Sunday, May 13, 2012

One down...three to go


13/5/12 Sunday. This morning is not a comfortable one at the minute, after playing my handicap matchplay yesterday. The various broken bits in my body are letting me know that they are not amused with the continuing excercise. The physical discomfort is fighting a losing battle in keeping me off the golf course though, as I have had worse. Don’t mistake this as a motivation mind set on my part, been there done that many years ago and well past it as an incentive method.

Whilst treating the problems this morning with my tens machine in preparing to play 18 holes today there was only one reason for persevering. Not the obsession with playing the game at all, it is the fact that the swing set up and execution I use now will not cause any hurt. This is a major benefit from the coaching in January and it was again highlighted with the coaching session last Wednesday. The new established stance takes away all of the pyhsical misdirection of energy from the previously inefficient technique, cobbled together in accommodating various body action limitations. It did take eighteen months or so of getting fitter and used to playing golf shots for my body to be able to do what the coaching professional was showing me.

The winning result in the matchplay yesterday (3 up with one to play) was a testament to the previous month of preparation. Truth is that I am approaching this golfing season with a definite pre-Tournament plan that starts months in advance of the actual rounds. This is an expansion of the Southern Ports tournament training and coaching that has been so successful for me in the past three seasons. Looking at my golfing as a football club, except that one person is the team, coach and president. Whilst a better analogy is possibly as a race horse. I choose football as a reference to how many people are involved in supercoach competitions for league teams, yet would not put as much forethought into their own golf competition rounds.

The opponent I played yesterday is going to be a single digit player, just got his handicap and started on twenty. It took me a a year to get to that handicap figure. Victory came from the planning in the past month the result came from putting the ball in the hole and a few game playing errors on my opponents behalf. Giving him a stroke on eight holes and finishing with 84 off the stick, 32 putts and winning was a good result. Apart from one hole with a triple bogey seven (lost ball), the rest were pars and bogies and two birdies on my card. It was the the effortless ease of taking my swing, accuracy off the tee and fairway which gave my game a good base. Without the inconsistent shots of past weeks, no more longer scrambling to save par. It was vital to play the practise swing before shots to reinforce the corrections from the weeks coaching lesson.

Playing again today will be a good opportunity to maintain the two days consecutive competition experience that has been a major benefit this season. I really want to test myself out physically and technically in a competition round today chasing a par or better round score. It is a bit of an added pressure to the game that needs to be explored. The matchplay group that I am in includes two former club champions, tuning my game is a must to have a real crack at beating these guys. Thankyou for your time and attention. “Hit ‘em straight all”

 Geoff