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.