Jekyll and Hyde Golf

31 Aug

“That’s Golf!” is an expression that every golfer, especially those new to the sport will hear every so often…

Welcome to 54 to Scratch, the weekly blog following my golfing journey as I navigate through the trials and tribulations that only golf can bring.

As most will know, the expression “That’s golf!” will normally be proceeded by the other person lamenting over something that happened on the course. It could be a sudden case of the shanks, a bad bounce or, in my case, my best ever round of golf followed directly by one of my worst.

Up until last week, my best ever score in a round of golf was 86. This was achieved at my home club - Kingsnorth GC. Now, as I’ve talked about before, the course is a 9-Hole with 18 tees, but is a short course with a Par 67/68 depending on how the 10th is laid out.

I haven’t yet broken 90 on a Par 70 plus course, but got close back in Wales at Clyne. However, despite it’s lack of length, Kingsnorth still has 2 Par 5’s in the 18 and a 200 yard par 3 over water for the 10th (when playing as a 67).

It has tight fairways that seem to be narrowing like the waste compactor in Star Wars: A New Hope, as well as rough that would make some turn pros’ knees quake in their boots. A few of the greens are very small too, so can be difficult to hold onto depending on the line you are taking.

So accuracy is key. If you are accurate, the course becomes relatively easy. For errant shots though, there may as well be water everywhere, as finding a ball in that rough can be nigh on impossible, resulting in numerous drops.

So getting under 90 is not something to be sniffed at (irrespective of what some might say).

As regular readers will know, I’ve been recovering after a bad swing period. Thankfully, my wrists are better and my swing has been getting back to it’s best and last week - things suddenly clicked into place.

I had some time in my work schedule to get a quick lunchtime round in, so decided to go to the course and do exactly that, but teeing off with no pre-round warm up at all. Standing on the first tee without any warmup was less intimidating than I thought it would be and I flushed my tee shot to exactly where I needed to put it.

My next shot then went a little short, leaving me with a chip which I executed to a gimme par.

So far so good. I then drove the corner of the second, hitting the ball into the rough, leaving me about 180 yards up hill to the middle of the green. As the pin was at the back, I decided to use my hybrid and it just flew straight, ending up at the back of the green on the fringe. I putted from there, narrowly missing but another easy par.

My tee shot on the next was a flushed 6 iron, leaving me with a 35 foot putt for birdie, which I 2 putted for another par. The next hole, I drove to only about 150 yards into the rough. I decided to bounce the ball onto the green, hit the shot exactly as I planned and had another birdie opportunity. Again, 2 putted to par.

I have NEVER done this before (starting with 4 pars in a row). Unfortunately, the next tee shot was a little errant, but my pitch was a decent recovery and got a bogey.

Similarly on the 6th, another bogey followed as my tee shot let me down again. On the 7th I got a double thanks to a combination of tee shot going too far right and my chip then not being good enough resulting in a 3 putt.

My drive on the Par 4 8th then went into the rough on the right, which means you have to choose between laying up or playing a blind shot over trees, with the pin being tucked right under them on the front.

After conferring with my playing partner, I decided to ignore his feedback and go for the green, deliberately going longer to get over the trees but hopefully put me in a position for par. As it was, I ended up landing the ball on the green about 20feet from the pin, with barely any roll on landing.

My partner’s response of “You’re a high handicapper, you aren’t supposed to be able to do that!” Was nice… Lol.

On the 9th, my tee shot was ok, my second to where I needed to be. Unfortunately, I think my adrenaline got the better of me, resulting in a poor 3rd shot. I failed to recover and ended the hole with a 7 and 40 for the 9.

Things then looked like unravelling. Another double on the next par 3, including a lost tee shot into the water and a double on the 11th could have left me reeling.

I pulled things together and went on another decent run. A par on the 13th was mainly down to decent wedge play recovering from a poor second shot. I got out of a bunker on the first attempt on the 14th, resulting in a bogey, before getting bogies on the next few holes.

This meant I was on 77 going into the final hole, a par 5. Bear in mind that my best up to that point was an 86 and I knew that all I needed to do was play the hole carefully and I would beat this.

My drive went right, but thankfully not enough to be in trouble. My next shot was a 5iron to the corner and then another 5iron was pin high about 20 yards from the pin. A poor chip left me with a bit of a knee trembler, which I thankfully sunk to end on a high with par and my best ever round by 4 shots.

I was ecstatic. I had the feeling that this might be the first in a string of decent scores, that I had turned the corner so to speak and that my handicap would start to plummet. Boy was I wrong…

After a couple of days, it was the weekend and I had arranged a 9-hole with a couple of friends followed by 18 in the afternoon with my usual playing partners.

Before even turning up at the course, I had problems though. As I was in the car leaving to go to the course to warmup a bit, I realised I didn’t have my wallet. 40 minutes later, I still couldn’t find it. After another 20, I discovered it in a place I hadn’t been - the dog is currently suspect number 1.

That meant that I was turning up without any prep again. Which should be fine. I mean - last time, I shot my best score ever with no warm up! Why would this time be any different?!

The problem is intention. Last time, I had decided to do that. This time, I had planned to do certain things before and then gotten worked up trying to find my wallet. I’d also used up a lot of energy in that hour stressing.

I haven’t talked about this much at the moment, but I will be writing a blog on how 6 weeks ago I started a new exercise plan and also intermittent fasting. I currently fast from 6pm until 12pm, so only have a certain amount of energy to expend in the morning.

When I played my best round, it had been a calm morning of work and I made the conscious decision to play without warming up due to having limited time.

On this occasion, I had planned to do something only to have those plans changed by something that caused me stress. I then got there and had to wait for a playing partners food to arrive… By the time we started playing, I was towards the end of my fast and low on energy.

Now I’m not using that as an excuse, just trying to think of things that might have affected my day.

As it was, I played some of the worst golf I have played in a while over the following 27 holes. I played pretty much every bad shot imaginable, scoring 2 10’s on my way to a first 9 of 55 and a 12 on the way to scoring 108 on the proceeding 18.

There were some good holes in there of course, but I was not hitting the ball anywhere near what I can normally, let alone the way I was hitting the ball the round previous where I could seemingly do little wrong.

Decision making is the thing that I come back to time and again though. I lack distance at times, I’m not the best at iron play but I still feel that the biggest thing that let’s me down is my decision making when things aren’t going well.

That was a key reason why I got the double digit scores on the holes I did. Because I made the decision to persevere with Driver (for example) even though I couldn’t hit it that day. I tried shots I was making the day before, even though I wasn’t hitting my irons the same way.

However, something that makes me wonder if it was down to the energy levels is that I couldn’t do ANYTHING right. Perhaps it’s just the mental state I was in making me think things were worse than normal. But whatever it was, the way I felt was as if I couldn’t putt and chip either.

Whatever it was, hopefully it’s “just golf” and I’ll be back on the downwards trend soon and more Jekyll than Hyde…

Thanks for taking the time to read, come back next week for a detailed breakdown of my Shotscope stats now that I’ve had some time to play!

Driver - Callaway Rogue ST

Irons - Taylormade Stealth

Wedges - Taylormade Hi-Toe 52, 56, 60

Putter - Scotty Cameron Squareback

Shoes - Adidas Tour 360 22

Trolley - GYMAX 2 Wheel Golf Cart

Watch - Shotscope X5