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.

The Power Of The Web

UK Handicap; 3.3 USGA Handicap; 1.7

The last week has seen me start to enter some of my competitions for next year. It's interesting to see how golf clubs market themselves differently, and the varying degrees of importance they place to their web presence.

Some club websites I visit haven't yet posted the dates of their tournaments for 2011, some have the dates up but no entry forms, and the two that I have managed to enter so far have given a very different user experience.

I posted last year about the race to get an entry in the Craw's Nest Tassie, a 6 day event played at Carnoustie in September. I made it in last year, and was primed for the entry form going live at 7pm last Monday.

As expected, the website started slowing down nearer 7pm as traffic to the site increased, but come 7pm itself the site was barely responding to requests, and I had a nervous 5 minute wait for the entry form to even appear. Wait that long last year and you were on the reserve list.

When the form appeared, I quickly put all my details in and pressed submit. Like before, the site was barely responding and I had the dilemma; is it my connection, my processer or the Carnoustie website. I run my laptops off fast processers and 20Mb broadband, so I suspected it was the Carnoustie site. Fortunately, 4 minutes later, and before I even received a message on my screen, an email popped through to my Blackberry informing me I had been successful and was in the competition. The confirmation screen appeared a few minutes later and I was able to go through and pay my entry fee.

Or so I thought. When I was diverted through to the payment site, it was hooked up to a test server, instead of a live server that could accept real money. It was 22 hours before an email came out asking people who did submit a payment to resubmit on the now correctly hooked-up payment server.
Also, every time I navigated to the Carnoustie website, even if I didn't type anything, I got another copy of the confirmation email telling me I was in the tournament. I ended up with 9 of these emails by the end of the week.
The bottom line is that I got into the tournament, so all's well that ends well. I feel bad criticising Carnoustie about this, because they are trying to make things easier, and I'd give them 10/10 for trying, but in terms of execution, the process was a shambles. I've spoken to people who had to wait a lot longer than I did for the entry form to appear, and it appears that the system was not tested properly before it went live.

The following night I had a look at the Monifieth Links website, as I will be playing in their 18 hole open at the start of August. They have recently gone live with a booking system, it is operated by BRS Golf, who provide this service for over 500 clubs in the UK and Ireland.

I have to say I was absolutely astounded with how good the system is.
Members and visitors alike can view and book available tee times months in advance, and Open competitions can also be booked and paid for online. I entered the Open competition for 2 people, chose my tee time, and paid for it in the space of 5 minutes. No forms to fill in, nothing to send, no waiting about to see if I got in and what my tee time is.

This is a really progressive piece of software, and is obviously used by clubs who are aware of the importance of moving with the times and giving power to the people to see and book what they want. The more transparent clubs are with their availability and ease of booking tee times, the more tee times will inevitably be booked. Tee times aren't a secret, I guess that some clubs feel that they are losing control if everything is visible on the internet. The reality is that clubs don't lose any control, they just pass the functional processing on to the end user instead of requiring staff to do it all for them.

As for the golf itself, another quiet week, hitting 100 balls on Sunday was all that happened, this weekend sees a match on Saturday, and again, due to being dark by 4.30pm every night, that will be it for the week.

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.