A weekend of no returns

I felt good going into Saturdays Presidents Day competition at Knott End following on from the practice I had put in over the week and the session I had on the mental side with Andy Morrison on Friday night. The session with Andy was excellent and I would recommend his services to anyone as it really cleared some things up in my head and showed me how to deal with certain thoughts I had around my whole golf game.

The weather on Saturday was extremely windy and if the greens had been cut shorter I believe we would have been called off as the balls where oscillating on the greens as it was and it made the playing conditions extremely tough especially given that it was a major competition and the pins were tucked away in some hard to get to places, especially with the wind blowing as it was. That said, i still felt that I could go out and build a score to compete with the other players as everyone faced the same scenario.

I hit some practice putts and did some warm up exercises before hitting some balls in the net and then walking to the first tee. Wind was hard off the right so my thought was to hit it down the right and let the wind bring it right to left into the fairway, unfortunately i drew the ball a bit too much and ended up in the left rough, leaving myself with a blind shot to the green from around 110 yards. I decided to hit a little 9 iron(usually the club of choice from 105 yards) and it landed on the back bank of the green. I got my chip to the green but was left with a tough left to right putt for par, which missed the hole to leave me with a tap in for bogey.

Another bogey down the next hole, which was playing extremely tough into the wind left me realising that it was going to be tougher than I first thought. A bogey down the third left me at 3 over thru 3 holes and looking for some sort of sign that I could get it going, and the next hole gave me that.

I hit my drive up the left and then pitched on to the green to around 12 foot from the flag which gave me a good birdie chance. I read the putt and it was from left to right, so aimed a cup left and rolled it into the hole for birdie to get a shot back and leave me 2 over thru 4 and feeling like I could get something going, unfortunately I knocked my ball through the back of the green with my second shot on the 5th and my short game weaknesses showed as my chip was poorly executed and I took two putts to get the ball in the hole for a bogey 5.

A poor chip from just off the green on the 6th cost me another bogey but I came back with a good par down the 7th after hitting a good 6 iron punched into the green. A good 9 iron and 2 putts saw me keep the ship steady at the par 3 8th and step on to the 9th tee feeling ok about how my round was going up to that point, then a poor swing from the tee cost me a double bogey after I pulled the ball into the trees on the left.

I hit my approaches on the next two holes through the back of the green and ended up with bogeys due to my chipping weaknesses and then made a good par on the 12th after I found the middle of the green with a sweetly struck 9 iron from the 10th fairway. The weather at that point took a turn for the worse for 5 minutes and the rain came down hard, but as we hit our tee shots on the 13th the sun came out but the wind seemed to get up even more.

I hit a tee shot down the right and then hit a full 8 iron to the green but came up short and my chipping again wasnt good enough and I had to take a bogey as I did on the 14th too. But I found the green on the 15th and narrowly missed for birdie before tapping in for a par.

I hit a good drive up the 16th but my second shot went too long and I ended up in the thick rough and eventually carded a double bogey and then a bogey on the 17th.

I pulled my tee shot on the 18th and never saw the ball again!

At that point I decided the best move was to call it a day and card a no return. The real weakness of my game was shortgame, especially chipping. On a windy day like Saturday it was always going to be tough to hit greens so shortgame was paramount and unfortunately mine wasnt functioning so clearly more practice is needed. But I didn’t have anytime to practice as my next comp was on Sunday, a 36 hole Northern Order of Merit competition at Crompton and Ruyton near Oldham.

I felt that my long game functioned ok on Saturday so felt that some time spent chipping and putting in the rain before tee off would be beneficial and I felt quite good about my game as we went to the first tee, that was probably the last time in that first round that I felt good. I hit a good tee shot down the first but that was it basically, I proceeded to chop it round and ended up needed to hole my third shot from 150 yards on the 18th to break 100. I shanked it into a hazard and decided that was enough for me and handed in a no return. My whole game was poor and I had absolutely no confidence that I could hit the ball where I wanted to either from short or long-range. Round 2 was going to be tough but I felt I needed to ‘get back on the horse’ and get back in the game.

Round 2 began much better with a couple of pars and then I lipped out of the hole for birdie on the third and ended up with a double bogey!

I carded an 8 over par total for the front 9 but it went wrong on the 11th when I lost a ball in the long rough near the green and decided to call it a day again, but carry on playing without a card in my mind to see if I could shake the cobwebs away. As chance would have it I didn’t play much better until the 16th hole.

I made good pars on 16,17 and 18 to end the day with some good shots into tough holes and feel a little bit better about a game I honestly thought about giving up a various points in the day.

Going forward though now, my handicap is 11, and I need to do some serious work on every aspect of my game before I play again in competition next weekend.

(I’ve put some pics of Crompton and Royton from their website in my gallery)

Lets get this putter working!

After my putting woes of the last few rounds I decided to get together with my mate/coach Chris and see if he could get me back on the right track with the putter.

I took some practice putts and then we got the stroke on film and it highlighted a few little issues that if sorted, would get the putter back in my good backs.

First issue was ball position. I had moved the ball forward in my stance gradually over the last few months, but I have always had it quite a way forward and almost level the insole of my left shoe. We have now moved this to a more central position. Second issue was the club path, going right at the end of the stroke meaning a slight pushed line to the right.

We got this all in line and at first it felt to me like the putts where being pulled to the left but they where actually going straight, a strange feeling. So plenty of practice this week and I know feel happy with the putting stroke and confident I can go forward from here with the refined style and onwards to hole more important putts.

After some practice with the stroke on Monday night I went out and played nine holes, as I did on Tuesday and again the long game was functioning well, putting was misfiring a little but it was mainly a distance judgement thing rather than a direction of the ball and missing left or right. I will also be putting a lot of practice in this evening(Thursday) if the weather holds and then I have a golf psychology session tomorrow evening with Andy Morrison to discuss the wall I seem to have hit this season and hopefully how I can get past that.

I then have a couple of competitions on the weekend, Presidents Prize at my home club on Saturday and then the Royton Sword at Crompton and Royton on Sunday which is a 36 hole scratch medal.

Looking forward to watching some of the Open Championship over the end of the week and over the weekend and see that the scores today are in the low numbers and a lot of players are under par already including a dangerous Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.