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Sad to say, but probably yes. New stage, new beginnings, a new start. Probably fitting as well that it is retired with the only person to have won the honour or wearing the jacket twice.
Either that, or we just get someone to unpick all the embroidery and start afresh.. Bwaahhhaaaahhahh
God, we’ll never be able to get Sisty to take the thing off.
In for this event please.
PS Madam,
suggestions for dinner
why not just do dinner at a local pub i/ bistro n area close to the accommodation.that is a back up plan but Commish correct on needing putting Comp green. So maybe bowls club
easy solution just do putting comp after completion of saturday round while everyone is still at course, and before they put their putters and gear away for day.
or have putting comp before start of r3 on sunday.Other option is to have dinner after R3 on Sunday night as a finale to the event.
Harrigans Irish Pub in Pokolbin has been recommended as a good night out.
People don’t get to use their own putters for the putting competition – sacrilege!
You will all be pleased to realise that the new handicapping system will come into play 2 days before this event, which will give me extra handicap shots for my daily so that our scores can be directly compared without having to make an allowance. There is every possibility that I might be able to begin to lift my average off the bottom of the pile.
Deege
Some great insight. Have you done any ‘on course’ type lessons before? Playing lesson with a pro etc
No, admittedly I haven’t, though if I get my 6 lessons this year as planned, I might give myself one as a Christmas present, or talk to Coach Matt about it.
Summary
As you can guess, this is all largely for my own purposes to try and document this and see what works and what doesn’t. So if you have managed to wade through the Wall o text, then thank you.
I don’t know whether I will be able to make significant impact on the handicap by the end of the year, but I think trying to be a little intentional about it has more chance than just showing up to play and hoping that things go in the right direction.
The plan
So I will review the elements of the plan as we go, but here they are:
Advice
- * no taking advice from anyone unless I pay them – no helpful tips, no magazines, no youtube.
* at least 6 lessons over the course of the year
* always be working on somethingFitness
- * already working on improving health, weight, strength and fitness this in other areas and this is to continue
Headcase
- * Read at least 6 books over the course of the year to help with the mental game, course management or strategy type stuff.
Practice
Do some practice of something every week. This is hard for me so I am allowing myself to include range time before the round so long as it hits all areas of the warmup – range, putting, bunkers, chipping – if I sleep in and don’t get all four elements in, I have to make it up somewhere else.All in all this becomes PHAF – Practice Headspace Advice Fitness which will help me to remember it.
Strategy/course management
I also want to gather some data to see, for me, whether it is better for my scoring to be agressive and go for it, or whether it is better to layup. I am not in range of a lot of greens, and when I am, I might have a long club in my hand. There is a school of thought that at some point, you are better off to lay up to a safe distance and wedge on rather than trying to go for it. My perception (and, frankly, enjoyment), suggests that I am better off going for the green with a fairway wood and trying to get it as close as I can, even if that might leave me in a bunker or similar.
I am not talking about the times that I am 70m out and wipe the hole (that should be an unforced shot error (UE) which I will add to the recording above). But more when I go for it instead of doing the sensible course management thing. So I am going to try to record holes where I have that sort of option – so let’s say where I have more than 130 metres to the hole (which would put a fairway wood in my hand) and I have 4 shots left to nett par – record whether I lay up or whether I go for it and whether I managed to get out in nett par, worse or better. I should then be able to figure out whether I do better on average when I lay up or when I play agressively. Here’s barracking for agressive winning out.
More information
So I am going to start by trying to gather some more information to make a more targeted plan for improvement. I stopped keeping my own stats when I started using game golf becuase it was telling me distances and typical misses with clubs and so on. But that is not really giving me proper information about what errors are causing me to lose the most shots. Today, for example, there was only one drive which caused me to lose a shot – where I had to chip out. I still find it helpful to track these lost shots against nett par rather than gross par, given my goal is handicap related.
What I want to do for each round is to record the errors which cost or contribute to costing a shot from nett par.
From my general observation of what tends to shit me during a round, the following may well be candidates:
* three putts (3P)
* missed short putt (MSP)
* double “chips” – where a bunker, chip or pitch within 25 metres does not hit the green, and I would like to record whether the error was a pitch, chip or bunker. So for my recording it will be 2Pi, 2Ch, 2B – regardless of what the second ‘chip’ is. Though an error with the second ‘chip’ will also be recorded in the corresponding fashion
* driver error (D)
* Club selection error (CS)
* Shot selection error (SS)Who knows, there might be more. After a few rounds, I want to see if there are certain types of errors that are costing me more shots overall than others. Hitlers shit me, but they may not cost me that many shots overall if my course management keeps me out of bunkers.
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The challenge.
In order to get to 9.9, I need to drop 5.4 shots from my best rounds. That seems to me to be screamingly doable by the end of December 2020. I know based on my own performance it is harder than that, but I just need to score one shot better on a third of my holes. To get to 12.5 as a new PB, I just need to drop 2.8 (let’s call it 3) shots from my best rounds. That is just playing one shot better every 6 holes. When I say it like that I know that I leave at least 3 shots out there a round, even on my good rounds.
The starting point
2019 average stats (from gamegolf)
FW hit – 63%
Average driving distance – 148 metres
GIR – 19%
Putts per hole – 2.1
Scrambling – 11%
Sand saves – 12%Some interesting observations. Gamegolf says that Dwayne hits 61% of fairways but my old driver was down to 56% for the last 12 months. If my thoughts are right, then I should hope to improve my driving stats. The putts per hole rate is pretty poor – just bringing it down to 36 putts per round would give me 1.8 shots back per round. If I could consistently get it to 34 putts then that would be 3.8 shots per round – and I would be below my PB.
However, when I use gamegolf’s strokes gained information and compare myself to a 10 handicapper, the strokes gained by the 10 handicapper against me are as follows:
Off the tee – 3.21
Approach – 5.53
Short game – 4.36
Putting – 1.63Unfortunately the strokes gained from gamegolf is missing something reasonably important – I can’t filter by gender. So I can’t compare myself to other people who have comparable basic tools to improve their game. So I will use these stats for my month to month or quarter to quarter assessment, but I think I need to gather some more information.
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So where am I now?
In the last 6 months I feel like I have finally started to get on top of the problem with the driver. Some intensive work on the swing followed by being fitted for and buying Dwayne have really made a difference. But it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. When I hit it well, I end up trying to hit it too hard or quick, which reintroduces the problem. But I started to see a pattern – my best drives with the new swing were often those where I felt like I was hitting it about 75%. Rather than sacrificing distance by slowing it down, I was making the best contact and getting the best run, as well as seeing the shot shape that Coach had been working on with me. So today’s round was a little experiment – no trying to hit it hard or fast with driver. Slow controlled takeaway and focus on tempo with the swing.
I don’t have fast swing anyway and I never get caught trying to hit my irons or fairway woods too hard, so no reason why I should rush things with driver. And sure enough, I hit some lovely long drives. Not every ball was on the fairway, but they were all a reasonable distance and only one drive of the day required a chip out (which was on the second). If I can do that or better every round, then driver will no longer be the thing that is costing me strokes. So hopefully that is the swing thought that will help me going forward. I don’t need to be the best driver on the planet to improve my scoring. I just need to hit it a good distance and have it not get me into trouble.
If its in the open and I can see it, then it’s okay.
Could we get a credits update please Lt Dan.
Sure, I will have a look and update on the weekend.
Hi everybody
Looking at venues for 2021. Some discussion had already about going to Murray River Region which I think would be great and be perfect for 10year celebrations
Which courses are the best to play? Please rank the order.
Also it’s not locked in 100% so am open to an alternative location for this event.
Well I am just back from a jaunt. I can heartily recommend Black Bull – I thought it was a great course.
My GA 14.9. Hopefully will get back to 10.9 by June 2020. I enjoy golf before wine,foods, shoes and handbags now. Grateful and thank you for those people put up with me on/off the course. Wonderful friendship….this is life all about.
How many pairs of shoes do you have Imeldo?
I am very naughty. Just 4 times average lady. All under control since I have golf to focus.
You can never have too many golf shoes.
Obligatory “I don’t know who needs to hear this” but
Maxx, good on you for being open and sharing what has been going on for you.
I (thankfully) don’t struggle with the black dog, but Mr Deege does, which is bloody difficult.
But I have a perspective from someone that sees people day in and day out that have stuffed things up financially and ended up in a bad situation – losing houses, losing money, making bad decisions. It’s not unrecoverable. It doesn’t automatically mean you lose everything. And it’s not the case that “everyone will know”. And almost universally from a legal and financial point of view, whoever you leave behind will be worse off if you are not around to help deal with the fall out.
Best of luck to you Maxx and any others that might be going through the same sort of thing.
