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LarryLong

Life under the new handicap system, and how practice can actually make you worse.

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May June and July were busy months for me in a golfing sense, but not much time was actually spent on the golf course. I started out with my short game in tatters and a challenging (for me) handicap of 21 to play to. It's interesting to look at how the new system shapes up for a newly-handicapped golfer who doesn't play much - it is entirely possible that your first few months will be spent trying to play to a handicap that is determined solely by your best round over that period. That puts your game under some serious pressure, but it also gives you something to chase while setting your first real long-term handicap. I quite like it, even the bit about me being unlikely to win anything for a while.

Anyway, after some sage advice from some of the resident choppers and bandits of OzGolf about short game strategies, I took a couple of weeks off and spent an hour each day on the weekends re-building my chipping. Opened up my stance, concentrated on contact, and got into the habit of using my 8 iron for bump and run type shots. Played little practice shots on the carpet when I got the chance and my wife wasn't looking. Really cleaned up my contact and felt semi-confident over the ball for the first time in yonks. I took this new-found confidence with me onto the course and more or less played to my handicap twice in a row, but as the second game progressed my driving and iron play gradually started to deteriorate.

I stuck to the plan, chipped more balls for a couple more weeks, and then it happened. Total meltdown. 110 in a stroke comp. I cold-topped two drives (one into a water hazard 20m away), sprayed it everywhere, and got worse as the day wore on. Didn't get near a green on the back nine in less than 4 shots. I'm no flusher, but I've always hit a pretty good ball for my handicap. This caught me completely off guard until I sat back and thought about it. For the better part of a month, I had been practicing quarter swings with a very open stance. This did wonders for my chipping, but when I tried to square up my stance and hit a full swing, I took the same backswing that I'd been practicing - WAAAAY inside the line, which led to - you guessed it - a big loopy correction at the top and a massive over-the-top swing that I had no hope of controlling.

I had successfully turned myself into a dead set chopper - through practice!

Being the reflective chap that I am, I analysed my game and immediately decided to buy myself a new driver. Then I decided that no matter how bad my short game got, I was going to learn to chip with a straight stance and the same on-plane backswing as my full swing was going to return to. The new plan was square-stance chipping and a trip to the driving range each week. I started out trying to bring the club back outside the line, and started with reliable contact and a huge swerving slice with every club in the bag that made my mate giggle every time I did it. Over the course of four trips to the range I brought the takeaway back to more or less where it used to be. On Thursday I started hitting them straight, and then the breakthrough. I hit my first duck-hook in two months. As the ball snaked it's way 80m to the left of my intended target I felt whole again. Ready to face the world.

8:00 tee off tomorrow morning, with two weeks of club champs the following weeks after that. I feel like a 60 year old Rocky Balboa standing at the top of those big-ass steps. Brimming with confidence for no good reason.
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  1. Yossarian's Avatar
    How'd it go?
  2. AndyP's Avatar
    +1
  3. LarryLong's Avatar
    Not bad, actually. 33 points on a windy day, which was a 15 stroke improvement on my last round, and still felt like I have plenty of improvement there. I birdied the first and had a tap-in par on the second, so for a while there I thought I had exorcised all of my golfing demons. Not quite, but I'm pretty happy.

    I got myself back to a straight ball-flight with the driver and would have hit around 10 fairways. Over the moon about that. Ball striking was much improved. Irons were 50-50, with strong winds and a bit of bad luck making things look worse than they were. Three good shots just clipped the edge of greenside bunkers on the way down. Chipping was OK, but I realised that I hadn't really spent much time practicing the tricky 20-30m chips that are probably the ones that you really need to get good at to score, so that's something I'll focus on a bit more. Left a few of them short and still had 2 or 3 putts. Chipping with an 8-iron really makes me feel a bit more confident though, because I know that even my worst effort is still likely to end up in a puttable spot.

    What else? The lowlights. Worst hole for the day was a short par 4 where I hit a good drive, duffed a chip and then played green-tennis, whacking the ball past the hole twice with bladed chips and then putted around a bunker because I was too embarrassed to try again. Also topped one tee shot - on a short par 4 when I decided to be smart and use a hybrid off the tee. Nothing worse than playing safe and stuffing it up. I also played two very good bunker shots and missed both 3 foot putts for the sand saves.

    Oh, and my putting was very poor. Missed a lot of gettable ones and a couple of gimmes. Might need to pull the putter out in the loungeroom again for a couple of weeks.

    Turns out they have moved the club champs to November, so I expect I'll be well into the next trough by the time that rolls around.
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