Played 18 holes today with Chiuck instead of having a range lesson. I need to get a handicap for future tournaments, so we started on that today. I hadn’t been able to practice in three days at all because I was house searching for a place to live in the next few years. I have to move out of my school apartment at the end of December. Finally found a place after hours of looking, but it took it’s toll on the practice time.
For some reason during our round I was real tense, my arms were shaking a bit everytime I addressed the ball. The front nine was actually pretty good, started off with a birdie on a Par 5, but had some bad holes and eventually shot 38. We stopped for some food at the turn and after that I stopped shaking so much. Apparently the shaking helped though because the back nine was abysmal. I missed every green, had some course management mistakes that cost me, and over all felt I just couldn’t do anything right. I shot a 43 for a total of 81, which is definitely not a score I felt like I should of shot after the past week of improvements. I felt like during the round I wasn’t getting a good turn behind the ball and my swing was getting long and slow. Therefore I hit some pretty weak shots. I hit some pretty poor chips as well on the back nine and couldn’t get up and down to save my life. I stayed after the round for another 45 minutes working on the chipping. Tomorrow will be better, I look forward to it.
Yesterday was an unusually windy day for this time of year and made the course play about 3 strokes harder overall. You definitely played the front well and things just slipped a bit on the back. This is totally normal and something I expected. It’s a long round of golf and a challenge to stay focused that long on every shot. I’m not concerned by the score in the least bit, conditions were tough and you don’t play 18 holes very often. I think you should walk away learning some very important lessons.
One, the first 9 is a piece of cake, it’s the back nine where winners are made. It’s a challenge to make the turn with the same upbeat enthusiasm and motivation and maintain that intense drive through the finish. This is something that takes time to understand and develop, but you’ve gotta fail first to understand what it is your lacking.
Second, every golfer needs a “Limp Home” mode when things hit the fan. Whether it’s hitting punch shots the rest of the round or some other go to shot, it’s a very important aspect of the game.
Third, windy conditions can be very challenging and you must develop shots and course strategy specific to how the wind affects each hole and each shot. Specifically this applies to how you place your ball off the tee when setting your approach to a specific pin placement to minimize exposure to trouble.
We will work on these things in today’s round.
-Chuck