On Monday this week I played in my first open competition of the year at The Buckinghamshire Golf Club. The event was a 36 hole scratch stroke play competition with a handicap limit of 3 to enter.
Going into the event I was interested in a number of things. Firstly how my game would stand up on a course I did not know. Every course I play seems to highlight a different element of the game I can work on so from a learning point of view this event was a great opportunity. I was also interested to see how I would cope with any nervousness the competition provoked and how well I was able to deal with it. Finally I was looking forward to seeing how my game compared to a strong field of golfers. This has to come last because in general I am only interested in comparing myself to myself, that is I just want to be better than I was last time. For me placing well in competitions is a side effect of having improved my game, not the main goal.
So what was the element of my game that an unfamiliar course highlighted? In this case it was my putting and in particular my long putting. On the card the course length is 6880 yards but for this competition many of the pins had been placed at the back of very long greens taking the length to closer to 7000 yards which combined with April temperatures in the UK makes this a fairly long course. Why mention this in relation to my putting? Because most of my golf has been played on shorter courses meaning I am hitting shorter clubs in the greens meaning I leave shorter putts. As a result of this I am simply out of practice for long putts and it took playing a long course to highlight this.
I am really pleased with how I drove the ball around a course that has fairway bunkers in play on the majority of holes. I hit 64% of fairways but what that does not show is that only 2 of my misses were in trouble; 1 in a fairway bunker and 1 blocked out by trees. I am also pleased with distance of my drives because I know 1 year ago I would have really struggled to hit it far enough for this course. I am probably not gaining an advantage on the field in terms of distance but last year there were times when I was losing out on distance and that is no longer the case.
I am also happy with how I dealt with my nerves. I know for me the best way of controlling myself is by focusing on my breathing which I did well for the whole day. On my 2nd and 3rd holes of the day I did over-hit putts because of a bit of excitement but on the next hole I focused on keeping my body connected which took my hands out of the stroke and removed the hit impulse I was feeling. In the future I will most likely use this feeling from the 1st hole to avoid the mistakes at the start.
I am actually fairly pleased with my score and how I placed. In the morning I started slowly to be 5 over after 5. It was a strange start because in general I played fine but putts lipped out and I just needed to remind myself I was doing fine just without of the score reflecting that. I was able to pull it together to finish 6 over par for the opening round which after the start I was pleased with. In the afternoon the theme was putts not dropping and I was only able to shoot 10 over par to finish in 38th place out of 60 players. In the UK handicaps are calculated based on the CSS, essentially the score a scratch golfer would be expected to shoot in that round, which for the 2nd round was 3 over par. This shows that while 10 over par may sound like a disaster it was in reality only 4 over my handicap. The CSS also shows how well the winner played to finish 2 under par for the 2 rounds
I am reasonably happy with my position in an event with a stronger field than any I have played before. I believe there were 19 players off scratch or better and I know if I had been in the same event last year I would have come pretty much last. While my finishing position was not as high as I would have liked looking back I would not have done anything differently to prepare for the event. It took playing in the event to highlight the weaknesses in my game in order to improve which is what I am most interested in. I look forward to my next competition and seeing what I can learn there.
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