September Medal

I played very poorly today but in hindsight and after analysing my golf I learned quite a lot.

Firstly the facts, I scored 94 net 69 and if the css is it's usual 69 it will be as you were in terms of my handicap.

My long game was tosh and I played all day with an over the top move that made me come across the ball and get a fade with longer clubs and a pull with short ones. I can't explain how alien the fade shot shape is to me I only get one per blue moon usually. Even if I'm playing bad my swing will produce a hook or a push as my miss but almost never a fade. As a consequence I spent all day playing and expecting my normal right to left spin and yet getting left to right spin. This really stuffed up my iron shots but I just could not bring myself to play for a fade through terror of aiming left and seeing the ball going even more left. So I aimed straight and dealt with the result. The result was only one green in regulation, ONE!!!!

So what's my excuse? I mean I always have an excuse right? :) Well here it is, it pissed it down with rain the whole way apart from when we got to the last few holes. It's the first time I ever played golf in full waterproofs (normally in a social knock I walk off if it pisses down) and it is different in the wet. Impossible to keep my grips dry, my glove, even my glasses kept steaming up! I'm a fair weather golfer!!! Rain is not fun.

The greens were saturated, standing water puddles and some were more like sponges rather than greens.

But how did I putt after last nights lesson? Well, bad, no real real bad!... I had an OK looking 33 putt's, but 3 putted twice, once from just 4 feet! And missed a tone of four to five footers. I can't blame the greens, water or not, it was tentativeness that did for me and that brings me to what I learned.

My best golf is played care free in social rounds, rip the driver or three wood, hit the green. Who cares about the out of bounds left? The worst that can happen is a lost ball and because you don't care you seldom find the trouble on a social knock.

Switch to a medal, and out comes the 3 iron and you trying so hard not to hit it left you get frozen legs, body takes over and a duck hook into the out of bounds is the likely result! Or you knob it because your thinking about trouble rather than smacking it down the middle!

On the greens your thinking about not missing from three feet so you dolly it at the hole instead of stroking it in positively.

In short you get tense and tentative instead of relaxed and positive and why? all because of a stupid card!! It's just daft, I mean what's the worst thing that could happen? 0.1 back and a few lost balls? Really, it makes no difference to me if my handicap is 26 instead of 25, both are tosh, I can 0.1 back ten times and it makes no difference. But one round in the low 80's and it's a huge cut.

So from here on in I promise to play medals without caring what happens, if I knob it out of bounds six times and shoot a hundred and five then so what? I do know that playing without being worried about it will mean that I'm much more likely to play to my potential rather than to my handicap.

Anyway, after that long moan, the positives? I really enjoyed playing a full round, even if it was raining! I'm going to play more medals, I have missed it. I chipped brilliantly today justifying all the short game work of recent times and giving myself loads of 3-5 foot one put chances after missing the greens. Even my sand play was great!

We will see what happens next week.

18 holes
Score 94, 24 over par.
48.5% fairways hit.
1/18 GiR
33 putt's (1.83/hole - 2.00/GiR)
Penalties 2