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.