How often do we hear words to the effect of "It's not fair I have to give away all these shots"? I know this is a common view among the low handicap players I know. This interests me because in my opinion the handicap system is one of the best things about golf.
In a recent match at my club I had to give my opponent 17 shots. Some of the low handicap players thought I had no chance in this match because I was giving my opponent nearly a shot a hole. As he hit a long and straight drive down the first hole there were even some laughs. The match turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and closest I have played. Neither of us were ever more than 1 hole ahead and it finished on the 18th.
I was able to enjoy this so much because of the handicap system. The truth of life is that most people do not like being significantly less able at something than others and in many situations this leads them to quit. I often wonder how many 20 handicappers would not play the game without the handicap system. So many people are competitive and if they are finishing 20 shots behind someone then they are going to question why they are trying. Part of the reason I enjoyed this match was because I got on well with my opponent and without handicaps he may not even be playing the game.
I also enjoy handicaps because they provide a track of how I have been improving over time. I love feedback on my progress and a handicap provides just that. I got my first handicap aged 10 and it was 36. Each time I think about that I realize just how much I have improved over the last 10 years. I can not think of any other sports where there is hard evidence of how much a player has improved which is just another great thing about handicaps.
Handicaps also enable the game to grow with the player. 5 or so years ago I was playing off around 20 and due to handicaps I had just as much chance of winning something then as I do now even though I am playing off 3. If I was a tennis player who started at my local club, as I have with golf, I may have needed to leave to seek stronger opposition elsewhere once I became one of the best players in the club. While I do go out of my way to play with scratch or near scratch golfers it is for different reasons and I have not had to leave my local club because of a lack of challenge.
I think a lot of the dislike for the handicap system among low handicaps is caused by competitiveness. I understand that it is not nice to be beaten by someone who has shot 10 shots higher than me. I have been in that situation too but I am not angered by it. I am a very competitive person but I do not mind losing because I am only competitive with myself. I play competitions to test myself. I always want to do better than the previous time, that could be putt better, hit more fairways, or even just enjoy myself more. I every time I am beaten by someone who has taken more shots than me I just hope they are enjoying winning as much as I did when I was in their position.
I would be really interested to hear other people's opinion on handicaps so please leave comments. I know I will continue to enjoy the level playing field they offer.
Monday 30 November 2015
Tuesday 17 November 2015
Unconventional Golf Tuition
Some of the most common advice for people who want to get better at golf is to see a professional. This is advice I have given myself and is something that I do myself. We hear about how the best players in the world have access to the best teachers in the world. I have begun thinking about this and how I can have the best tuition in the world.
In the modern world we do not need to be near someone to learn from them. We have the telephones, television, and the internet. The golf world is only just waking up to this in comparison to other industries. There are hundreds of online courses online for learning how to write computer code but so little practical information is online specifically for golfers. This got me thinking; Can advice from other areas of life apply to golf?
I have long believed that golf is one of the most diverse games so I am sure I can learn from other areas of life. People have long looked for similarities between the golf swing and movements in other sports. A clear example of this is seen in the swing of Tommy Gainey, who says that he based his swing on a baseball movement.
If movements from other sports can be used to great success in golf, then what about mental approaches? What if lessons can be learned in other areas of life, not just sports, that can then be applied to golf? The benefits of this are clear, a technique only has to been learned once and it can then be used in different areas of a person's life. For example, maybe a person is learning a new language and they find a method that helps them speed up their learning, they could then use this same method to learn new ideas in golf more quickly. I am not aware of this idea having been explored deeply so I intend to use myself as an experiment. From what I watch on television to what I read, I will see if I can find something that I can apply to golf.
In the modern world we do not need to be near someone to learn from them. We have the telephones, television, and the internet. The golf world is only just waking up to this in comparison to other industries. There are hundreds of online courses online for learning how to write computer code but so little practical information is online specifically for golfers. This got me thinking; Can advice from other areas of life apply to golf?
I have long believed that golf is one of the most diverse games so I am sure I can learn from other areas of life. People have long looked for similarities between the golf swing and movements in other sports. A clear example of this is seen in the swing of Tommy Gainey, who says that he based his swing on a baseball movement.
If movements from other sports can be used to great success in golf, then what about mental approaches? What if lessons can be learned in other areas of life, not just sports, that can then be applied to golf? The benefits of this are clear, a technique only has to been learned once and it can then be used in different areas of a person's life. For example, maybe a person is learning a new language and they find a method that helps them speed up their learning, they could then use this same method to learn new ideas in golf more quickly. I am not aware of this idea having been explored deeply so I intend to use myself as an experiment. From what I watch on television to what I read, I will see if I can find something that I can apply to golf.
Thursday 5 November 2015
This Is Easy...Oh!
I was fortunate enough this past weekend to play the beautiful Burford Golf Club. For the 1st November in the UK the weather was fantastic too with sunny skies, warm temperatures, and barely a breath of wind. Despite this I was not feeling well when I arrived at the course and only made about 5 full swings in my warm up. Ultimately I think this helped me because I was not worried about playing well and I forgot about swing mechanics.
With not a care in the world I played the first two holes perfectly and was stood on the tee of the long par four third at 2 under. After pushing 2 shots I found myself in the greenside bunker. I immediately liked the look of the shot. I looked at the target, made the swing, and watched as the ball disappeared into the hole.
At 3 under I badly hooked my tee shot on the 4th but worked hard to save my par. I lipped out for birdie of the 5th and despite pulling my drive on the par 5 6th and being forced to lay up, made another birdie. I got away with a bad tee shot on the 7th and hit another iron close to go 5 under. I just missed my birdie put at the par 3 8th and was able to find the green in 2 on the par 5 9th despite driving under a tree. I left my putt short but tapped in for a 6 under front 9 30! This is by far the best I have ever played, particularly as I was not on a course I know well. I was not worried about protecting my score at this point, I wanted to keep going and see how low I could shoot.
Good up and downs at 10 and 11 meant I stayed at 6 under headed to the par 5 12th. A simple birdie there after a good drive and reaching in 2 took me to 7 under and the lowest I have ever been. I decided to hit driver on the short par 4 13th because I wanted to stay aggressive. The drive I hit would not have been a disaster in the summer but with the autumn leaves it resulted in a lost ball and a double bogey. A few poor drives and near misses with the putter meant I only managed to finish at 2 under but I was still pleased with a 69 at an unfamiliar course.
Dropping 5 shots in the last 6 holes looks like a bad collapse so I feel like I need to analyse why that happened. I do not feel like it was a mental issue in this case. I did not think about mechanics at all during the round and I do not think I changed my attitude or my strategy from when it was going well to when I started dropping shots.
I think it is more a case of I stopped getting away with my mistakes and I misjudged a few putts. On the front 9 I only hit 3 out of 7 fairways but got away with those mistakes, whereas on the back 9 I was punished for a similar number of misses. From this I know I need to work on my accuracy off the tee. As this was not a long course having a shot I could have gone to with a shorter club would have really helped so that is something I will work on during my next trip to the range as well as practicing my driving.
While most people would probably be disappointed with my finish to this round I am thankful for it. As strange as that sounds I am pleased that this happened in a round with nothing on the line instead of during a competition. I feel a reason a lot of people get frustrated at finishing a round the way I did is because they fear they may never be in such a good position again. I have a lot of confidence in my approach to the game so I am sure that I can improve and be in the same position or a better one at some point in the future.
With not a care in the world I played the first two holes perfectly and was stood on the tee of the long par four third at 2 under. After pushing 2 shots I found myself in the greenside bunker. I immediately liked the look of the shot. I looked at the target, made the swing, and watched as the ball disappeared into the hole.
At 3 under I badly hooked my tee shot on the 4th but worked hard to save my par. I lipped out for birdie of the 5th and despite pulling my drive on the par 5 6th and being forced to lay up, made another birdie. I got away with a bad tee shot on the 7th and hit another iron close to go 5 under. I just missed my birdie put at the par 3 8th and was able to find the green in 2 on the par 5 9th despite driving under a tree. I left my putt short but tapped in for a 6 under front 9 30! This is by far the best I have ever played, particularly as I was not on a course I know well. I was not worried about protecting my score at this point, I wanted to keep going and see how low I could shoot.
Good up and downs at 10 and 11 meant I stayed at 6 under headed to the par 5 12th. A simple birdie there after a good drive and reaching in 2 took me to 7 under and the lowest I have ever been. I decided to hit driver on the short par 4 13th because I wanted to stay aggressive. The drive I hit would not have been a disaster in the summer but with the autumn leaves it resulted in a lost ball and a double bogey. A few poor drives and near misses with the putter meant I only managed to finish at 2 under but I was still pleased with a 69 at an unfamiliar course.
Dropping 5 shots in the last 6 holes looks like a bad collapse so I feel like I need to analyse why that happened. I do not feel like it was a mental issue in this case. I did not think about mechanics at all during the round and I do not think I changed my attitude or my strategy from when it was going well to when I started dropping shots.
I think it is more a case of I stopped getting away with my mistakes and I misjudged a few putts. On the front 9 I only hit 3 out of 7 fairways but got away with those mistakes, whereas on the back 9 I was punished for a similar number of misses. From this I know I need to work on my accuracy off the tee. As this was not a long course having a shot I could have gone to with a shorter club would have really helped so that is something I will work on during my next trip to the range as well as practicing my driving.
While most people would probably be disappointed with my finish to this round I am thankful for it. As strange as that sounds I am pleased that this happened in a round with nothing on the line instead of during a competition. I feel a reason a lot of people get frustrated at finishing a round the way I did is because they fear they may never be in such a good position again. I have a lot of confidence in my approach to the game so I am sure that I can improve and be in the same position or a better one at some point in the future.
Monday 2 November 2015
Initial Progress
I now have some progress to show for taking the first steps towards my goal. When I started writing this blog I was in a rest period where I was practicing less and instead focusing on enjoying the success I have had this year. I have always found it important to remember to enjoy my achievements as opposed to simply moving straight on to the next target. As I came back from my short break my game was not quite where I wanted it to be and 2 relatively poor rounds saw my handicap increase to 3.4 from 3.2.
2 weeks after these rounds I went out to play the final medal of the year at my home club and what followed was one of my strangest rounds of golf. Reflecting on the round it appears that the 1st hole sums up the whole round fairly well. The hole is a par 5 that on this day was probably just on the edge of my range for reaching in 2 shots. I pushed the drive into the trees on the right but decided all I had to do was hit a fade with a 5 iron to get back to the fairway and leave a wedge into the green. I hit the 5 iron very fat and still had 230 yards left to the green. I then hit a fairly good shot with my hybrid next to the green and chipped in to start with an unlikely birdie. The 2nd is a drive-able par 4 and I came up just short with my tee shot. I have a lot of confidence in my chipping and I used this to help me hit the ball close for a tap-in birdie. I then played the 3rd perfectly and hitting a drive round the middle and wedge to 8 feet, resulting in another birdie. After being 3 under through 3 I bogeyed the 6th and the long par 3 9th. At the halfway stage I pleased to be back under par after my 2 previous rounds. I lost a ball on the 10th and was able to make a long putt to save a bogey before making my 3rd straight bogey at the 11th. At this point I was not disappointed because I knew I had just hit a few stray shots and was still playing well. This is something I often tell myself after a few bad holes and it helps me remind myself that I can still shoot a good score. Following this thought I bounced back with consecutive birdies at 12 and 13 before another lost ball on the 17th resulted in a double bogey. I kept calm after this and made a birdie at the 18th for an unusual round of level par.
During this round I lost 2 golf balls but due to the 6 birdies I was able to shoot level par. The reactions to this round have been very interesting to me because it would appear there are two very different viewpoints on this type of round. My view on this round is that I did well to keep calm and come back from the mistakes to still shoot the score I shot. However it would seem the more common view is that I threw away the chance to shoot an incredible round. I simply do not see the benefit of thinking like this, I would much rather praise myself on what I did well then go back to working on my game rather than being hard on myself and risking a loss of motivation. I am far more interested in looking for the positives than thinking about what could have been. I do not believe that being harder on myself would help me identify my weaknesses as certain people have suggested. I can analyse the round and know what to work on without beating myself up for my mistakes. The way I see it is I always come off the course knowing I have done my absolute best on that day so there is no point in wishing it could have been a different result.
A few days after this round I played again and shot another round of level par albeit in a much less adventurous fashion. I had 2 birdies and 2 bogies this time with no particular element of my game being significantly better or worse than it normally would be. The main manner in which I was able to learn from this round was in comparing it to my previous round and discovering for myself that there are many different ways to get the job done. The 2 rounds together also confirmed something I already knew; it is almost entirely useless to try to analyse a round using just score. Another example of this would be a round from my club championship where it looked like I had played very consistently as I had 16 pars, 1 birdie and 1 bogey. The reality was I had managed to get up and down 7 out of 8 times and I had not hit the ball as well as most people thought from looking at the card. Moving forward I will definitely pay more attention to stats such as fairways hit that present more information about an individual part of my game.
As result of these 2 rounds my handicap dropped from 3.4 to 2.9 in under a week. While for a higher handicap this may not even be seen as an achievement for a lower handicap player it is a breakthrough. It is nice to have some evidence that my practice is working early on because while I am convinced that I am doing the right things, I can use results to support that.
2 weeks after these rounds I went out to play the final medal of the year at my home club and what followed was one of my strangest rounds of golf. Reflecting on the round it appears that the 1st hole sums up the whole round fairly well. The hole is a par 5 that on this day was probably just on the edge of my range for reaching in 2 shots. I pushed the drive into the trees on the right but decided all I had to do was hit a fade with a 5 iron to get back to the fairway and leave a wedge into the green. I hit the 5 iron very fat and still had 230 yards left to the green. I then hit a fairly good shot with my hybrid next to the green and chipped in to start with an unlikely birdie. The 2nd is a drive-able par 4 and I came up just short with my tee shot. I have a lot of confidence in my chipping and I used this to help me hit the ball close for a tap-in birdie. I then played the 3rd perfectly and hitting a drive round the middle and wedge to 8 feet, resulting in another birdie. After being 3 under through 3 I bogeyed the 6th and the long par 3 9th. At the halfway stage I pleased to be back under par after my 2 previous rounds. I lost a ball on the 10th and was able to make a long putt to save a bogey before making my 3rd straight bogey at the 11th. At this point I was not disappointed because I knew I had just hit a few stray shots and was still playing well. This is something I often tell myself after a few bad holes and it helps me remind myself that I can still shoot a good score. Following this thought I bounced back with consecutive birdies at 12 and 13 before another lost ball on the 17th resulted in a double bogey. I kept calm after this and made a birdie at the 18th for an unusual round of level par.
During this round I lost 2 golf balls but due to the 6 birdies I was able to shoot level par. The reactions to this round have been very interesting to me because it would appear there are two very different viewpoints on this type of round. My view on this round is that I did well to keep calm and come back from the mistakes to still shoot the score I shot. However it would seem the more common view is that I threw away the chance to shoot an incredible round. I simply do not see the benefit of thinking like this, I would much rather praise myself on what I did well then go back to working on my game rather than being hard on myself and risking a loss of motivation. I am far more interested in looking for the positives than thinking about what could have been. I do not believe that being harder on myself would help me identify my weaknesses as certain people have suggested. I can analyse the round and know what to work on without beating myself up for my mistakes. The way I see it is I always come off the course knowing I have done my absolute best on that day so there is no point in wishing it could have been a different result.
A few days after this round I played again and shot another round of level par albeit in a much less adventurous fashion. I had 2 birdies and 2 bogies this time with no particular element of my game being significantly better or worse than it normally would be. The main manner in which I was able to learn from this round was in comparing it to my previous round and discovering for myself that there are many different ways to get the job done. The 2 rounds together also confirmed something I already knew; it is almost entirely useless to try to analyse a round using just score. Another example of this would be a round from my club championship where it looked like I had played very consistently as I had 16 pars, 1 birdie and 1 bogey. The reality was I had managed to get up and down 7 out of 8 times and I had not hit the ball as well as most people thought from looking at the card. Moving forward I will definitely pay more attention to stats such as fairways hit that present more information about an individual part of my game.
As result of these 2 rounds my handicap dropped from 3.4 to 2.9 in under a week. While for a higher handicap this may not even be seen as an achievement for a lower handicap player it is a breakthrough. It is nice to have some evidence that my practice is working early on because while I am convinced that I am doing the right things, I can use results to support that.
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