After pulling up sore last week, I was always feeling a little negative about how I would go this week. I contemplated pulling out given that my back was pretty bad, but woke up on Saturday morning feeling a okay. Well I should have stayed in bed! The round started well, I had two easy par's on the openning par 4's, but wasn't convinced about how well I was striking the ball. The warm up before the round had me hitting the ball without any of the crispness that had become normal over the past few weeks. Perhaps that played on my mind as I went to the par 5 third hole. From there on it went really bad. All of the things I had been working on, like a compact swing for iron shots, and maintaining a nice even swing went out the window. I became angry and started swiping at the ball like a true hacker. Needless to say, the score wasn't pretty at the end. 25 stableford points, which means I played to 11 over my handicap.
I went back to the driving range afterwards in order to remind myself that I still can play the game moderately well. It was the first real time I had to play around with that tip I was given, about lining up the driver an inch or so behind the ball. The picture here illustrates what I am talking about. Well it worked really well. I probably get an extra 10 metres, and a whole lot more loft. The problem is that the accuracy is off a little. I'm hoping that if I stick with this for a while the consistency will improve as will my confidence in pulling out the driver.
As for my iron play, well I'm still not totally happy with how I hit the ball at the range either, but it was an improvement on the round of golf.
At the end of the day, this poor round of golf was due to the impact that the mind has in this game. Despite a good start I never felt confident, and as soon as something negative happened, I started to believe that is what was destined to happen. If your attitude isn't there, the score is generally going to disappoint. Hopefully by next week, I can get my head together.
I went back to the driving range afterwards in order to remind myself that I still can play the game moderately well. It was the first real time I had to play around with that tip I was given, about lining up the driver an inch or so behind the ball. The picture here illustrates what I am talking about. Well it worked really well. I probably get an extra 10 metres, and a whole lot more loft. The problem is that the accuracy is off a little. I'm hoping that if I stick with this for a while the consistency will improve as will my confidence in pulling out the driver.
As for my iron play, well I'm still not totally happy with how I hit the ball at the range either, but it was an improvement on the round of golf.
At the end of the day, this poor round of golf was due to the impact that the mind has in this game. Despite a good start I never felt confident, and as soon as something negative happened, I started to believe that is what was destined to happen. If your attitude isn't there, the score is generally going to disappoint. Hopefully by next week, I can get my head together.
I might try to get one or two rounds of 9 holes in after work this week to try to get the confidence up and regain my touch. In the meantime, the handicap has dropped back to 13.4. Looking forward to turning it around next week.
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