Its a funny game

Okay so now the long game goes but the short game kicks in. Frustrating 83-83 Fri and Sat. Rebounded Sunday with an 80 with two stooopid doubles on the card and penalty drop after getting a bad bounce into the lake on 7! Really feel that I'm hitting the ball as good as I have ever done but seem to throw in a couple of mental errors keeping the score up. Par'd the last five coming in on Sunday completing the Richmond 12 with a par on 18 after drive hits tree right and leaving myself 210 yards out up the hill into breeze. Left myself an 8' birdie put but missed it. In fact I could have gone very low for me at the moment if I had converted at least 4 other birdie puts from about 10' - 12' or less!
Now off to Quail Hollow for a few days with my 5 year old boy, and hopefully pick up some tips from watching the pro's.

Hey Hey

Signs of improvement starting to show in the scoring. Shot a 77 Friday (with three birdies back to back!). Only managed an 83 Saturday with three doubles :( (two on par threes!). New Cleveland Launcher driver given me by mate "Oh" Randy working a treat off the tee, barely missed a fairway all weekend. Need to work on the short game a bit altho' putting going good. Much more positive for the coming summer golf now.

Wow ......

didn't realise it was so long since the last post! Must be because I've been playing so badly over the winter I've been almost too embarrassed to write anything about it.

Think the decline is due to trying to make some fairly radical swing changes as I had got about as far as I could get with my old swaying, non releasing, non compressing one.

Starting to see some signs of it working with the new season upon us, so have set as my first target to get back to where I was last summer (handicap index out from 6.2 to 8.7!!!!!). Ideally this year I would like to shoot at least one round of level par or better and get my index down to 4 or 5. Will just have to see how it goes and hope my wife gives me enough time off for good behaviour to practice. Unfortunately good behaviour is not one of my stronger character traits.

Watch this space.

P.S. Got my first eagle since playing at Richmond Country Club on Sunday (par 5 9th - Driver, 3 wood, putt)

YoYo Golf

Generally happy with game at the mo but scoring seems very inconsistent flopping between high 70's to mid 80's. Main causes being disaster holes and crapola putting on the the hollowtined greens. At least my handicap revision has come through with a further cut to an index of 6.4 (from 7.1) which means I'll be playing off 7 from the whites at RCC.
Need to work on my consistency and putting. Interestingly enough picked up a book from the Library by Tiger's first coach (Rudy Duran) on how to teach kids which I thought would be useful for our two kids. Tried some of the drills on the range last night myself and I swear blind that its added another 10-15 yards to my irons and driver!!! Could be the wind blowing the other way but all shots were definitely more solid and consistent. Can't wait to get out there and try it again and of course converting it to the course is an entirely different matter. I need the improvement if I'm to keep my handicap down and improve to my target of under 5 by the end of the year. I also tried his putting drill of putting through a gate 3 inches ahead of the ball. This seemed to work too but I still see a few hours of practice getting my putting stroke much better if I'm to shoot low scores. Would love to equal or beat par at least once this year!!

Natural Swing

Check this out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ_k68ZXoF8
Its my 4 year old son Ryan hitting balls. To me it just proves that the golf swing is a natural motion just f***ed up adults like myself who over analyse it. Whilst he doesn't lways get a perfect strike he never misses the ball and pretty much all of his shots go where is aiming and he manages to belt his little driver about 70-80 yards on average.

Stupid Game

Maybe its my fault for trying to tinker with my swing rather than just hit the ball but my game is going backwards. Plus the greens at RCC have just been tined and sanded which cost me a few shots which is understandable.
Played terribly on Friday but somehow managed to hang onto an 81 which at least knocked an 84 off my last 20 scores for handicapping. My miserable form continued on Saturday and i shot a more game resembling 85! Finally on Sunday I started to hit the ball pretty good again but this time I had the opposite problem to Friday and couldn't turn that into a decent score, ending up with an 82!
Trying to not get too down hearted as I think I found something on the Sunday round and I should of scored in the 70's if it wasn't for the fact I putted so poorly.I'm sure if I had a psych coach they would tell me to blame the greens (see above) so that's what I'm doing.
Looking forward to when the greens come round as the course is looking in great shape and I need some more sub 80 rounds to keep handicap going in the right direction!

No golf last week ........

but it was worth it. No golf at all for 7 days but all because the Duramed Futures tour was at RCC and what a great week it was. The club staff and volunteers did a great job and the golf that the ladies played was a treat to watch. I even did a couple of stints as unofficial scorer and cart driver with a couple of groups. Hope I didn't screw up too much !!! Kristen and I went to the Casino night put on as part of the tour festivities and we managed to win a sightseeing flight round Richmond with the daughter of one of the members of RCC. That was neat as a couple of weeks prior had promised my daughter exactly that experience and had been disappointed that I couldn't find any opportunities for it on the web.
And the best news is that my handicap adjustment came through today giving me a handicap index of 7.1, playing 8 off the whites at Richmond. Yay.
Now time for a lesson or two and see if I can't get that down to 5 before the end of the year (some hope I think but I'll give it a bash).