Progress, Closure and USGA Scratch

UK Handicap; 1.9, USGA Handicap; 0.8

I thought it was about time for a bit of closure on this blog, seeing as my last post back in June was a negative, depressing tale of woe.

The last 5 months have been an overall success, and whilst I did not make it down to scratch on the UK handicapping system, I did get down to a low of 1.6. Although not the original target, on 19th August 2011 I made it to becoming a scratch golfer based on the US system. I managed to maintain this over the following 3 months, reaching a low of 0.0, and it has recently crept up to 0.8 as a consequence of winter golf being a bit more tricky to score in.

In the three weeks following my last post, I played in 5 qualifying competitions at my home course and got cut in all 5 of them, moving me quickly from 3.7 to 2.5.

The target of a playing handicap of 2 eluded me for a couple of weeks, but eventually I made it to 2.4 with a round at my second course of Monifieth in advance of playing in the Montrose 5 Day and Nairn Dunbar 5 Day opens.

Montrose was a good week, I made it to the last 8 out of 195 players, before losing in extra holes in the quarter final. I played well throughout the week but the strain of solid competitive golf every day, moving to 2 rounds a day later in the tournament, took its toll.

I then went up to Nairn Dunbar the following week and, after a nightmare 1st qualifying round where anything that could go wrong did go wrong, managed to put in a good second round to qualify in 25th place. In my first round match I played a home player, playing off a handicap of 4. I played to my handicap but he was 4 shots better than his handicap, resulting in a 2&1 loss. It was just one of those things, playing Nairn Dunbar was a pleasure in itself as it is such a fantastic course.

A couple of weeks later, back at my home course, I made a real breakthrough.
Sitting at 2.1, I was round in 3 under par 68 (net 66), getting me down to 1.6. This round was also an achievement as it was the first time I have ever gone round 18 holes on a full length course without dropping a shot. The scorecard of 15 pars and 3 birdies is now framed in my house, as it has long been a goal of mine to have a blemish free scorecard.
I milled around for the next 3 weeks before going back up to Carnoustie to play in the Craw’s Nest Tassie.

I played the Championship course on the Monday, going round in 72. Yes, that’s right, 72 shots round Carnoustie Championship course. Later in the same month, world number 5 Dustin Johnson and Open Champion Darren Clarke would take more shots to go round the same course. I played really well, and finished with a delightful 4 pars on the toughest finish in golf.
The second round was on the shorter Burnside course on Tuesday, and the weather was just horrific, especially on the second nine holes. The wind was incredibly strong, which resulted in me putting from 70 yards short of the green as it was the only way I could get the ball to stop in a reasonable amount of time. I was round in 75, which was pretty good considering the conditions, and when the overall scores were added up, I qualified in 4th place out of 338 players.

My first knockout match on the Championship course on Wednesday was played in quite a strong wind, and I had the biggest win of the day, 6&5. I was round in 75, which although 3 shots more than my round on the Monday, was one of the best rounds I have ever put together. I was striping the ball as well as I have ever done at this point.

My second round match was played in beautiful conditions, and was virtually over by the turn, I was 2 under par after 6 holes which put me 4 up, and I coasted around from there, eventually winning 4&3.

In the last 16, played in a drizzle and breeze (you may be getting the whole concept of the weather changing every day on the east coast of Scotland), I just didn’t turn up. I was struggling all the way round, and made 3 or 4 cardinal errors from no danger at all, and went down 3&2. I was really disappointed with this, as I know I am capable of much better and the person who beat me, who eventually won the tournament, was playing off a handicap of 4 compared with my 2.

Having said that, if at the start of July I had been told that at the end of the Carnoustie tournament I would be playing off 1.7, would get to the last 8 at Montrose and the last 16 at Carnoustie, I would have said thanks very much.

Since Carnoustie I have lost a little momentum, going up 0.1 on 5 occasions, coming down 0.1 on 3 occasions, and making buffer zone on 5 occasions, however maintaining a handicap of 2 is pleasing in itself as it proves to me that it was not a temporary peak in form, I am a solid 2-handicapper who, now I have maintained it, can focus on getting to the next stage.
This year I played in 72 qualifying competitions, and went up in 36 of them, made buffer zone in 15, and was cut in 21 of them. This compares with being cut on 12 occasions in 2010.
The graph below shows my handicap adjustments in 2011, compared with 2010 in the shaded areas.

Split out by category (up, buffer zone, and down) it looks like this;

My average score at my home course this year has been a record low since I took the game up again in 2007, and has continued my decrease every year (2007; 78.63, 2008; 77.95, 2009; 76.54, 2010; 76.26, 2011; 75.83).

I don’t think it is any coincidence that my golf has significantly improved since I removed the pressure of updating this blog every week. It’s a paradox; I want to share what I am doing, but by sharing it I am making success less likely.
The graph below demonstrates just how my form has turned since the last update;

To that end I am going to close this blog now, and give it one more year to get down to the ultimate goal of 0.4 or lower. As much as I love playing in the week long competitions in Scotland, I am going to cut back on them next year as a) I’m struggling to have enough holidays to play in them and b) the greens at my home course are starting to get better after 5 years of being appalling, so I am going to focus on my home course as this gives me the best opportunity to get cut.

So there we have it, getting down to scratch in the UK handicapping system is a monumentally difficult achievement. Whilst there are still people who think it is fairly easy (see any number of ridiculous ‘novice to scratch’, ’18 to 5’, ’10 to scratch’ blogs where people are simply deluded in what they think is achievable), I hope most people have seen by the progress of this blog just how difficult it is. I was starting at a handicap of 3, and am happy with progress in “just” getting down to 1.9. Hopefully next year I can take it to the next step and reach the ultimate goal.

Catch Up Time

UK Handicap; 4.0 USGA Handicap; 3.0

Adjustment required; 3.6, Competition rounds; 71, Ratio; 0.051

Blimey, it’s been a while. Just over 3 weeks to be exact. As I mentioned then, I was going the best part of two weeks without playing, due to being out of the country.

When I returned, I played a couple of evenings shortly after my return, a mixture of garbage followed by some decent stuff. It always seems to be one of the fundamental things in my game that goes. A few weeks ago it was my alignment, so I spent some time working on that, and fast forward a little while and suddenly I was making another diagnosis – this time that my hands were too vertical at address, and they should be a couple of inches in front of the ball. When I suddenly work out what I’ve been doing wrong, invariably it is something so basic that I feel stupid for not figuring it out earlier. This is where the pros are different. Apart from having several people to diagnose these things at a moment’s notice, their setup is just a standard, they don’t even need to think about it.

My first competitive game back was a Tigers match away from home, and a combination of me playing decent but not spectacular, and my opponent not having the best of days, ended with me winning 7&6. I’ll certainly take that for the opening match of the year.

The following day was a chance to put my new found confidence towards getting my handicap reduced. The first nine holes backed this up as I turned in one under par. I hit the ball as well as I have in a long long time. In the back nine I still played some holes okay, but to be blunt I collapsed. I actually only hit four bad shots, but they were absolute stinkers (two shanks and two fat wedges) which cost me 7 shots in total. I finished the obligatory 1 shot over buffer zone, meaning another 0.1 to be added.

The weekend past followed a similar theme. Saturday was a competition, 2 over after 13 holes then I inexplicably double bogied 14 and 15, and once again finished 1 shot over buffer zone.

Sunday was another match which resulted in a fairly comfortable defeat, having said that our opponents were 3 under for the last 8 holes which turned the game.

So far this year I have played in ten qualifying competitions, and the results paint a frightening picture. One reduction, one buffer zone, eight increases. My handicap is now the highest it has been in 22 months.

You may remember the graph below, showing my competition performance coded green for cuts, yellow for buffer zone, and red for increases.

I have overlaid my 2011 adjustments against the final 2010 breakdown with a lighter background. I am falling down on exactly the thing I identified last season I need to stop – narrowly missing buffer zone. Four of the eight increases this year have involved missing buffer zone by only one or two shots. You can click on any graph to enlarge it.

The next graph puts these scores into categories, and although it is early days in 2011, I need to start playing better, quickly.

I went out tonight and started playing quickly, and started playing better.

2 hours and 3 minutes later, I’d putted out 18 holes as if in competition conditions and shot 73, my best score of the year. I hit 15 greens in regulation, which is a year high as well.

Where does this leave my game? I don’t know, to be honest. I’ve gone from having 6 good holes per round, up to 9 good holes for a while, and I’m now up at about 14 good holes per round, but it’s still not enough.

Where does it leave this blog? It’s not difficult to see that the blog posts have been more sporadic this year. Second season syndrome I suppose. Most of the things which were new to write about last year aren’t new any more, and I’m getting a bit fed up of saying “I’m not far away but I need to start making it count”, every time I say that I become a bit more of a parody of myself. I’m also identifying that in order to be off scratch by the end of September I need to take the next 6 months off work as I’m not going to do it without spending several thousand pounds on coaching.

Add in other factors such as; work taking me away from home quite a lot, taking over the running of a golf league and website that requires a bit of my time, and the fact it’s less fun to write when my handicap is ballooning, means my posts are going to be a bit less frequent than in the past. Otherwise I’ll just be writing for the sake of writing.

Putt It Out Of My Mind

UK Handicap; 3.8 USGA Handicap; 2.4

Adjustment required; 3.4, Competition rounds; 73, Ratio; 0.047

I’ve played 3 competition rounds in the 2 weeks since I last updated, and I don’t have any good news to report from any of them.

Last Saturday I played in the morning, and the only positive I can think to take away from the round was that I played the first hole well. If the peak of the round is the first hole, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of it. I started hitting everything completely fat. That is, I was hitting the ground before the ball. The most worrying aspect of this was that it was happening even with my tee shots, where the ball was teed up off the ground and I was using a driver. I rely on my driving quite a lot, I’m not the longest hitter by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m normally fairly consistent with it and the more fairways I can hit the better. To put it more accurately, the more fairways I miss the more trouble I am in, as I’ll be struggling to hit the green if I’m off the fairway or get an impure strike (like a fat shot).

This week I had competitions on Friday and Sunday, and I didn’t get the best preparation by being ill all week. I felt better by Friday, but I was still a bit energy sapped.

I’m not going to detail each round individually, but the grand total of the 36 holes was that I was 17 over par, and went up 0.1 in each round.

In total I dropped 20 shots (as I had 3 birdies), so I had a look at what club cost me each of those 20 shots.

Shots with my driver cost me 3 shots, but none of these were in the last 8 holes I played today. I figured out my stance was too narrow again so I made my feet a bit wider and started hitting the ball much better off the tee. If I can keep doing what I was doing towards the end of today then it’s not a problem.

2 of the dropped shots were caused by hitting a 3 wood off the fairway. I’m not unduly concerned about these either, both were from well over 200 yards from the green and they weren’t particularly bad shots.

Iron shots up to a 9 iron cost me 3 shots, which over 36 holes is quite good. In fact, I hit 19 of 22 greens where I was hitting a 9 iron or more into the green. For a change I’m happy with this part of my game.

Wedges cost me 2 shots, with a wedge in my hand I hit 8 out of 10 greens. That is not very good, there isn’t really an excuse for missing a green with a wedge in my hand, and some of the greens I did hit weren’t particularly close to the hole.

1 shot was dropped where there wasn’t a bad shot that caused it, it was just one of those things.

So that’s 11 of the 20 dropped shots accounted for, with the only concern being wedges (on the basis the driving is sorted).

The remaining 9 dropped shots were all caused by 3-putting. Having 9 occasions where I take 3 putts to get down once the ball is on the green is suicidal golf. That’s one every four holes. Although I missed a few short ones, the underlying cause was my distance putting. The greens at my home course, which have long been criticised, are in the best condition in the five springs I have played on them, but I seem unable to judge the pace of anything. A 30 foot putt for me is more likely to go less than 24 foot or more than 36 foot. I’m not overly bothered by the line at this stage, I’d just like to be able to hit it the right distance. I spent 30 minutes practising my distance putting on Saturday, having seen it cost me 3 shots on Friday. After 30 minutes I thought I had it sorted, I was able to putt 3 balls 30 foot and get them to finish within 2 foot of the required length.

Fast forward 24 hours and instead of having three 3 putts, today I had six.

I’m not quite sure how to resolve this. Practice seems like a good idea, but in a live environment you only get one opportunity at each putt, and that involves reading the pace of it. Practising invariably involves hitting the same putt several times on the same line, and getting used to the pace of that putt. I don’t have access to a putting green where I can practice many different putts without getting a rhythm for that putt as opposed to the stroke.

All this is going to have to go on the backburner anyway, as I am out of the country with my work next weekend, so I’m not going to be able to play for 12 days now.

The weekend after next is all systems go, the clocks go forward, at least two competitions every week, practising before breakfast every morning.

The last 3 months have just been a warm up.

The Main Pain Is Rain

UK Handicap; 3.5 USGA Handicap; 2.1

Adjustment Required; 3.1, Competition rounds; 74, Ratio; 0.042

Another week, another baby step closer to scratch.

Nothing changed Monday – Friday, it’s still too dark to practice in the evening, so it was another weekend where I had my only opportunity to play.

My plan to practice all day on Saturday took an early blow when I woke up to quite heavy rain, but I spied a break in the clouds at lunchtime so decided to wander along to see if I could get some practice in.

Fortunately the rain did go off, and I managed about an hour’s practice before it came on again. A 45 minute hiatus in the sanctuary of the clubhouse allowed the shower to pass, and I went back out, but onto the course this time.

I mentioned several times last year that I often play two balls, and have a match between the two of them. This helps me to treat everything as if it was a competitive round, and play everything as it lies – it’s too easy otherwise to give myself good lies, and get out of serious play mode. I just need to remember to use two golf balls with different numbers on them.

I played 11 holes on the course, 22 holes with the two on each hole, and finished 6 over par in total. Nothing spectacular, but my first ball was level par and my second ball was 6 over par.

The *plan* for today was to go to a local range, which has excellent short-game practice facilities, and spend several hours honing my skills on everything 50 yards and in. However, I’m not the most assertive of people, and eventually caved in to playing a round of golf instead, on about the fourth time of being asked.

The weather was much better this morning, and I decided to put in the first of my ten available supplementary cards for the year. I’d been playing half decent yesterday, and with the drier weather I thought I could knock it around in a decent score.

After 9 holes this was looking like an extremely good decision, and I reached the turn in 3 under par. This is massively better than anything I have managed so far this year and, although I sank 3 very good putts along the way, that doesn’t detract from the fact I was hitting the ball very, very well.

Just when you think you have it mastered, something comes up and bites you. Towards the end of the first nine holes it started raining, and by the time we reached the 9^th green it was very heavy, and the temperature had dropped by about 10 degrees.

I ended up playing the back nine in 6 over par, to finish one under my handicap, and to get a reduction of 0.1 to take my handicap back to 3.5. As traditionally happens, the rain stopped just as we were on the final green.

Of the six shots I dropped, four of them could be directly attributable to the weather, which for most of the back nine was utterly miserable. One of the par fours became out of reach, despite two of my best shots, and I hit a tee shot on one hole where pitchmark was actually further than where the ball finished.

There has been quite a bit of rain recently, and the course has been saturated. It didn’t take much rain to re-saturate it again, which made playing very, very difficult. In four years playing at my home club, today was the first occasion I have ever seen water lying on any of the greens, they can normally take as much water as mother nature can throw at them, and they will drain straight away. I also had several lies where the ball was lying directly and wholly on top of mud. People generally imagine playing a golf shot off of grass, but playing off mud, especially around the greens, is a whole different ball game.

There are several attitudes I could have to today, including;

- I blew up, I could have got 0.7 or more off my handicap

- I was only in a good position to start with because I sank some putts

- I was unlucky

- I was lucky

- I played well, but the weather accentuated any loose shots that I may otherwise have got away with

- I played brilliantly considering the conditions

The attitude I will take away is the second last one. I did play well, 2 over par for the back nine, taking out the weather affecting shots, would have been very good and would have got a 0.5 reduction for my handicap, but the conditions meant that any shot that wasn’t bang out the middle of the club, and even some that were, was an instant bogey. These things happen, nothing I can do about it now.

A very quick analysis of my round tells me that in my eyes I hit 22 good shots, 9 average, 6 bad, and 5 that were affected by the underfoot conditions. I hit more good shots than everything else combined. During the week I finished off re-reading the Bob Rotella book I often go back to, and it reminded me that the mechanics of a good golf shot are nothing short of a small miracle. Watch a beginner try and make contact with the ball and you’ll soon see what I mean. For me to hit more of them well than anything else is something I should be proud of, regardless of my standard and the score I end up with.

We’ll give it another go next week, maybe I’ll be 3 under par after 9 again, and the weather will stay fair.

Anyone Got Any Good News?

UK Handicap; 3.6 USGA Handicap; 2.2

Adjustment required; -3.2, Competition rounds; 75, Ratio; -0.043 per round

I don’t have a great deal to say this week, only the one game of golf has taken place and that hasn’t exactly inspired me to wax lyrical about my game.

I had a lesson on Sunday morning, followed by a competition in the afternoon. Now normally I would absolutely advise against having a lesson just before playing a proper game, but with the lack of daylight time available, and the general state of disrepair I found my game in, I didn’t see what alternative I had.

I got quite a lot out of the lesson, which focussed mainly on my setup. As a result, I have changed quite a lot, and to be honest at the moment it feels quite uncomfortable. I am now standing a lot further away from the ball, am doing some checking that my feet and the clubhead are facing towards the target, and am trying to get more of a turn in my hips when swinging. Standing further away from the ball is the most uncomfortable part of it, as it feels like I am miles away from it and have to reach to make contact with it now. The alignment of the clubhead is the most difficult part for me. I normally address the ball with the clubhead open (pointing right of the target for a right-hander like me), when I line the clubhead up correctly with the target it feels like it is pointing dramatically to the left. If I don’t change my swing then I will end up hitting everything left, but the other two aspects of standing further away and getting more of a hip turn should help sort them out.

The next thing I need to do is to groove this in, so I am planning on reluctantly spending all day this coming Saturday hitting golf balls. It will be boring, it will be a war of attrition, and I need to keep regularly checking that I’m still doing the right things, and haven’t either slipped back into old methods, or as often happens overcompensate. But if I can put in the spade work now then I will reap the benefits long term.

As for the game I played after the lesson, I scored 30 points, which is 6 over my handicap. Considering that I missed 4 putts of less than 3 foot, and the course was playing incredibly long due to the extremely wet ground and amount of mud on it, actually isn’t too bad. But you get an idea of whether you’ve played well or not, and I certainly didn’t play well. Had I not missed the short putts and scored 34 points, it would have felt like robbery. As often happens after a lesson, there was a real mixture of shots. I hit 5 really top drawer shots, 2 of which were chips (the putts of which I then went on to miss), 2 were mid-irons, and 1 was a fairway wood from 210 yards onto a green. However there were some absolutely abysmal shots, we’re talking beginner shots here. When I get my new setup right it works, but it’s few and far between at the moment until it becomes second nature.

In my vain (bit negative there, who knows what will happen this year) attempt to get to scratch by the end of September, I’m going to start tracking how much I need to reduce by, and how many competition rounds I have left. If this ratio becomes higher than 0.1 for every competition round, then it’s goodnight Vienna, ideally I want to keep it at 0.05 or less. This should be a laugh.

A Four-gone Conclusion

UK Handicap; 3.5 USGA Handicap; 2.2

As was odds-on to happen, I have slipped back up to 3.5, meaning I am now playing off a handicap of 4. As much as I didn’t want it to happen, in a perverse way I like playing off something-point-five, as I feel the extra shot I now get gives me a good slingshot to get a significant cut.

I can’t pretend that I put up any sort of resistance to the inevitable rise to 4, I did it in the most miserable style.
The first game I played after my last post didn’t count for my handicap, which is just as well, because it was absolutely awful. Any time where my first par comes on the ninth hole isn’t going to end up with success. In the end I had one par in the first 13 holes, then 5 successive pars to finish, meaning I at least finished on a positive.

The following Saturday was a handicap counting round, and once more I turned a potentially good round into the obligatory 0.1 increase. After a shaky start, back to back birdies around the turn saw me 2 over par on the 13th tee. I can’t really remember what happened for the next hour, I think I just lost concentration completely, but I know I dropped four shots in four holes. A couple of pars to finish resulted in a 77 net 74, which wasn’t a disgrace, but was two shots too many to avoid a handicap increase.

The following day I had my first club match of the year. For the first time since I started playing golf again 4 years ago, I was the player receiving shots, as I was up against a 1 handicapper. By the end of my round, I had a touch of the Worman Swords. All bad golf is measured on a scale, with the Worman Sword being the absolutely worst golf I can possibly play, so named after my performance at the said named competition last year. It was embarrassing playing as I played, against a 1 handicapper who must have thought there was a 2 missing from the front of my handicap, and I was actually a 23 handicapper who had delusions of grandeur. Anyway, enough said, it was miserable, I was well beaten, the team lost, there is always next year.

The round in which I eventually went up to 4 came Friday past, and once more it was ridiculously bad golf. I totalled 23 stableford points (11 on holes 1-6, 1 on holes 7-12, 11 on holes 13-18), the equivalent of at least 16 over par. It was particularly disappointing as I was playing with two people who will push me this year to be the low player in the club. Going on current form, swing quality, temperament, attitude, natural ability, and just about everything else, you would get long odds on it being me being the low player at the end of this year. However, there is plenty of time for me to reverse this prediction, and I am literally counting down the days (42 currently) until the clocks go forward, and evening practice can commence.

In fact, evening practice might not happen, as in line with a broader lifestyle change, I am contemplating getting into a routine of getting up early every morning and practicing before breakfast. Going to bed at 1am and getting up later isn’t good for the mind, body or soul. I’m not typically a morning person but if I can get into the habit of being an early riser it will make me feel better, more productive, and hopefully a better golfer.

After the major downer of Friday, a couple of people gave me some hints as to why I may be randomly firing the golf ball in all directions.
I got a quick chance to put them into action, as today was the club “3 club and a putter” competition, so I took out a 3 wood, 7 iron, pitching wedge and putter with no expectations.
These lack of expectations look well justified when I was 5 over par after 6 holes, but from somewhere I actually found a bit of my game, and played the last 12 holes in level par. For the first time in several months, I can actually genuinely say without lying to myself that I played pretty well. The fact that I can play with 14 clubs and score 23 points, then two days later play with 4 clubs and score 35 points, is not lost on me. For the first time this season, I was absolutely solid with my putting. I didn’t miss anything inside 8 feet. By the end of the round my confidence in putting has risen dramatically, so I was standing over a putt knowing I was going to hole it, rather than thinking about which side I was going to miss it on. Sounds simple, confidence breeds confidence, but it’s absolutely true and is something I already know, but maybe need to remind myself by taking part in my annual read of various Bob Rotella books.

As things stand, my results show that I am playing stinking stuff, and there is no doubt that I need a lesson (when I can find the funds for it), but there is also an element of confidence simmering underneath, once I can get a few tweaks made in my swing I’ll be back in the game.

Battle of Wills

UK Handicap; 3.3 USGA Handicap; 1.7

Another week of weekend-only golf, and as so many times last year, it was a mixed bag.

I had a match yesterday, a fourball match where myself and my partner play against two people, the best net score on each hole counting. Having coasted to a comfortable 3 over par round in my last game a couple of weeks ago, it was a bit of a surprise how badly I played, shooting 12 over par for the 16 holes of the match.
I left my partner with too much to do, and despite his best efforts, his back must have been sore from carrying me all the way around, and we slumped to a 3&2 defeat. Our opponents played well, but we made it fairly easy for them.
It's difficult to pinpoint where I went wrong, it was just awful all over. I struggled to get the ball off the tee (6 out of 13 fairways), struggled to hit greens (5 out of 16), and struggled with putting (2 x 3 putts and only 2 x 1 putts, both of which were tap-ins).

I hadn't intended on playing today, and didn't want to, but having played so badly yesterday, and been giving a kick up the backside by someone over my motivation, I forced myself to go out and practice for a couple of hours.
This will become a running theme over the next couple of months. When it's cold outside and gets dark early, my warm living room and watching football on television is a much more appealing prospect than going out and hitting golf balls. I have to force myself to do it. This is where I admire the top pros, they put in hour after hour, not seen by the cameras, doing mundane practicing in order to find an edge and give them the best chance in competition.

As it is, I was glad I made myself practice today, as I hit the ball beautifully, the best I've hit it in months. Being able to strategically place my phone on my golf bag and film myself hitting shots is also a great benefit, as it breaks up the monotony of hitting golf balls. It allows me to work on some things, view a few shots, keeping working on it, keep reviewing, and so on.
Whenever I practice I always like to play 2 holes at the end, and put the swing I've been working on into action, hitting real shots at a real target. Today I hit 3 balls down each of the last 2 holes, and flushed every driver and iron shot I hit.

Today really brought it all back how fragile this game is, the difference from one day to the next, and how confidence can influence perception of where my game is. Yesterday I was on a bit of a downer about my game, today I have seen that I can still hit a golf ball in a straight line and that has given me the confidence that will see me through the week, knowing that when I play next Saturday and Sunday I do have the ability to knock it around in a low number.

Déjà vu

UK Handicap; 3.3 USGA Handicap; 1.7

Difficult to believe, but it’s over 6 weeks since my last post on this blog. A large part of the reason for that has been the weather – there have been two separate lots of snow in that time, and the course has been closed for an extended period of time. Below is one of the pictures I took of the course under snow, although to be honest I could have taken this photo on any day out of about 14 and the date wouldn’t be identifiable.

The first golf ball I hit in December was on the 26th of the month, and even then it was off a mat at a driving range. Normal service should now be resumed, both on the golf course and this blog.

The day after my last posting I woke up with snow on the ground, and 7 of us, who really should have their sanity questioned, decided to go out for 9 holes. It is the one and only time I have ever played golf in a scarf. Maybe there is a market for golf snoods similar the ones English Premiership footballers are wearing, much to the disdain of the more traditional members of the football fraternity. Playing golf on frozen, snow covered ground, is just a complete write-off. It’s nothing like anything encountered in the summer. Allowing for the ball bouncing 40ft in the air when it lands on a frozen green takes a lot of the skill out of the game, but one positive it does have is that you feel much better when you complete your mission and reach the warmth of the clubhouse.

After a completely blank December, other than those 50 driving range balls, I have managed to play twice in January so far.
Monday ended up in a round of 78 at my home course, on 18 temporary greens. Unsurprisingly, it took a little while to get going, and I reached halfway in 7 over par. I started to find a bit of rhythm on the back nine, and returned in level par, with a nice run of 3 birdies in 4 holes. Ultimately, the quality of golf wasn’t particularly great, but expectations have to be adjusted at this time of the year, at the moment it’s all about getting out there and keeping some semblance of a half decent swing going until it warms up a bit.

Today I played the first competition of the year, and the good news is that my handicap didn’t go up.
Where’s the déjà vu as alluded to in the title then? Well, like so many rounds last year, I found myself chasing the game very early, finding myself 3 over par after 6 holes. I then got it back to 1 over par after 11, and standing on the 18th tee I was 2 over par. A par or better required to get cut, anything higher to remain static. Well, to keep the déjà vu theme going, like so many times last year, I managed to completely blow an opportunity to get cut by taking a double bogey six, after chopping a drive into the trees then taking a couple of shots to get out. Completely daft, wasting a good round on the last hole, and definitely something I need to eradicate this year.
Having said that, although the course was playing very short a 4 over par 75 was better than I was expecting and isn’t a disaster.

The last, and most worrying, aspect of déjà vu is that my left knee became very sore in the hours after I finished playing. I had this problem at the start of last season, to the extent that I saw a knee specialist about it. I’m guessing that because I’ve not been playing, and haven’t been doing much exercise at all in the last 6 weeks, it’s going to take a bit of work to get my knee accustomed to the twists and turns of playing golf again. I need to get into a regime of exercises to strengthen my knee, as with the diary I have planned for this season I don’t want to be in pain throughout it.

The physical pain can be sorted by exercises, the mental pain of throwing away good rounds may be tougher to overcome.

Winter Is Here

UK Handicap; 3.3 USGA Handicap; 1.7

Apologies for the lack of updates, but there has not been much to update on. Winter is officially here.

The day of my last post I played my last competition round of 2010. It was meant to be the penultimate competition of the year, but it is so cold, and the course is playing so long with greens that have the roll of a test site for the moon landings, that I decided that there is absolutely no point in playing again to try and get my handicap reduced, as it’s almost certain it would result in a 0.1 increase instead.

Despite the conditions, I actually played fairly well. Two birdies and two bogeys in the first 5 holes wasn’t too consistent, but I then rattled off 8 pars, followed by 2 stupid bogeys, followed by another 3 pars. So I walked off with 37 points, one better than my handicap, and what I considered to be a very good score.

The UK system of handicapping is good in that the Competition Scratch Score can alter based on the conditions of the day, so there was the possibility that I would get more than 0.1 reduced from my handicap due to the harsh playing environment. The downside is that the CSS uses the scores of the competition to decide what alteration, if any, there should be. So it’s open to statistical anomalies, especially where there are a small number of competitors, and a few of them score 34 points or better. In fact, in an event where all the entries are category 1 players, and everyone scores 35 points, the CSS would actually move downwards and everyone’s handicap gets increased, even though the worst score was 35 points. The calculation also doesn’t take into account a few people all having a good day on the same day.

Note that when the competition is stableford (i.e. the scores are around 36 and the higher the points the better the score), the CSS ‘coming down’ actually means you need more points to play to your handicap. Where the competition is strokeplay (i.e. the scores are around 70 and the lower the score the better) the CSS coming down means just that, to play to my handicap I need to shoot one shot less than normal.

That is unfortunately what happened in this competition, as 5 of the 11 entrants (45%) scored 34 points or better, and the chart for this makeup of competition states that the CSS comes down if more than 44% of entrants score 34 points or better. So instead of needing 36 points to play to my handicap, and get cut 0.1 for every point I get above 36, I actually needed 37 points to play to my handicap, and 38 or more to get cut.

The end result is that I finish the season on 3.3, not a disaster but not the progress I had hoped for either. I played my best golf of the year in the final 2 months, I have a few months to figure out what the difference was in that time and make sure I can keep it into next year.

Over the winter I am aiming to play once a week, and the Tigers section of my club have agreed to have a meeting once every 3 weeks, plus a matchplay event over the winter months. This will keep everyone’s eye in, instead of the temptation to put the clubs away for the winter and dust them off in March.

The first of the 3-weekly events was on Saturday, and as if an omen, it snowed on Friday night. There were seven brave (or foolish, I can’t decide which) people who turned up on Saturday, and we played 9 holes in about ½ inch of snow. It was a bit of a lottery, but good fun overall. 5 of the 7 managed to get 14 points or more over 9 holes, which was actually not bad, and we managed a couple of birdies, and an eagle on a 400 yard par 4, between us.

Next up for me is a lesson in a couple of weeks time, in order to get some things to work on over the winter, other than that it will be the occasional round just to keep things ticking over, I’ll endeavour to keep this blog up to date with any interesting developments, either involving my game or other topics I happen to come across.

Three Is A Guarantee

UK Handicap; 3.3 USGA Handicap; 2.0

As we get to the end of the season, everything seems to get a little bit more difficult. There’s only 9 hours daylight per day at the moment, limiting the amount of golf that can be played. The ground is a lot wetter, meaning the ball doesn’t roll so far. The temperature has reduced dramatically also, meaning that an 8 iron that would have travelled 150 yards just 6 weeks ago is now travelling about 135 yards instead.

The penultimate competition of the year yesterday resulted in a score of 36 stableford points – exactly on my handicap. Normally I would consider 36 points as a waste of 4 hours of my life, but yesterday it seemed like an achievement. There are 3 reasons for this. Firstly, as detailed above, with the more difficult conditions it is much more difficult to play to my handicap when the ball is travelling much less distance. Secondly, I actually recovered quite well. I was 3 over par after 6 holes and then played the last 12 in level par. Thirdly, keeping my handicap static and not increasing 0.1 yesterday means I will definitely be playing off 3 at the end of the year – not exactly my dream last April but certainly better than having to call myself a 4 handicapper for the next few months.

After the satisfaction of yesterday’s round, I played again this morning, unusually for me in a social game. It’s wasn’t a competition, nor a club match, just a game of golf for the sake of playing golf. Having played the first 9 half decent, I played very poorly in the back nine, and tailed off to a disappointing 79. Having said that, in the last couple of months my good rounds have been in the non-qualifying games and my poor rounds have been in the competition rounds, so I should be grateful that I scored 74 79 this weekend and not 79 74.

My US Handicap took a bit of a jump this weekend, as 20 rounds ago I had a couple of very good scores, and they are being taken out of the equation and replaced with my current rounds. Although this week it has taken a jump from 1.3 to 2.0, over the next 10 rounds it can’t go any higher than 2.9, no matter what I score. The problem comes after those next 10 rounds, as of my current 10 counting rounds, 9 of them are consecutive. When these scores stop being included in the equation my handicap has the potential to jump up dramatically, hopefully I can put in the occasional decent round over the winter to keep things respectable.

Dark Matter – Night Golf, Putting & Holes in One

UK Handicap; 3.3 USGA Handicap; 1.3

I played Night Golf for the first time ever on Friday night. As you can imagine, Night Golf is exactly as it sounds. The tees, greens, bunkers and flagstick are lit by luminous markers, and the golf balls glow in the dark. Other than that it is completely pitch black. We played an event over 8 holes, all fairly straightforward par 4s, and I really enjoyed it.

It was a bit nerve-wracking standing over the first tee shot, having to trust your swing, but I hit a good one down the middle and soon got to grips with it. The balls only go about 70% of the distance of normal golf balls, so the clubbing needs adjusted accordingly. It is the sort of game that isn’t very enjoyable if you don’t hit the ball well, but fortunately for me I actually played quite well, and would definitely play again. It was also a great confidence boost knowing that I can trust my swing, and my ability to hit a ball is driven by a natural swing, rather than a visual adjustment.

On Saturday morning I played in a stableford competition, and once again managed to throw away a good round into the most frustrating result possible – missing buffer zone by one shot.

The main problem was putting; I missed 4 putts of 3 foot or less. When I only get 3 shots to play with in the course of a round, then losing 4 shots so easily is not going to lead to a happy ending. This may have been caused by me, but I’m fairly certain that the condition of the greens was also a factor.

There have been ongoing problems with the greens at my course for years, and a recent agronomist report was quite scathing. The short term impact is that tons of sand have been put on the greens, making short putts quite difficult as some of them break quite a lot and some others stay straight. I have 2 more competitions in 2010, so in theory I could be back up to 4 at the turn of the year, but I’m playing well enough to avoid this, and if I can sort the putting out then I don’t see why I can’t get cut.

I have never named anyone on this blog, but this next bit merits an exception. The round on Saturday was also notable for being the first time I have played with someone who got a hole in one. Having narrowly missed a hole in one by about a foot on the 13^th hole (our 4^th, as we teed off on the 10^th), two holes later Steve Pope hit a beautifully crafted shot that landed on the green, disappeared over a slight slope in the green, and wasn’t seen again until we reached the green, couldn’t see his ball, and peered into the hole. Well done Steve, I enjoyed sharing your celebratory drinks too!

The Late Eight - Rounds 6-8

UK Handicap; 3.2 USGA Handicap; 1.3

The last three main competition rounds of the year took place over the weekend just past, with mixed results.

Friday saw a steady start, 9 pars and a bogey in the first 10 holes, and 80 yards short of green on the par 5 11^th in 2 shots. Looking to get a birdie, worst case scenario a par. One monumental full-blooded shank later, closely followed by two hacks out sideways from terrain where it would be difficult to locate a Chilean miner, and my round was taking a slightly different perspective. I steadied myself to have another 6 pars, before a minor calamity on the last where I missed an absolutely tiny putt to end up with a 4 over par 75. It looked as if this may have an impact on my handicap, going up instead of staying the same, however when the results were published today I managed to scrape by with no adjustment either upwards or downwards.

The rounds on Saturday and Sunday were very similar; poor start, great middle, mediocre end.

On Saturday I was 5 over par after 5 holes, before a little run of birdie, par, birdie, par, birdie around the turn got me back to 2 over. I blew up a little on my 15^th & 16^th holes, dropping 3 shots over the 2 of them, including a wasteful short putt that bounced all over it’s path. It was this putt that cost me in the end, as my 76 meant I missed the buffer zone by 1 shot and moved back up to a handicap of 3.4.

Sunday didn’t have quite as bad a start as Saturday, but I was 2 over par after 8. This time I got three birdies again, but they came consecutively instead of in the space of 5 holes. Once again I got a bit wasteful, missing a very short putt on the 13^th and 3-putting the 15^th (have you noticed a trend here yet?), but ended up with a one over 72, getting 0.2 off my handicap, and once again returning to 3.2.

My 6 rounds over the last two weekends have been 75, 71, 72, 75, 76 and 72, yet I’ve only managed to get 0.1 reduced from my handicap. I’m reluctant to call it luck, or karma, maybe it’s just fate, but I consider myself a bit harshly done by to have scored fairly well and consistently, and not seen much rewards for my efforts in terms of my handicap moving downwards.

Part of the problem, and a big elephant in the room, is that the greens are in pretty poor condition. I appreciate that they require maintenance, and occasionally this will require them to be cored or tined, but when the ball is bouncing all over the place, even from short distances, then it makes a huge difference to everyone, but moreso to the lower handicap players who have less shots to play with during the course of a round. A non-golfer reading this will probably think ‘typical golfer, blaming the greens when he misses a putt’, but there is some quite scathing criticism of the green conditions coming from various parties at the moment, it’s not just me making up excuses.

Over the 3 rounds I missed 9 putts of 6 feet or less, 3 of which were within 2.5 feet. I’m not claiming that I would have holed all 9 of these putts on better quality greens, but I would expect to hole at least 7 of them. Plotting that into my database, 7 of the 9 putts being holed would have seen me playing off 2.6 instead of 3.2. Now this is all hypothetical, I’m aware that I scored what I scored, and I can’t change that now, but the purpose of saying all of this is to demonstrate that there are some factors that can hinder the quest to get down to scratch. I can accept playing poorly and not being rewarded for it, but I’ve been playing well, hitting lots of greens in regulation (13, 12, 11, 13, 11, 12 in the last 6 rounds), but these 2 or 3 short putts per round are the difference between static and progress. I would love to putt on greens where I know exactly where the ball will go, and until I can do that more consistently it’s going to be an uphill battle, but one I still believe is achievable, to get down to scratch.

Although this is the end of the main season, there are a couple of competitions over the next month, which may or may not count for handicapping purposes. However, as far as I’m concerned a line has been drawn under the 2010 season, and I have plenty of interesting pieces of analysis to share over the next few posts regarding what has happened over the past 9 months.

The Late Eight - Round 5 + Am-Am

UK Handicap; 3.3 USGA Handicap; 1.9

There was just the one handicap qualifying round this week, but two rounds in total on Saturday, as I was called up to play in an Am-Am on Saturday afternoon. An Am-Am is where 3 players are grouped with a top amateur, there is a team event but the amateurs also play between themselves for separate prizes.

First of all the morning round, and with the course set up for the Am-Am later in the day it meant the tees were just about as far back as they could go, and some of the flags were in particularly difficult positions. When playing 36 holes in one day, it is generally a good idea to wake up more than 35 minutes before the first tee time, however I didn’t do that today so meant that it was a bit of a rushed start, which may explain why I found myself 3 over par after 6 holes.

I managed to steady the ship a bit after that, 4 pars then a birdie, before dumping an approach shot into the water on the 12^th. Not for the first time this season, I took the plunge and played the ball out of the water, making it to just off the back of the green, and then proceeded to waste the recovery by taking three more to get down. So 4 over par after 12 wasn’t exactly a great position, but I managed to par the last 6 holes for a respectable 75, meaning my handicap goes neither go up or down.

For the Am-Am, I was one of the ‘top amateurs’, so knew I needed to perform to justify my selection. It was also a chance to compete against some of the top amateurs in the county, and see where I am in relation to them.

I started quite well by sinking a monstrous putt for birdie on my first hole, and followed it up with 5 pars before an unusually volatile stretch of birdie, bogey, birdie, bogey, bogey to get me back to level par, before 7 pars in a row saw me finish with a 71.

For the second Saturday in a row, my first round of the day counts for my handicap and I don’t get cut, and my second round of the day doesn’t count for my handicap, and I would have been cut if it had. It’s very frustrating, I am showing that I can shoot the scores, I’m just doing it in the wrong competitions as far as my handicap is concerned.

When I got into the clubhouse I was delighted to see that the lowest score was 71, with 4 people including me having shot that number. With there being 4 prizes it was decided to pool the prize money and split it equally, rather than doing a countback of the best last 9, 6, 3 and 1 hole. So I was a joint winner out of the 17 amateurs, and picked up a bit of cash for it too.

This is a great confidence boost, I now know that I can mix it with the real top amateurs. Okay, I had local advantage, and it’s only a one-off, but the bottom line is that I shot the joint lowest score, and shared the prize with people who have won 4 County Championships between them in the last 7 years, as well as beating some really good players by several shots.

Next week is potentially a big week, with competitions on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I need to try and retain this good form and make sure I can replicate it when it matters for getting my handicap reduced.

The Late Eight - Rounds 2-4

UK Handicap; 3.3 USGA Handicap; 2.2

I’ve played three rounds since the last update, and as you can see by my handicap above, the target of getting down to 2 by the end of the season is fast evaporating. That’s not to say it’s all doom and gloom, as there has been some half decent golf, but in true sods law format, it hasn’t reduced my handicap.

Round 2 was last Sunday, and once again I managed to use all 3 shots I receive in the course of a round by the time I walked off the 2^nd green. Getting off to a good start is vital with such little room to manoeuvre, and dropping any shots early on creates an uphill battle. By the time I reached the ninth tee I was 7 over par, and all hope of cutting cut, or even maintaining my handicap, had gone. With the pressure off I managed to play the last 10 holes in one over par, but it was too little too late.

Rounds 3 and 4 were both played yesterday, and the first round was played in a combination of weather, from thick fog at the start (see photo), to glorious sunshine, to cloudy and breezy.

I managed to scramble it around the first 8 holes in 2 over par (including another 2 on the 3^rd hole, my 10^th 2 on that hole in 43 times I’ve played it this year), and with 3 easy holes to come I was confident of being no worse than 1 over par on the 12^th tee. Whether it was complacency, whether it was just poor golf, goodness knows, but I played these three holes in 4 over par. I have to admit I lost interest a bit after that, as the round had gone, and I just played my way in without much focus on my score.

Round 4 was a 35 player event in the afternoon, which due to the nature of the event (full handicap stableford) I gave myself no chance of winning, but thought I could go out and give my best and try and get my handicap cut. Well, that was until I found out that it wasn’t a qualifying competition, and the scores would not count towards handicap adjustment. This isn’t a moan about this round in particular, I accept the decision that it wasn’t a qualifying competition (I was sure the same competition in previous years was a qualifying competition, that’s why I thought it would count for handicap this year) or a criticism of anyone in particular, but the UK really needs to review what counts as a qualifying competition. As far as I am concerned, where there is a group of people playing in a group for a prize, and the competition states that the rules of golf are adhered to (i.e. all holes are putted out, there isn’t a restriction on the number of clubs used, etc etc) then I don’t understand why it isn’t mandatory for the scores to be submitted for handicap adjustment. In 2010, with the advent of Inactive Handicaps for players who haven’t submitted 3 qualifying scores in the past year, it should be doubly relevant.

Anyway, back to the round, and on the back of the news that this wouldn’t count for handicap, I went out and played really well to score 38 points, which would have got at least 0.2 reduced had the score been submitted. I had 3 birdies and 4 bogeys, hitting 13 greens in regulation and 32 putts, very very close to my standard target of 14 and 32.

To my utter amazement, although with hindsight maybe because; the conditions were difficult with some rain, the course was playing long, and the greens were like putting on a pinball machine, my 38 points was good enough to win the competition. Playing against 34 players with higher handicaps, there is generally at least one person who has a good day and comes in with a score well better than their handicap. But it didn’t happen yesterday, so I was delighted to pick up the trophy.

This blog focuses on my handicap, I see that as my trophy. I’m not normally bothered by actual physical trophies, in the 3.5 years I’ve been in my current golf club I’ve won; A silver plate, a carriage clock, a glass decanter, a set of 4 crystal tumblers and on 7 separate occasions a crystal glass for winning a monthly medal / stableford, with another trophy of some description on the way for a competition I won a few weeks ago. They sit in a cupboard in my house, most have never even been looked at. This is the first time I’ve won an actual trophy, something with two handles and a cup, so it’s gone in pride of place to be looked at for the next year, where I’ll either have to give it back, or try and win it for another year.

So, four competitions rounds left, one of which is next weekend, then a triple header of the following Friday, Saturday and Sunday to finish the competitive season.

The Late Eight - Round 1

UK Handicap; 3.1 USGA Handicap; 1.9

The first of the ‘Late Eight’ – 8 competition rounds over my home course in 24 days that will mark the end of my season – was today.

Today was a sure fire indicator that winter is on it’s way as the temperature was a full 10C colder than any other round in the last 5 months. A fairly strong wind coming from the north and the occasional rain shower coming in horizontally only added to the difficulty of the conditions.

Despite my desire to reduce my handicap, I’m failing to do some of the basics, as I stood on the first tee today having not practiced since I played last Sunday, and having done no warm up at all. Both of these are purely down to time, having a full time job and trying to play golf at a half decent level gets very difficult as the nights start drawing in – no time to practice during the week, and midweek games have to start earlier to get off before dark, meaning that by the time I’ve finished a half day of work I have enough time to get to the golf club, get something to eat then jump onto the first tee.

Sounds like a load of excuses, and in some ways it is, but I’d love to be able to hit 100 balls every day instead of it becoming a weekend pursuit, as it will be for the next 6 months.

As for the golf, I felt that I played absolutely terribly, but I had some escapes, holing two shots from off the green. The reduced temperature also meant the ball was flying considerably less distance than it has been, and combined with the wet ground meant that the course was playing a lot longer than normal. A actually managed to play 14 of the holes in 2 over par, but the other 4 holes consisted of 3 double bogeys and a hole where I picked up, when I was on course to rack up a goodness-knows-how-many.

I hit a pitiful 6 greens in regulation, the worst since 3^rd April, but had 28 putts, the best all season. This made a terrible ball striking round look semi respectful but still not good enough.

So round 1 of 8 was unsuccessful, but there is another chance on Sunday, where I’ll make sure I’ve had a practice and a warm up before I start.