Hello world!
Welcome to my blog.
It’s a shamelessly self-serving and navel-gazing blog about my fledgling experiences of learning how to play, practicing how to play and then trying to play the most popular outdoor parlour game in the world.
What’s the point of the blog (although seriously, what’s the point of any blog other than perhaps the more political blogs)?
For you, I hope it will prove at least midly interesting, even if just in a ‘nodding-your-head-in-empathy-because-that-happens-to-you-too’ kind of way.
For me, if I keep it up-to-date, it’ll be a useful aide memoire as to what my teacher got me doing in each lesson…because I forget…a lot…and there’s a lot to remember…which also means there’s a lot to forget.
Hmm. This reads a lot like an ‘About’ page, but I’ve just written that. Maybe I’ll move some of this, but for now, here we are. My next planned post will be a ‘fascinating’ summary of my golfing life from my first, and free, half hour lesson, to my first round and so on up until, well, anything prior to starting this blog.
A blog which would have been better off started just before my first lesson rather than about three years later.
Welcome.
It seems I can’t do it
Apologies for the delay in posting. It’s been…*gulp*…15 months since my last. I plead guilty to neglect. Thanks for the nudge, Brian K.
Since the 2017 Club Championship I have played in 17 other competitions at my club, of which nine were handicap qualifiers.
All my handicap has done is go up. It’s now 26.6.
Occasionally there are chinks of light in my play: For instance, seven weeks ago in our September medal I hit seven tee shots over 200yds (two of which were over 250yds albeit with some significant downhill help). That should help me to a good score, no?
No.
I had a +6, two +5s, five +3s, five doubles, two bogies, two pars…then picked up on the 18th because we never found my tee shot in the darkness (literally in the darkness…we were using our phones to show the way for my two playing partners to putt out) for an overall NR.
The only thing I can do consistently well is putt, which would be great if I could reach the green in +1 or even +2, but that September round had four two putts, and the other 13 were all one-putts.
I realise that lots of one-putts in itself isn’t indicative of putting mastery (if one is constantly chipping from just off the green and getting those chips close enough to one-putt easily), but being able to avoid three putts doesn’t really help that much when the first putt is the 7th, 8th, 9th, or even 10th shot of the hole.
So what’s the problem? Well, of course time and money are significant issues. I don’t practice at all, and I don’t play nearly often enough – largely because of the cost – to compensate for that lack of practice. Really it’s no surprise that my handicap goes up by 0.1 after every qualifying competition.
It makes me question if I should even continue playing club golf, but since my old playing partner has now emigrated to San Diego if I don’t play club golf the chances are I wouldn’t play golf at all.
Perhaps I should go back to baseball…
Club Championship 2017 – Day Two
…and I didn’t, that’s DID NOT, finish last in the gross competition!
Okay, so, second-to-last…but not last!
In the net competition I finished 17th out of the 28 entries.
Today’s round was six shots better than yesterday’s: 102 (53/49), which is net 76 (40/36). No pars* but 10 bogeys. Sadly, these were accompanied by five doubles, two triples, and a quad, and fuelled by two three putts.
However, I did finish with four consecutive two-putt bogeys.
So, overall I feel a bit happier about this round compared to yesterday’s, and my driving distance is a heck of a lot better than it was the first quarter of this year.
* There really should have been one par as I was putting for birdie on the first (as I was yesterday). Yesterday’s putt for birdie was much easier, but I actually came closer to making it today. Sadly, the putt lipped out, which gave it a little extra pace with which it rolled off the green. So, it’s an odd looking score on the card as it’s a GiR bogey with two putts!
Club Championship 2017 – Day One
…and I’m in last place.
At least in terms of gross score. Net score is a bit better at 22nd out of 28, but I’m still disappointed because it could – and should – have been so much better.
I mean, for goodness sake, I was putting for birdie on the first hole! I parred it, and parred the 3rd, and managed four bogeys, but really, after the 4th hole it just got a bit untidy.
And then it started raining…when it was meant to be dry.
Gross Score: 108 (51/57)
Net Score: 82 (38/44)
I think one of the problems is that I’ve started to improve.
(Reader’s voice: “Er, what?”)
I’ve played two midweek practice rounds over the last two weeks, in which I hit was able – thanks to the quiet course on Monday and Tuesday afternoons – multiple balls from one spot. In particular I was working on the irons from 7 and shorter.
The result is that I’m hitting them further, with the further result that some of the shots today went further than I expected them to.
Case in point: On the 18th my driver was a bit thin and low so went about 164 yards. The next shot was measured at about 126 yards, but uphill and with a big bunker on the front left hand side of the green to get over. So I played safe with my 9 iron to hit the ball short and to the right of that bunker. But I flushed it straight in to the bunker, from where I needed two shots to get out, and a further three to finish out.
This sort of hitting-the-ball-further-than-I-wanted-and-expected-to nonsense happened four or five other times. As if this game wasn’t hard enough.
Second and final round tomorrow. Until then!
It Seems I CAN Do It
When I’m feeling grumpy about not breaking 100 AGAIN, I really should remind myself that this game is hard, and I’ve not been playing it for that long, and I don’t practice anything like enough to make a real difference, and neither do I even PLAY that often.
And yet, check what I received at my club’s AGM and Prize Giving afternoon.
Sweet…
Grrr
My goal this year was to break 100 again, then never again fail to break 100. No more scores of three figures.
Well, last Wednesday I broke 100, so as far as I was concerned I was on my way.
On Saturday I played in our monthly medal, the first this year to be stroke play format, and I started pretty well. The first six tee shots were all good, and after those six holes I was nine over par, and finished the front nine with a score of 51.
The back nine was just messy. I managed to keep most of the scores on each hole from running away with me but although the stats say I hit four out of seven fairways, really only three of those tee shots were any good (12th and 14th, and a don’t-go-in-to-the-ditch 5 iron layup on the 16th).
But the killer was the 15th. My tee shot went 11 yards. It didn’t even get off the (admittedly quite big) tee box. The 5 iron second shot from there was fat so only went 79 yards, and the fourth shot hooked in to the trees, forcing a pitching wedge sideways back on to the fairway. Shot number six was about a foot short of the raised green and rolled halfway back to me, the 7th was a thin bullet almost just the green, the downhill fringe putt was short, then I three putted for an 11.
And absolute card wrecker. To break 100 I needed to complete the highly unlikely feat of scoring a birdie on each of the last three holes! Instead I went double, triple, double. So ugly.
Honestly, I really don’t know why this happened. How can I go from having reasonable control of my tee shots and fairway shots to suddenly topping so many? The tee shots on 8, 10, 13, and 15 were embarrassing, totalling a pathetic 199 yards!
As per the title. Grrr!
That’s It
DATE: Wednesday, 6th April 2016
VENUE: Beckenham Place Park
ACTIVITY: 18 Holes of golf
I broke 100. I broke 50 on both front and back nines. Four pars, four bogeys, six doubles, and the rest were triple bogeys (i.e. nothing worse than a +3).
So that’s it. No more total scores over 99 shots. No more three-figure gross scores. I’m done with that nonsense.
Two Moves
I read an interesting article recently in which the author argued that the golf swing can be thought of as being just two moves.
No typo there. TWO moves.
First Move
The backswing should be initiated with a push away of the club, by the left hand. He reckoned that most amateurs start their backswing by pulling the club away with the right hand, but with the common result of the club being brought too far behind the body.
Second Move
The down swing sequence is triggered by the left knee pulling toward the target. This helps achieve the proper unwinding, lateral shift, and hip clearance.
I’ve started trying this and I have to say it does make a lot of sense. The second move in particular I hope will help me.
Further Reading
http://www.golfdigest.com/story/the-golf-swing-in-two-moves
I Won Something
Hi!
How have you been?
I’ve not been playing a lot, certainly not practising a lot.
However, today I won a club competition. Excuse me for limited excitement, as it was ‘just’ a Texas Scramble (or Scramble, for the rest of you outside the UK), so I was playing as part of a team with two others, both far more capable than me.
I played my part though. On the 1st, a par 5, we were just off the green in 2, and I rolled in the 30′ not-really-a-putt for eagle. And on the 18th, all three of our first putts were poor, leaving a tricky, downhill, five-footer for bogey (net par), which I managed to trickle in for two vital points.
We ended up winning by one point with our score of 45.
It was fun though, despite the high winds and cool weather.
Leading the way
A good survey garners opinion; a bad survey leads!
These blogs are coming thick and fast as Lewisham Council’s position regarding Beckenham Place Park becomes ever more untenable.
I have just conducted some empirical research – well it sounds good and maybe by process of osmosis I have been infected with Lewisham Council’s ability to make far fetched claims without blinking an eyelid.
However, I did get a tad carried away with my research and pressed a button I should not have. So, smack my wrists and I promise to take more care and not to do it again.
What is this research? Well, I was going through Lewisham Council’s Children and Young People Survey with regard to Beckenham Place Park to see how it is structured and, as with all on-line surveys, you can’t progress from screen to screen without filling it in. And, of course, I am not…
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