Double Trouble

UK Handicap; 3.6 USGA Handicap; 2.8

Five days without hitting a ball maybe wasn’t the best idea in the middle of the season, but I needed a break from things after the efforts in the second half of June. There is also the small matter of work getting in the way, and with being off for most of July I need to get my work up to date before I go off later this week.

I managed to play 3 times over the weekend just past, with a mixture of success.

A drawn Texas scramble on Saturday was a bit of fun, if hard work, and it was followed by a presentation for various competitions. I got my runners up prize for the Club Championship, it was quite bizarre really, about 25 people (most of whom I don’t know, and who meant well) said congratulations to me, I found it quite strange being congratulated for losing. Just goes to show that people have different mindsets, and one person’s defeat may be seen as a success to a different perspective.

Sunday involved a stableford competition in the morning, then a Tigers match in the afternoon. The stableford was a combination of some pretty good stuff (3 birdies in four holes, sticking a tee shot on a par 3 to about 1ft just past the hole) and some absolute rubbish (35 yards from the hole in 2 on a par 5, with no hazards between me and the hole, and I lost my ball – I shanked it into the rough and never saw it again).

I got to the last hole somehow needing a par for buffer zone (meaning my handicap wouldn’t go up or down). I could par this hole in my sleep, and in fact my last 11 competition rounds had seen 10 pars and 1 birdie on this hole. As you can probably guess, I contrived to make a complete hash of it on this occasion, hitting a bad tee shot, bad second shot, duffing a chip and missing a 30 foot putt for par.

The Tigers match in the afternoon was a fairly straightforward affair, I won my game 5&4 to finally bring my matchplay record for the year back to a 50% rate (4 wins, 1 tie, 4 losses).

Even in this win, I still managed to have 2 double bogeys, together with another 2 double bogeys in the stableford round in the morning. I sound like a broken record, but I have got to stop having these disaster holes, they are the difference between 34-36 points and 37-39 points in stableford competitions. 19 of my last 21 rounds have contained a double bogey or worse, in total I have had 32 double bogeys or worse in these 21 rounds. A little bit of data manipulation shows that if I could change even as little as every second double bogey down to a bogey over the last 21 rounds, my handicap would be 2.9 and my USGA handicap 2.3. Take them all down to a bogey and my handicap would be 2.5 and my USGA handicap 1.8. I’m aware that this is the equivalent of wishing my life away, I can only affect the future, not the past, but it’s a tangible demonstration of what these disaster holes are costing me.

Yesterday was my last experience of playing my home course for 3 weeks, and to be honest that’s maybe not a bad thing. I got home last night as tired as I have ever been after playing golf, it has been extremely warm for weeks, I cannot recall the last time it rained. I’ll be delighted to play some golf a few hundred miles further north, where it’s a bit cooler, and the rounds aren’t quite as tiring, especially for someone who carries their clubs. I’ll revise that opinion if I end up playing in the torrential rain for the next 3 weeks.