive disadvantage compared with the students, gap year kids, and people who don't have to worry about working full time. There are moments of severe doubt on occasion, is my target (and the whole purpose of this blog) actually achievable, and realistic? My best score this year is 2 over par 73, a lot of people will never get near to going round a golf course in as few as 73 shots, but if I have any chance of reaching my goal I need scores like 73 to be a bad day at the office, not a season best. Who knows? I’ll keep on trying, but as I have started to mention more often recently, it is time to turn thoughts and theory into action.

To finish on a minor stats note, I have now played my home course 20 times this season, so I thought I’d look at my stats. My mean average round is 77.45, but the thing that absolutely stands out is that I appear to have a complete mental block about the 16^th hole. I was thinking this was the case before I saw these stats, I’ve not parred it in my last 7 attempts. It’s strange how different holes can play with your mind for a period of time, it’s happened before on other holes (14^th, 10^th and 1^st, all of which are now in midfield of my difficulty rating). I think I just need to play through it, par it a couple of times to give me positive mental images that I can refer to when I play it in future. I’ve never been averaging as high as 1.1 over par for a hole after 20 rounds of a season before this, when I only get 4 shots per round I can’t afford to throw 1.1 of them away on the same hole, time and time again.

A Healthy Service

UK Handicap; 3.7 USGA Handicap; 3.5

I’ve not hit a golf ball since my last post, but there have still been a couple of ups and downs.

The down is that my handicap has managed to go up another 0.1 without even playing. I found out that the Competition Scratch Score wasn’t the provisional figure I had been told, for a competition I played in a couple of weeks ago, so my handicap had gone up instead of staying the same. There is a kind of perverse pleasure when my handicap goes up, and it gives me more scope to get cut further. That defies all sensible logic, I should want my handicap to be as low as possible, but I feel like my handicap going up gives me a slingshot for a good run of getting it reduced. Having said that, the way this season has gone, I need one of these slingshots sooner rather than later.

The up side is that my knee is on the road to being mended. For any American readers who have heard the Republican claims that the NHS is “evil and Orwellian” over the last year, below is my experience of the services it has provided me.

Monday 9.20am; Phone doctor

Monday 10.20am; See doctor, prescribed anti-inflammatory tablets and referred to knee specialist

Monday 11.00am; Pick up medicine from chemist

Tuesday 2.00pm; Arrange appointment with knee specialist

Next Tuesday 2.00pm; Appointment with knee specialist

I’m not going to suggest that my experiences are replicated across the country 100% of the time, but I would have been hard pushed to have got a better level of service anywhere else in the world.

The anti-inflammatories (which I had within 2 hours of first contacting my doctor) have worked fantastically so far, my knee is in no pain whatsoever, and the underlying cause should be investigated next week. The total cost of all this? £7.20 ($11) for the medicine. Had I been younger, older, or a vulnerable member of society, I wouldn’t even have had to pay that.

Thanks to the NHS I’ll be playing on Friday and Sunday in competitions I didn’t think I’d be anywhere near being fit enough to play in.

Review, Forget, Move On

UK Handicap; 3.6 USGA Handicap; 3.5

The dust has settled and I can now objectively look back at the weekend in a bit more detail, and fill in a few gaps.

What I haven’t mentioned so far is that on Thursday night I went out for 9 holes, playing 2 balls on each hole, and putted absolutely everything out as if it was competition conditions. I played the 18 holes in 1 under par, and the world was a great place. I was filled with renewed confidence in time for the Worman Sword competition on Saturday.

The top line of yesterday (Saturday) has already been detailed from my mobile posts, and the opinion side of things remain the same as it was last night – my performance was embarrassing. I was notionally 36 over par for 36 holes, and was 26 shots worse than last year.

There are lots of things I could try and blame my poor performance on, in reality it was just one of those miserable days, not just on the golf course;

• 2^nd consecutive 5.30am start; I am not an early person, and 2 x 5 hour sleeps in a row do not help with fatigue.
• Bank card; On the way to the course a cash machine in Hounslow decided to keep my bank card, leaving me with virtually no cash until my bank can send me a new one sometime this week.
• Hayfever; Yesterday was the first visit of my hayfever, without my havfever medication I just had to get through it.
• Being hit; I’ve only ever been hit twice by a golf ball, and yesterday was one of them. It’s a bit frightening when you see a ball hurtling towards you and know you can’t get out of the way before it hits you in about half a second.
• Knee; It is now sore all of the time on the course, which I’ll mention later in this post.

To fill in some more numbers, I hit 13 greens in regulation out of 36 holes. In the morning I hit 10 greens, which is alright although still well below the 14 I would expect to hit. My putting was awful and that helped to destroy my card. In the afternoon I hit a pitiful a 3 greens in regulation out of 18. In the absence of data to back it up, I would expect that to be the lowest greens in regulation I have hit in several thousand rounds of golf. I was absolutely in a positive frame of mind standing on the first tee of the second round, I just couldn’t hit the ball in a straight line.

Of the 13 greens that I did hit in regulation over the course of the day, only 2 were within 14 feet, and 6 in total were within 20 feet. You aren’t going to get many birdies if the ball isn’t going near the hole.

By the time we reached the last 9 holes my knee was getting very painful, and I wasn’t sure if it was affecting my swing or not.

The answer arrived this morning, when I woke up with my knee in agony.

Had I not had a competition and been drawn in a 2-ball, therefore feeling obliged to turn up to not leave my partner on his own, there is no way I would have played today.

As it was, I actually played alright, although a lot of that was down to a dynamite short game – I got up and down on several occasions from places I would not expect to.

I was round in 77 shots, which kept my handicap the same (although it went up 0.2 yesterday). In truth it was a bit of a scrambly 77, and to say that a 6 over par round is ‘alright’ gives some indication as to how far away from scratch I am, although there are extenuating circumstance in this case. I only hit 10 greens in regulation today, because I was unable to fully turn my knee, meaning I was losing a lot of distance and I was ‘steering’ my irons. This meant I was either arriving at the ball with the clubface open, meaning the ball blocked right, or I was overcompensating with my hands to get the clubface square, which resulted in a hook. Two of these such shots cost me 5 of my 6 dropped shots, a big hook on the 6^th resulting in a double bogey, and an absolutely massive block out of bounds on the 14^th resulting in a triple bogey.

As I write now my knee is fine when stationary, however is extremely painful whenever I try and move it. I don’t really suffer from injury and illness, I’m very lucky in regards to my health, so this is a bit of an unknown for me. The doctor will be contacted tomorrow, as I can’t continue to just say it is sore – I need to do something about it. I’m just nervous about what the verdict may be.

Worman Sword Round 2

Okay, I need to think before I say that things can't get any worse, because this afternoon's round was just chronic. I sprayed the ball all over the place, I hardly hit a straight shot all round. I didn't complete my card, but if I had taken the most likely score on a hole where I lost a ball I would have scored 91. That is 22 over par. For a 3 handicap golfer. I'm embarrassed even writing that. The funny thing is that I have another competition tomorrow morning at my home course, I may well shoot the lights out and wonder what today was all about.
I hope that happens, otherwise I am going back to the drawing board in a big way.
For the moment, I'm on an underground train on my way home, looking forward to a nice hot shower and anything to take my mind off golf.

Worman Sword Round 1

Well, that was an unmitigated disaster. Round in 83, my worst score around Wyke Green. I had 6 three-putts, despite the excellent greens, and generally threw shots away all the way around. I also got hit by a wayward tee shot on the 9th from some numpty who didn't shout fore. The round has been forgotten about now, this afternoon is a no pressure round to enjoy.

Worman Sword Preview

The Intro;

The first of my major competitions of 2010 is the Worman Sword on 8^th May.

This is a 36 hole strokeplay event played at Wyke Green Golf Club.

The Background;

Wyke Green hosted the Middlesex County Championships last year, and in preparation I decided to play in this competition, as I hadn’t played the course before. I thoroughly enjoyed the course, and the County Championships a couple of weeks later, and decided at that point to make it a regular fixture in future years.

The Location;

The course itself is certainly not somewhere to get away from it all; there are planes, trains and automobiles wherever you look. The M4 motorway runs by the side of the 11^th and 12^th holes, it starts 2 miles east to take cars out of London, and will continue for another 180 miles until Swansea has been passed. The skyline on various holes, most notably the 3^rd, has aeroplanes virtually on the horizon, as they make their final approach into Heathrow Airport. In addition, if you ever fly into Heathrow and get the London Underground Piccadilly line into London, in between Osterley and Boston Manor you will pass through the middle of the golf course. Some people don’t like it – I absolutely love it, it is a reminder that you can get a golf course in one of the busiest cities in the world.

The Course;

The course itself is quite different from the front nine to the back nine. Holes 1-9 mainly consists of long par 4s, it’s all about keeping a card together with pars. The back nine is the opportunity to score, it’s filled with par 3s, short par 4s, and a short par 5. The par is 69, and the SSS is 70.

The Competition;

The maximum field is 72 players, and 10 of them will win prizes. The prize fund is £1,500, with the overall winner receiving £500. 58% of the entry fees go back into the prize fund, meaning that the green fees, lunch and sandwiches in the evening cost around £15 to each entrant – an excellent deal.

This year will be the 31^st time the competition has been played – in the last 26 years 25 different people have won it, and no-one has successfully defended it.

The Target;

Last year I shot 77 & 71 for 15^th place. This year I would like to finish in the top 12 places.

Updates will appear here at about 2pm and 7pm (UK) on Saturday.

Motivation Only Runs Sofa

UK Handicap; 3.4 USGA Handicap; 3.6

Long time readers may recall me setting out some loose targets for the year, based around 7 competitions that I am playing that I have called “My Majors”. These are 7 competitions that, although not the be all and end all of my season, are certainly competitions that I want to prepare for and perform as well as I possibly can. The first of these 7 competitions is next Saturday, and they following fairly regularly every 3 weeks or so for the next 4 months.

Having played an average of 5 times per week in the last month, it is somewhat unhelpful that in the last full week before my first "major", I have played once, and have spent the rest of the time sitting on my sofa eating chocolate. Okay, well maybe not all of the time eating chocolate, but it feels like it. I intended to have a couple of days off because of my knee being sore, but it’s amazing how that couple of days can extend, and soon it quickly becomes 5 days without hitting a proper golf shot. Once you are in that state of not playing golf at least every 48 hours it is amazing how difficult it is to quickly regain that motivation.

I had another lesson on Saturday, and I have to admit that I didn’t get as much out of it as I should have. This was entirely my fault, it was early in the morning, I wasn’t zoned in as much as I should have been, I didn’t write down notes straight away afterwards, and to be honest, it was difficult. Every lesson I’ve had so far has been about basic things I understand, this one was a bit more technical, which is something I’ve never really had to deal with before. I will try and see if I can get a 5 minute refresher over the next couple of days, write it all down, then start working hard on it.

I finally beat the motivation back into me today, with 18 holes in a club competition. The course was set up probably as hard as I have ever seen it, the flag positions were very difficult, and there was a very strong northerly wind, which is the most difficult (and coldest) wind direction.

I managed to hit my irons terribly, hitting 8 out of 18 greens in regulation (2^nd lowest of the season), yet my short game was pretty sharp and helped me knock it round in 77, net 74. This was good enough to be the best net score among the group of 12 people I played with by 2 shots, and the best gross score by 5 shots. Although normally a net 74 would mean my handicap going up, because of the conditions I reckon the CSS (Competition Scratch Score) could go up, meaning my handicap will remain at 3.4. If my handicap does go up then it means I’ll have an extra shot to play with on Saturday, so it wouldn’t be a disaster. It would have been easy to deliberately score badly to get my handicap up that 0.1 in time for Saturday, but that’s not how I believe golf should be played – you should always play and try your best, if my handicap has gone up today it wasn’t for the lack of trying to keep it as low as possible.

This week I’m determined to practice a bit more, Tuesday and Thursday are the only days I can manage due to work, and then it will be an early start on Saturday to get to Wyke Green. I’ll post up a bit more about Saturday’s competition during the week. I am also going to give mobile blogging a go at the weekend, to post an update after the first 18 holes and again after the afternoon round. It should be easy to do via my BlackBerry, and if it works well then I’ll do this in all of my “majors”.

One final thing, good luck Tony for your trip to the States, you have a lot of people (me included) very jealous of going and hitting golf balls for 3 months solid. Make the most of it, enjoy it, and make sure you’re a scratch player when I see you at the end of the summer.