June Update

UK Handicap; 3.7 USGA Handicap; 2.0

It’s been 11 weeks since I last updated, and there aren’t too many good news stories to fill that gap with.

I have played 3 of my major competitions in that time.
The Forfar 36 hole Open was abandoned after I had played 19 holes, due to extremely high winds. Trees were falling over which made it unsafe. I had carded an unspectacular 9 over par 78 in the first round.
The County Championships saw me fail to return a 36 hole score. Had I putted out I would have scored 83 and 85 for 47th place, my worst finish in this tournament.
My Club Championship yesterday again saw me fail to return a 36 hole score. I shot an awful 79 in the morning, and was miles over par in the second round when I unexpectedly lost a ball on the 8th hole.
So Abandoned, No Return, No Return aren’t particularly great results.

I am not enjoying playing golf at the moment. I feel that I need a break, like Sergio Garcia took, to take a step back and focus on why I play golf. In the cold light of day I can think logically. There are many worse things I could be doing than playing golf. I have all my limbs, don’t work 7 days per week, can choose what I do of my own free will. There are literally billions of people who would love to be able to walk around a golf course in the sun at the weekend but can’t because their life doesn’t allow them.
However, whilst on the course I cannot see this and am ruining my, and other peoples, game by insisting that everything is absolutely perfect, and when it deviates from perfect, as often happens very early in a round, my game goes mentally.

I may not get a break because of the number of tournaments I have already committed to, but I really don’t want to play in situations where I am not going to enjoy it.

There is also the wake up call that I have recently seen that I am not nearly as good a player as some of my peers. I am used to being at the top, or within reach of the top, and at the moment I am miles behind the people I used to contend with. This isn’t just in scoring, this is also the quality of strike, and general short game ability. I was outclassed and embarrassed in the club championship as my two playing partners could, put simply, hit a golf ball much better than me. It’s not a nice place to be.
The obvious solution to this is to work harder to get myself up to their level, but I’m not sure I have the desire to do that anymore. This ties in with the reduction in posting frequency on this blog.

So hopefully I will gain some perspective over the coming months, and if I choose to update this blog again it will be with happier tales.

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A Supplementary Bonus

First of all, happy 100^th blog post to me! It’s taken less than a year, and although I’m well behind my target golf-wise, I’m pleased with my persistence with this blog, as many other blogs on a similar subject have come and gone without a trace. Here’s to the next 100 posts.

I have started planning for next year already, which has thrown up some interesting logistics, and an unexpected bonus.

As has been previously detailed, after my last qualifying competition for 2010 which takes place tomorrow, I will have played in 56 qualifying competitions. This is quite a good number, but I need to really ramp that up next year, together with a lot of hard work, if I want to progress. There are several ways I am going to make this happen.

Firstly, I am going to join a golf club in Scotland that has qualifying competitions every Saturday and Sunday. In fact, there are two on a Saturday as there are two courses, and you can play on each. So if I am in Scotland playing a Monday – Friday tournament (of which I have 3 of these planned), I can travel to Scotland the Friday evening previously, play in 3 qualifying rounds on the Saturday and Sunday, then play in the Mon – Fri tournament, then another 3 qualifying competitions the following weekend, before heading back to London on the Sunday evening. Very tiring, but it gives me the opportunity to bookend my week long tournaments with 6 qualifying rounds.

In addition to this, I have already gone to extreme lengths to maximize the number of qualifying competitions I can play in. There is one particular weekend where I have a 36 hole competition in Scotland on the Sunday, followed by a bank holiday Monday competition at my home club. So I have bought a 7am flight from Dundee – Birmingham, then train to London, then underground train to my golf club, so I can get there by midday and play in an extra competition.

Secondly, the golf diary at my home club is a lot better for 2011 than it was in 2010. When I first joined this club I was baffled by the lack of qualifying competitions, 23 between April and September, next year there are 39, and are much better spread throughout the calendar. With these club competitions, and week long tournaments, I have already submitted my annual leave from work for 2011. Before the year has already started, I only have 2.5 days left from an entitlement of 28 days. So I’d better hope I don’t need any more time off work in the next year, as I’m not going to have the availability to take it. I also did a check of Friday afternoons, and from mid-April to end of September, I am going to work on 9 of them, and be off for the other 14. So if any work colleagues need me, don’t need me on a Friday afternoon!

Thirdly, I heard today that CONGU, the UK handicapping body, have made some amendments for 2011. In 2008 they introduced a system called Supplementary Scores, where players with a handicap of 6 or higher (i.e not me), who played less than 6 qualifying competitions in the previous year (i.e. not me), could submit up to 10 extra qualifying scores without a designated qualifying competition taking place. There are additional rules, such as a maximum of one per week, and you need to designate before starting that you are submitting a Supplementary Score. The good news is that as of 2011, they have opened Supplementary Scores up to players with a handicap of less than 6, and have scrapped the rule about having played less than 6 qualifying competitions in the previous year.

So that means that every player, including me, can now submit up to an extra 10 qualifying scores per year.

The end results of these 3 changes are that my diary now shows that I currently have 83 opportunities to play for my handicap in 2011. Even I have to admit that is quite a large number. It’s worth remembering that I played in 56 this year and didn’t reduce my handicap, so the number of competitions and handicap reduction are not directly correlated, but if the goal of my journey is to get down to scratch, then the vehicle that can help me get there is the number of qualifying competitions. And I’d rather be travelling in the Porsche of 83 competitions, than the Astra of 56.

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.

More Of The Same

UK Handicap; 3.7 USGA Handicap; 3.1

It’s been another week of mediocrity; I’ve not had any disasters, but I’ve not exactly been pulling up trees either.

I practiced on Wednesday night for a couple of hours, I think I hit the ball okay but I can’t really remember, I’m at that stage of the year where one evening blends into all the others.

I then had a lesson on Thursday, which could have gone better. I understand the changes that were made, and why they were made, but I hit the ball absolutely terribly. Many people, having had a lesson and then shortly afterwards find that they are hitting the ball worse than before, will lose faith and go back to what they know. My opinion is that, if you are paying a professional a not insignificant amount of money for their time and expertise, should have complete trust in what they say and you have to stick with it. One of the changes we made was to weaken my left hand grip. Retrospectively, this makes perfect sense, as my left hand was too strong (the “V” formed between my thumb and index finger was pointing too far right), which is the cause of my bad shot that goes left. The downside of making this change is that, because my swing made an allowance for this, weakening my grip has caused my bad shot to now be a short, right shot. The only way to get round this is to practice, and build up muscle memory of making the right swing, and to that extent I’m going to have a follow-up lesson in a few days time to review what I’m doing and ensure I’m doing it properly.

I practiced on Friday night again, and also went out and played ball 1 v ball 2 for 9 holes. The two balls were 1 over par for the 18 holes between them, without doing anything spectacular at all, and the course was absolutely deserted due to the majority of members being English and therefore watching England’s World Cup snoozefest against Algeria.

There was a competition today, in which I was struggling to get a game until one of the pros, getting ready for Open Championship Qualifying on Monday, asked if I wanted to go out for a game with him, which I was only too happy to oblige.

Once again, I hit the ball terribly, managing only 8 greens in regulation out of 18. However, as often happens in this bizarre game of golf, my short game was suddenly really, really good. During my lesson on Thursday we spent a couple of minutes on chipping, and it was like a moment of clarity. So I’m now missing greens, but I’m absolutely confident of getting up and down. I had 29 putts today, my first time under 30 putts since last July, and the 29 is more down to my chipping close rather than holing long putts.

The end result is that I was round in 75, bang on my handicap, in quite windy conditions. My playing partner beat me by 3 shots, but he gets paid to play golf and I don’t so I can live with that.

I turned down a game at another course in a match tomorrow, as I don’t like the course, it’s slopes are what first caused my knee to get injured, and I need to practice instead. The Club Championship is next Saturday, which I’ll talk about more during the week, but I’ve not actually committed to playing in it yet. I almost certainly will play in it, but I’m actually fairly underwhelmed by the whole thing at the moment. Last year I was really excited by the prospect, I was playing well and I was convinced I would win it. This year I’m making it fairly low-key. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to win it, but I’m going to have to improve on the 74 and 75s that I’ve been consistently shooting over the last couple of months to stand any chance. A top 5 finish is well within range, but I’d have to be considered an outsider to win it at the moment, despite being the joint lowest handicapped player in the golf club. In a week’s time we’ll know if the work I’m putting in has started to pay off.

The Need For Speed

UK Handicap; 3.7 USGA Handicap; 2.9

After the depression of Saturday, it was time to see if the pep talk I gave myself had any positive effect on Sunday.

One thing I failed to point out about Saturday’s round was that I was out in the last group of our regular roll-up, the pace of play was very slow, and I was playing with a slow player. There wasn’t a great deal of conversation on the way round, and while that lack of conversation may have been driven by me, I don’t think the overall environment helped my attitude at all. It took 4 hours to get around the course as a 3 ball playing in amongst other 3 balls, which is slower than it should be, although having said that I think I must have changed timezone somewhere on the course as it felt as if it was at least 5 hours.

I cannot abide slow play on the golf course, but it’s important to define the difference between thorough and slow. A four hour round when the players are being thorough and are preparing for each shot properly, like the county championships a couple of weeks ago, or the club championship in two weeks time, is perfectly acceptable. A four hour round because people are walking slowly, or aren’t clearing the green quickly after putting out, or are leaving their bag in the wrong place and keep having to make a detour whenever they need a different club, or aren’t ready to play when it is their turn, is not acceptable. Saturday was definitely the latter.

The round on Sunday took longer; four and a half hours, as a 4 ball playing amongst other 4 balls, yet felt about an hour less than the Saturday round, because two things were different. Despite having to wait on several holes for the group in front, (who lost 3 holes on the group in front of them, and incidentally included Mr Slow from Saturday), it never felt like a slow round as my playing partners were aware of their status on the course and ensured that they were in the right place, ready to play, at the right time. They were also good company and for the first time in a while I had a laugh on the course and there was plenty of encouragement going around.

I also tried my new (un)patented fruit gum relaxation method. Basically, I’ve felt like a coiled spring recently on the golf course, so I decided that when I hit a bad shot, instead of letting it get to me, I’d have a fruit gum instead. It seemed to generally (but not entirely) work, there was the odd moment of irrational madness that bubbled up from the pit of my stomach, but generally I was fairly chilled.

The end result of all this was that I was round in 3 over par 74, not brilliant, but not a disaster either considering that when I dropped 3 shots from my 7th – 9th holes to go from 1 under to 2 over par, my round could have quite easily slipped away from me. But I dug back in and came back with 8 pars and a bogey, to get the 0.1 that I had given away on Saturday reduced back off my handicap. There is no doubt that I need to be shooting better than 74, but it’s a start, and regardless of what I think I should be shooting, it’s a lot better, both numerically and mentally, than it was on Saturday.

After a couple of days playing golf in the sun, the hamster wheel has been crawled back onto. I write this whilst on a train to yet another nondescript industrial English town to deliver some training to some of my colleagues. It is very difficult to keep everything in focus when there is too much work to do, not enough time to do it in, and only 2 days of golf for every 5 that I spend working. With every passing day I am getting more and more jealous of the people who aren’t chained to a job whilst trying to keep their heads above water; - those people who can choose to play golf whenever they want. I’m finishing my working week so tired that golf feels like a chore, and I don’t want it to be like that. I need to bust this habit, and have been thinking about ways of freshening things up, like maybe practising in the morning instead of the evening, get out there at 6.30am and get a couple of hours hitting balls before starting work at 9am. Early starts aren’t my forte, but it might be time to turn things completely on their head.

This week probably contains no golf until a lesson on Thursday, to sharpen me up for the club championship 9 days later. There is a competition on Friday, but I am struggling to get time off work (surprise), and it’s unlikely there will be anyone to play with after work, as everyone will be watching the England v Algeria World Cup game instead.

There’s another chance to get my handicap reduced on Saturday, and I will probably practice on Sunday. I should be playing / practising 5 times a week at the moment, so I’m going to have to force myself to play on Wednesday and Friday evening to keep that ratio up, as unappealing as it looks now I’ll thank myself for it later.

The Problem With Perfection

UK Handicap; 3.8 USGA Handicap; 3.1

I’ve played 3 times since my last update, all at my home course, the first two being quick run-around games in the evening, followed by a competition game today.

The first game was a mediocre five over par 76. It was nothing special, I didn’t think I played that well, but looking back on what I know now maybe that’s the type of round I need.

I went out on Thursday evening and played 18 holes. Well, actually, I played 9 holes, but what I often do when I don’t have much time is play two balls on each hole and play 1 ball versus the other, ProV1 versus ProV1X. On this occasion the match was a tie, both balls played 9 holes in level par, in quite difficult conditions.

So it was set up nicely for a competition today, but as far as I was concerned my round was over after the first hole, which I double bogied from nowhere. Looking back, I played alright in spells today, but mentally I was awful, and have been in competition for a while. I am trying to have a perfect round, and as soon as I drop a shot, or something goes against my plan, my brain explodes and I find it hard to recover.

I need to re-learn, pretty quickly, that I’m going to drop shots during a round. That may sound a bit paradoxical, but I’ve never had a round without a dropped shot, so it’s natural that it will happen. Obviously I want to limit the dropped shots to as few as possible, and have the confidence that at some point I have the ability to maybe birdie some holes. I have unreasonable expectations currently, if I double bogey the first hole then instead of thinking that my round is over I should be thinking about, well, nothing. There is also no point in thinking that I must get the shots back in the next 2 holes, as that is just heaping more pressure on myself and setting myself up to fail.

The thing that frustrates me about my mental implosions is that I already know about everything that I have said, I’ve blogged about how hard it is to go for a round of golf without dropping a shot, and I’ve blogged about how I should be thinking when on the course. I’ve just got sloppy about it recently, and additionally I’ve been putting excessive pressure on myself to have a sub-par round, as I’m very conscious that my best round on my home course is a poor 73 this year, and my handicap is higher now than when I started this blog. However, this is the whole purpose of this blog, when things aren’t going well I can review what things were like when things were going well. So that’s exactly what I’ve done, re-read a few posts and a bit of a golf book that helps me psychologically, and all being well I’ll play in another competition tomorrow with a clear, positive, frame of mind. The ability is still there, I know it is, it just won’t come out to play whilst my mind is putting unreasonable demands on it.

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.

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.

Mind Power In Action

UK Handicap; 3.6 USGA Handicap; 4.2

Okay, let’s get this out of the way quickly. Yesterday I took 4 putts on the final green to turn an excellent round into a ‘playing to my handicap’ round.

On the back of my mental preparation yesterday, I effectively played 3 games of golf in one yesterday.

The numerical round; I was round in 75 shots, 4 over par, which is the equivalent of 36 stableford points and is playing exactly to my handicap. I’ve scored better, I’ve scored worse.

The physical round; I drove the ball really well, working on my swing has definitely found me quite a bit of extra difference off the tee. I hit 14 greens in regulation, my highest of the year. 3 iron shots were leaked slightly right, and I got a bad lie in a bunker. Every other green was hit, and 8 of them were hit to within 15 feet. My putting was fairly poor, I seemed to have an aversion of getting the ball up to the hole. I only holed 2 of the 8 decent birdie attempts, I’ll work on that though.

The mental round; I have never played a game of golf as well mentally as I did yesterday. I prepared properly, I was focussed for every shot, and was very calm. When I hit one of my few bad shots, it was completely forgotten about straight away. In fact, it crossed my mind that perhaps I hit more greens in regulation, because I knew that if I didn’t hit the green it wouldn’t bother me. I didn’t put myself under pressure of having to hit the green.

When I had a disappointment, I accepted it and just got on with playing the next hole. After a silly bogey on the 6^th hole, I followed it up with 4 solid pars. When I bogeyed the 11^th, I followed it up with 2 really good birdie chances on 2 of the hardest holes on the course. When I 3-putted the 16^th, I followed it up with a birdie at 17.

The 4-putt on the last was just one of those things, it wasn’t a loss of concentration, it just happened. You’d think that after throwing away a good round on the final green, I’d be mad with myself? The thing that surprised me was how little I was bothered about it, and this is exactly where I have wanted to get to.

This is the paradox; I care, everyone knows I care, I want more than anything to be as good as I possibly can be. But I can’t let myself be bothered by things that happen. The best thing I can do in caring about my game is not being bothered.

If I continue to focus on the mental and physical rounds, the numerical rounds will sort themselves out, I am in absolutely no doubt about that. I just need to make sure that every game I play from now on has the same thorough preparation and clarity of thought before and after every shot.

A couple of footnotes to mention today. As of today I have not had any alcohol for 100 days. Me stopping drinking didn’t have anything to do with golf, I just felt like it. However, it has had the knock-on effect of helping my game, as no alcohol = no hangover = clearer mind + less likely to lie in bed not playing golf. I was going to have no alcohol for specifically 100 days, however now that I’ve done 100 days I’m just going to continue, I can’t say even for a minute that I miss it.

Secondly, I was out practising tonight, hitting 6 irons 170 yards into the practice green, when someone (whom I don’t know) came down to the practice green and started chipping balls right from my landing area. I obviously had to stop hitting there, as I could have killed him, but the plain ignorance just absolutely astounded me. He didn’t say anything in advance, just went straight down there right into the middle of where I was hitting to. I went down there to enquire about his decision to position himself there, and after a short civil conversation, in keeping with my attitude of not letting things bother me, I went off elsewhere to hit balls. Life’s too short. Next time maybe I’ll just keeping hitting balls when he appears.

Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Firstly, I learned a small but valuable lesson the other day; ten pin bowling uses totally different muscles to golf. As a result, certain areas of my body are in agony when I move in certain ways at the moment. I must remember not to go ten pin bowling again if I plan to play golf within the following 48 hours.

I am playing a stableford competition today, and have been thinking about my preparation for it. I have mentioned in several posts about a book I bought, called Your 15^th Club by Bob Rotella, well I finished re-reading it on Friday having read it for the first time 4 months ago.

The first thing I took from re-reading it is that, in between reading it for the first and second times, I have already adopted a lot of the regimen detailed in the book without realising. This is obviously pleasing, if not a bit freaky, as I thought I had come up with these ideas myself, but maybe they have come from a seed that was planted the first time I read the book?

This blog itself was actually started having read the book. Dr Rotella mentions writing down a journal of good shots, and also writing affirmations. Whilst I have not adopted that to the letter, it did persuade me to start writing about my golf. Obviously in this blog I have to write about good and bad things, however when reviewing I can choose to read only the good things and ignore the posts about bad things completely.

The remaining things in the book, in fact all of the ideas that come across in the book, are common sense. However, they are only common sense when you read them. It’s the sort of “Yeah, I can see why that would help, I’ll start doing that” thoughts. As I mentioned earlier, the seed needs to be planted first.

So, for today, what should my plan be?

In advance of going to the course, basic preparation; checked the weather forecast, ensured I have the right clothing and equipment, and food for the course.

Time preparation; I’m playing at 1pm, so I have a clear plan to get to the golf club at 11.30am, warm up from 11.45am – 12.15pm, have a bite to eat and socialise with my playing partners 12.15pm – 12.45pm, get ready and hit a few practice putts 12.45pm – 1pm.

I’ll make sure that my warm up doesn’t contain any technical analysis, it is purely to get my swing, and muscles, warmed up.

I have already visualised my round; imagined very clearly in my head every shot, taking into account the noises, sights, feelings as I hit each ball.

So what about when I am playing?

When I have a shot, I will only play it when I am ready and have visualised clearly the shot I want to play.

If I have a specific thought, it will be positive. I will think about a generic swing thought if at all possible. If thinking about a target, I will think about where I do want to hit the ball, not where I don’t want to hit it (e.g. “hit it down the middle” is massively more powerful than “don’t hit it in the bunker”).

If it doesn’t go where I want it to, I will forget about it and only think about the next shot. If I miss a green with an approach shot, I know I have practised my short game enough to be confident to get up and down from anywhere.

If I hit a good shot, I will appreciate it for what it is. The mechanics involved in hitting a golf ball successfully towards a target are amazing, I only have to look at a beginner trying to make contact with the ball to realise how difficult it is. I won’t think “About time too” or “I’ll only go and miss the putt”.

When all is said and done, I will appreciate that my score is reflective of how I played. There is no point moaning about a bounce, or the state of the greens, or how much sand is in the bunkers.

Where a good game can become a bad game is when I stop living by any of the above. Maybe I get rattled by a missed putt and replay it over and over in my head. Maybe if I’m playing well I start getting ahead of myself and thinking “What if……”.

I need to keep my frame of mind exactly as it is now whilst writing this; relaxed, positive, almost serene if you like. Do that and I’ll be alright.

Video Nasty

UK Handicap; 3.6 USGA Handicap; 4.6

Another week, another 0.1 added to the handicap. Might have to rename this blog ‘Trying to play like a complete hacker”. Having said that, the 0.1 that I went up Sunday was just daft, and could have easily been avoided. I got to the eighth tee 1 over par, having played really nicely for the first seven holes. 8-11 is an easy stretch of my course, I would always aim to be 1 under par for those four holes. So going bogey, par, bogey bogey wasn’t in the script. All 3 dropped shots were caused by being just a couple of yards off line, on another day they would have all been pars. I battled back from then on, needing a par 4 on the last to avoid the 0.1 increase. Having nailed a drive down the middle of the fairway, I was left with 85 yards to the flag and 3 shots to get down in. I could do this with my eyes closed. However, not this time. For some inexplicable reason, I hit an awful wedge onto the green about 30 feet from the hole, and took 3 putts to get down, having putted really confidently up until that point.

It was one of those ‘I can’t believe I just did that’ moments, but there’s no point dwelling on it, it’s just one of those things.

The game on Sunday was the first competitive game since I saw my swing for the first time. I had another lesson on Saturday morning, and the video camera was brought out as part of it. I haven’t had lessons for over 15 years, and the technology that has evolved since then makes it a completely different experience.

Seeing my swing on video was an awakening experience; there were some things that were much better than I could have imagined (still head on the backswing, good swing plane), but there were some things that absolutely horrified me. I take the clubhead back in a closed position, and I can work on that fairly easily, but the main thing that surprised me was my weight distribution – it is completely wrong. I am right handed, and it makes sense that I should have my weight on my right side on my backswing, and transfer it over to my left side during the downswing. This generates power into the golf shot. I do the complete opposite, I transfer my weight onto my right foot during the downswing. This does go someway to explaining why I haven’t been hitting the ball as far as I think I should be.

Having been given some things to work on, I have played on the three days since. The first game is detailed at the start of this post, the second was a practice session the following day, which started terribly before I realised that transferring weight is a gradual process, it doesn’t have to look as if I’m trying to chop down trees by shifting my entire body weight from one leg to the other in under half a second. Once this notion clicked into place, the shots got a lot better. It’s also worth giving credit where credit’s due. I blogged at the end off last week about how bobbly the greens were at my course, that practising putting was next to impossible, well in the space of 3-4 days they are like different greens, there is still work to be done to them but they have made a massive improvement, the whole course is looking quite good at the moment. Long may it continue.

Tonight I played another course just for a change, my friend is the head greenkeeper so we scooted round in under 3 hours, and for the first time in a long time I can confidently say that I didn’t hit a single destructive iron shot. I was round in 5 over par 76, which isn’t exactly the course record, but considering that it was very windy and I hadn’t played the full course before so wasn’t entirely sure on distances and reading greens, it was one of my best rounds in a quite a while.

I’m getting a sense of déjà vu here, but I’m confident I’m hitting the ball well and have a good mental game at the moment, so sooner rather than later my UK Handicap will start to reduce. Next attempt is this Sunday.

18 Months To Go

3 days into British Summer Time (BST), and I’ve already used two of those evenings to take advantage of the extra daylight and get some practice in. The S in BST is a bit deceiving, seeing as it was pouring with rain on Monday, and the temperature was 5C (41F) this evening as I hit another 147 balls. There is a certain sense of satisfaction practising when the weather is awful and no-one else is out, if there is any justice, or karma, or (whisper it) even the development of a skill due to repetition, then this should come back to reward me in the summer months.

It occurred to me today that my deadline for getting a scratch handicap is the last day of September 2011; exactly 18 months today. So I thought it apt to do a 3 month review to see what I have done, and what I have learned.

What I have done;

- Played or practised 22 times. Considering that due to snow, work trips abroad, and darkness, there have only been 26 days that I could possibly have played on, I’m pretty pleased with that.

- Bought a new set of clubs. Still early days, still paying for them, but I certainly have more control of the ball than I did with my old set

- Increased my handicap by 0.1. Only played 4 competitive rounds, gone up in 2, come down in 1, no change in 1.

- Got myself a job at the Open in July. This is something to look forward to for the next 3½ months, it should be one of the highlights of the year.

What I have learned;

- You don’t get anything for nothing. I will only get better if I practice, even (and especially) when I don’t want to.

- The mind as well as the body needs trained. Reading Your 15^th Club has opened up my mind to various psychological aspects. All of them make perfect sense, they are very clear in my mind, the first test of them will be when I get in a real pressure situation. The picture to the right is something I have put up in my bedroom, next to other golf items (the item above it is a certificate of an 80 around the Old Course when I was 15). It’s the first thing I see every morning when I get out of bed, so the constant reminder is there of what my goal is. It's tacky, but it works.

- I am mortal. I knew this already, but my left knee has reawakened me to this. It may decide whether I’m able to play golf at all, never mind get down to scratch.

- I was nearly a scratch golfer last summer. Calculating my USGA handicap let me see that I would have got down to 0.9 at the start of August last year. No reason why I can’t do better this year.

Warm Up Act

UK Handicap; 3.4 USGA Handicap; 4.2

I have only played once this week, it was today in the last group game of our Tigers Fourball Better Ball group stages. We won our match, and it was a record equalling game from my perspective.

I had gone back to lifting weights this week, the schedule having slipped recently, and noticed some definition in my arms and shoulders for the first time. Nothing spectacular, I guess most people wouldn’t notice the difference as I look fairly normal now as opposed to ‘rake-like’, but I definitely noticed muscles that weren’t there a couple of months ago.

Another thing I did today, for the first time this season, was to warm up properly. The vast majority of amateur golfers stand on the first tee having done nothing to warm up the muscles they will be using over the next 4 hours. I can totally understand why a lot of people don’t warm up; it means arriving an extra 30 minutes before teeing off, the hassle of having to mess about with clubs and practice balls, and it’s not nearly as much fun as playing a real round of golf. I started doing a proper warm up during last year, and will try and complete it religiously before playing this year. It’s important to recognise the difference between practising and warming up. It’s easy to get the two confused, as they both happen on either a practice ground or in practice nets, and involve hitting golf balls in succession with a variety of clubs. The warm up is exactly that; it is to warm up and loosen the muscles, and get into a rhythm, it is not to practice technical aspects. If you need to practice then that needs it’s own time, 20 minutes before playing is not a good time to solve swing problems. My warm up is fairly simple, some basic stretches followed by 10 x pitching wedges, 10 x 7 irons, 10 x 3 irons, 5 x drivers, and 5 x 60% pitching wedges. 40 shots in total, utilising a range of clubs and different muscles.

So having done my weights during the week, and a proper warm up before starting, everything was primed for a great day.

The record I ended up equalling was my joint worst net score in the three years I have kept a database of scores on my home course. I’ve had worse gross rounds, albeit when I was playing from a handicap of 5 or 8, but after taking my handicap into consideration I have never returned worse than today’s total; 25 stableford points.

36 stableford points is the equivalent of playing to my handicap, every point below that is 1 shot over my handicap, so today I was 11 shots over my handicap, taking my handicap of 3 into consideration means I was at least 14 over par gross.

I don’t want to analyse it too much, it was just generally pathetic. I will try and focus on the positive that I had a 2 on the 3^rd hole. No matter what else happens, if I have a 2 on my scorecard then I have something positive to take away. The warm up will stay, as will the weights, I’m not stupid enough to say after one bad round that they were the cause.

The fact we won our match by 2 holes was as much due to our opponents, and my partner playing marginally better than me (he counted in 6 holes, I counted in 3, we both counted in 4, and we lost 5). At the end of our group matches we have won 2 and lost 1, whether it is enough to qualify for the semi finals depends on other matches being played, and will come down to a countback of some description.

This week involves nothing Monday – Thursday due to being away with work, then a club match on Friday at a course I’ve not played before, and 36 holes on Sunday.

Next Sunday is officially ‘The Best Day Of The Year’ (reason to be explained in the near future), but ironically could also be a day of failure, due to having my handicap increase to 4, and playing 36 holes in one day being the first big test of my physical shape for this year.

That Friday Feeling

UK Handicap; 3.4 USGA Handicap; 4.0

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shiny New Irons Have Arrived

I got the call I’d been waiting for this afternoon, my irons had arrived.

A quick phone call to my boss, and 15 minutes later I was standing in the pro shop of my club looking at my new clubs.

Although it was getting dark and there were heavy showers coming and going, I couldn’t resist going out for 45 minutes and hitting some balls.

I hit a few 7 irons, and then moved onto my 5 iron. I gave a spontaneous reaction when I hit my first 5 iron and felt it coming off the clubface and rising, straight as an arrow, into the February gloom. The reaction rhymed with clucking bell, I won’t go into any more detail.

I then hit 21 pitching wedges from 100 yards out, 15 of them went within 10 feet of my target. There were a couple of squiffy ones in there, however the squiffy ones all had the same cause of squiffyness, so I reckon that’s a swing mechanic I need to work on.

I feel really confident hitting these irons, a large part of that is down to the notion of having new equipment, and part is down to the equipment itself. They even look really cool sitting in my golf bag with my wedges. This is now a golfer’s golf bag, instead of just a collection of golf clubs.

I’ve put myself down for 36 holes on Sunday, I’d never normally do that in February, but I like the feeling I get when I hit these irons so I want to do it more often.

Four Seasons In One Day

This weekend has seen visits from weather from all around the year, including snow, blazing sunshine, hail, winds, and heavy rain at various points.

Due to its unpredictable nature, I decided not to play the course today, but to practice instead, giving me a quick escape route to the clubhouse should it be required.

As I’m expecting a new set of irons this week, I concentrated on hitting my 2 new wedges, and my new 3 iron. It’s difficult to tell how far I’ll hit them between April and September, as it’s currently 15 degrees Celsius (27F) colder than it will be then, but I measured my sand wedge at 79 yards, my gap wedge at 90 yards, and my 3 iron at 185 yards. Due to the saturated ground, those are about the carry distances too as the ball simply isn’t running. The 3 iron (I don’t know whether to call it a 3-iron, Fli-Hi or driving iron, it’s not a conventional 3 iron as it has a much thicker sole, but I think I’ll stick with that name for the time being) goes high and straight, which is a big change from my old 3 iron which didn’t go very high, and as a consequence I often hooked it.

The wedges have been a new lease of life for me. I now have a gap wedge for the first time, which fills a big gap (excuse the pun), as previously I didn’t have a club for shots between 70 and 110 yards. This may sound a bit straightforward, but the new wedges actually go where I’m aiming and the distance I’m trying to hit it. Maybe this is because Titleist Vokeys are some kind of super wedge, or more likely my old wedges were holding me back, due to them being 11 years old, not fitted correctly for me, with virtually no grooves left, and completely worn grips. I’ve never been in the position of having the right clubs for me in my bag, 4 months ago the entire contents of my golf bag cost £200, next week the contents will have cost £885. Money isn’t everything, but you get what you pay for, and having the right equipment will take shots off of anyone’s game.

With this in mind, and remembering that it’s been my putting letting me down over the last year, I went and chatted to the pro for 15 minutes about putting. Having done a few checks, it’s become blindingly obvious that my putter is more of a hindrance than a help. It is 36 inches long, whereas I should be fitted for a 33.5 inch putter, and the lie angle is completely wrong, meaning I often have the toe of the putter in the air when I hit the ball. The weights within the putter are not set correctly either, and although it was cutting edge when it was made, that was over 20 years ago, and time and technology has moved on considerably since then. So it looks like I could be shelling out £100 for a new putter as well. I’m not one of these people who has a bad round and decides to change their equipment, in fact I don’t get it when people go through 6 putters and 8 wedges in the course of a year. Once I get the right gear, fitted for my game, I’ll stick to it; the problem at the moment is that I have totally the wrong equipment to start with. It will be hard to say goodbye to my original Ping Zing, as it’s the only putter I’ve used for the last 14 years, but it is time to move on.

When I’ll get to use this new equipment is another story, looking at the current weather forecast it certainly won’t be within the next 5 days.................

Mizuno; Get Your Act Together Please

I went to Mizuno’s National Fitting Centre on 13^th January to be custom fitted for a new set of irons.

The whole experience was very good, I learned a lot and felt it was very worthwhile, even though all of my settings came out standard, meaning there wasn’t much customisation of my clubs required compared with an off the shelf set.

The order for the irons were put in there and then. The plan was that the order would be sent to their assembly plant in Cumbernauld, who would make the set up and send it out to my club pro. I was told at the fitting that by ordering via the National Fitting Centre I could expect a turnaround of 7-10 days. I was expecting to have my new clubs by January 22^nd.

Since I left the Fitting Centre that snowy afternoon in January everything has gone pretty much wrong.

I hadn’t heard anything by January 26^th, so I arranged for my club pro to chase Mizuno up. At this point I found out that the club heads were out of stock, but new stock was due in on 8^th February and my clubs would be sent out that week. Not ideal, but these things can happen, although I would have expected them to order more clubheads when they realised they were running low on stock.

The week starting on 8^th February was met with silence, so at the end of it I asked again for Mizuno to be chased up. The outcome this time was that there was a shortage of shafts, but more shafts are due in on 26^th February, and I am ‘towards the top of the list’ so my clubs should be assembled and distributed shortly after February 26^th. One thing that has turned up is the Fli-Hi 3 iron, so I have one club, and am still awaiting another 7.

A couple of things stick out here. You would think that in an assembly plant, the number of shafts would be enough to cover the number of clubheads? Secondly, the shafts are bog standard Dynamic Gold S300 shafts, they aren’t specially crafted from the triple filtered iron ore smelted by pygmies in a rainforest somewhere. They can be picked up anywhere.

I have always thought of Mizuno as a very efficient company, and all of the stories I’ve read about other people being fitted have been very favourable, however a delay of at least 5 weeks, probably more, on top of the advertised turnaround time, with me having to do all of the chasing up, is not acceptable.

The Fitting Centre have been fine, and my club pro is merely passing on messages from Mizuno, the problem seems to lie at Mizuno itself. Do they have cashflow problems? Do they have organisational problems? Why on earth have they run out of stock of two different components within a few weeks of each other? I still think they are a great clubmaker, but their customer service and communication has been absolutely appalling.

All this means is that I’m going to have a lot less time to get comfortable with my new irons before the serious competition starts. In a vain attempt to look on the bright side, I suppose it could be worse, I could have paid up front for them and be worried about being the best part of £700 out of pocket. Small mercies.

Footnote; whilst writing this post, I went to the Mizuno website to put in a hyperlink to their fitting centres, and found that their entire European golf website is offline. I hope this is for maintenance, otherwise I will start to worry.

Fitted Up

Today I took a half day from work and went to Mizuno’s National Fitting Centre in New Malden. It’s a free service provided for people looking for a new set of clubs, which is a very good service of Mizuno, as they could easily charge £50 upwards for the service.
I went in and was invited to hit balls for 15 minutes or so with my own 6 iron to warm up, then we used various tools to analyse different measurements.

One that can be decided without hitting a ball is the length of the club. This is done by standing up straight with arms at sides, measuring the knuckle to floor distance and plotting it against a chart. I came out absolutely standard.
Attaching a device to the shaft of a 6 iron and hitting a few balls gave quite a few readings. The first was an average (and very consistent for each shot) swing speed of 82mph. I was quite surprised and pleased by how fast this was, my dad was recently measured and came out with 68mph, tour pros are in the region of 90-95mph.
Shaft flex, and transition (from backswing to downswing), were both right in the middle, indicating that my tempo is neither slow nor fast. Very pleased with this.
Release timing; very early. Basically, I break my wrists too early, which causes a loss of power. I’ve tried breaking my wrists later, but I find I can’t control the ball so well, in fact most of the time I don’t know where it’s going.

These readings gave recommended shafts, and I then hit several balls with each of the shafts. I was surprised by the difference in results that different shafts gave. Shaft 1 gave an average distance of 161.6 yards, compared with 144.5yds with Shaft 2 and 148.3yds with Shaft 3. That is quite a big difference. Shafts 2 and 3 also had much less ball speed and way more side spin. Shaft 2, which had a lighter shaft, gave a ridiculous amount of side spin which would have given me a huge slice.
Having decided on the shaft, we then checked the lie of the club at impact, and to my surprise it much pretty much in the middle of the club. Another pleasing result.

After all was said and done, we settled on standard length, standard loft, standard lie, with stiff shafts. With the results being so standard, these could have been bought off the shelf, however I feel a lot more confident knowing that the clubs I get will absolutely fit my swing and body shape.
I also decided to take their Fli-Hi 3 iron, which is not quite a 3-iron, not quite a hybrid, more like a driving iron. I only hit about 10 balls with it but it felt absolutely fantastic.

Overall, it was a very enlightening experience. It was very thorough, I learnt that I hit the ball differently from how I thought I did, and although it wasn’t a lesson, the data it provided has given me some hints on what I need to work on. One thing I was astounded by was the difference between range balls and real golf balls. I previously knew that range balls weren’t as good, but to hit 2 shots in succession, one with a range ball and then one with a real ball, the difference in ball flight was absolutely astonishing. I would recommended everyone to be custom fit for irons, if you are going to play many hundreds of rounds with these clubs, it makes sense to get ones that are right for you.

In other news, I did get the “call” (email actually) from the Craws Nest Tassie, I made it into the tournament, all I have to do now is phone them, pay the £185 entry fee, and book my practice round time.

Also, when I was at the golf club today, it looks like it’s still going to be a while longer before I’m able to start talking about actually playing golf. The photo left shows the 18th, 9th and 7th greens. I think that all this snow may make the course a lot better when it comes to summer, it’s a bit annoying for all those people who are desperate to play in January though.

Weight And See

I did something yesterday that I never thought would happen – I bought some dumbbells.
Reading various books recently has made me realise that the best players, as well as being technically very good, are all very strong as well.
As I see it, to hit a long, straight golf ball, you need 3 main things; technique, timing, and strength. Timing is a pre-requisite, without it you will not a hit a long, straight ball. Of the other two, if they were an exam marked out of 100 I would put the available marks at 80 technique and 20 strength.

I weigh 9 ½ stone (133lb), and am as skinny as a rake. At the moment I would say that my technique is sitting at 70 out of the 80, and my strength is at about 8 of 20. On that rough measurement I can probably hit a ball at 78% of my capability. At the moment I can carry a driver 240 yards on a good day, in summer it will roll another 30 yards or so and end up about 270 yards. That is an accurate distance, based on actual shots using known distances. Most people will add 20-30 yards when asked how far they carry the ball, this blog is about being honest, 240 is my carry on a good drive, no more, no less. If I can increase my strength to 15 out of 20 then I should be able to add about 22 yards in total onto a driver, and that’s before my coach starts work on the final 10 marks of the technique aspect. Carrying the ball 262 yards instead of 240 yards will make a massive difference. Going on the basis that I get the same 30 yards of roll it gives me a total distance of 292 instead of 270. It will give me wedges into greens instead of 8 irons, and 6 irons instead of 4 irons. It’s pretty much a 2-club difference right down the scale. Hitting a shorter iron means I’ve got a better chance of getting it close to the flag, which in turn gives me a better chance of sinking birdie putts, and so on and so on. The phrase ‘drive for show, putt for dough’ is probably the most accurate golf statement ever made, so I’m not suggesting that if everyone builds up the right muscles they will hit the ball like a dream, as if they aren’t scoring well of the technique side of the golf shot exam you can get 20 out of 20 for strength and still not hit it any distance at all.
The main things I’m working on are bicep curls, tricep curls, and shoulder presses, as well as good old fashioned press-ups. I did it for the first time last night and definitely felt like I’d been lifting weights afterwards. It is over a decade since some of the muscles I exercised had felt any sort of labour coming their way.
Something I need to be aware of is that by building up muscle it doesn’t upset my technique or timing, there’s no point in being stronger if it is counter-balanced by not having the same rhythm as before. I’ll be working on that one with my coach.

One thing I did notice was that my left side is especially weak, especially the tricep. I wonder if there is any bad shot caused by having one side stronger than the other? I’m right handed and my bad shot is a hook, I’d like to think there is some sort of logic that says if your right side is more powerful then it can cause a hook, as the right shoulder and arm turn in too quickly. It’s something that sounds as if it could be true but almost certainly isn’t. If anyone knows any different please let me know.

Anyway, another 6 inches of snow fell today, so there won’t be any golf for a while, so looks like the weights will be seeing a bit more action over the next few weeks.

A load of games and a load of balls

You can study as much theory as you want in order to perform a specific task, whether it be football, physics, or sheet-metal work, but the real improvement comes from practical experience.
This is why I come up with a plan for how many times I’m going to play golf over the course of a year.

I’m not a great fan of playing between November and March, and until 2009 my clubs used to go away when the clocks went back at the end of October, and come out again sometime during March. From monitoring my handicap, I found that after these 5 month spells of not playing, the first 2 months of playing again resulted in my handicap going gradually upwards, before a sustained period of dramatic reduction started. If I didn’t play until the middle of March, then it was the middle of May before my handicap started to reduce, and by that time 25% of the season has already passed. So in 2009 I decided to start playing at the start of February, so that by the start of the golf season (start of April) I was primed and my game was where I wanted it to be.
And you know what? It worked. My handicap was cut in the last week of March, I won a competition in the first week of April, and the handicap was cut again in the first week of May. So I’m going to do the same again in 2010, play in the colder months when I really have to force myself to do it, knowing that it will really benefit me when the warmer weather arrives. And believe me, it really is a struggle to drag my sorry backside out of bed when it’s minus 3 degrees, to go and hit 100 balls in a soggy field when I could be sitting inside watching football on the tv. But it has to be done if I want to get any better.

Overall for 2009 I planned to play 140 times, and I actually achieved 112 games. I count a game as a full 18 holes, or at least 9 holes playing multiple balls per hole, or a minimum of a 90 minute practice session. Okay, so I didn’t play as many times as I had planned, but the bar was set deliberately high; there will always be a time where due to travel, work, or illness, I am not able to play as many times as I would like. 112 games in a year is just over 2 a week, which doesn’t sound much, but bearing in mind I have a full-time job that takes me all around the country I am fairly happy with it.
Without this plan I wouldn’t have even made it to 100 games, and the constant knowledge that I pay £1,500 a year to play golf on my home course reminds me that it makes sense to try and squeeze as much value as possible out of it; that’s the Scottish gene kicking in there.
The captain of my golf club last year played 161 rounds, so my 112 rounds stands up to scrutiny considering that someone who is retired and gets invited to every golf day going, played less than 50 rounds more than me.

The 2010 schedule has 150 games in it, starting at 1 per week during the winter, slowly building up to My Majors where it is either 4 or 5 games per week, then winding down again from the middle of September onwards. If I actually play 150 times I’ll be delighted, and I’ll be trying to achieve it, in all reality if I play 130 times or more then I’ll have given myself every opportunity to achieve the season’s targets.

I reckon that in these games & practice sessions I’ll hit in the region of 15,600 golf balls in 2010, and I’ll be keeping track of this with the little counter on the right of this blog. This is where the whole day job thing gets in the way. Tour pros probably hit at least 15,600 golf balls in a month, it will take me a whole year to do it. However, until I get 6 numbers in the lottery, or manage to get myself fired, it looks like the job is here to stay, so I’m going to have to work around it. The weather is harder to work around though; I couldn’t even get to the practice nets last week as they were covered in 4 inches of snow. A nice, mild, January – March will really help me get up to speed for 2010, especially as I’m going to need at least 2 months to get used to my new irons. Weather gods – despite your previous track record, please take note of this request and do your best.