Bordertown Open Tournament result...

3/4/12 Tuesday The weekend tournament at Bordertown was one of extremes in golf. The first day is still one that has me bemused at the result. Starting on the back nine my final scores on the nines were 55 and a 51, total gross 106 for a nett 93. Last time I had a 100 plus score was in September 2011 when I was struggling to play with the golfers elbow injury, prior to that was in November 2010 when playing off a 19 handicap. This round was one of total inconsistency. Could not drive of the tee with any of the recent stability, off the fairways and into the trees on most holes. Requiring a drop for relief with the penalty just to be able to chip out to a fairway. Using the irons on the par 3 holes worked fine enough but then it would be either bad chipping and putting combined to score a double bogie.

The putting result, apart from one three putt all the rest being one or two putts for a 36 stroke total. The greens were beyond my ability to play first up on Saturday. Missing many with the ball just running and catching the rim and going out instead of into the hole. The greens were some of the best that I have played on and the difficulty was my lack of ability on the day in getting the ball into the hole with the first putt. Chipping with the 56 degree wedge was a total catastrophe all day. Most of the time it took two chips to get onto the green, the first invariably going short, added with the second chip never running up to the hole.

Not once during the day was there any lessening of trying to improve my standing and performance. Being a happy good natured golfer really did pay off on the day, no displays of petulance or bad temper came from me for the entire round. Was already getting pumped for round 2 the next day and coming out to improve. There was a bit of moderation in the socialising that night on my part. After dinner with my playing partners and a few others I headed out to see a Johnny Cash tribute show at the Mundulla Oval which certainly reduced the amount of beer consumed on my part. The daylight saving turn back the clock also helped getting an extra hour of rest before starting the day.

Right from the start my game was on track, I did manage to get some chipping and putting practice in before tee off which did not happen on day 1. made the decision to use the Pitching Wedge for chipping all day which proved to be a good choice. The new addition to the bag a Diawa #2 Iron was spot on for the long fairway shots. A total of 8 GIR’s, 8 fairways hit off the tee and much improved putting all contributed to the much better round. A total of nineteen strokes better with an 8 after a bad decision with a ball buried in a bunker on a par three. Fortunately that was the second hole played on the day and with 16 holes to go could be countered. Starting score on the back nine with a 44 after that was a good effort and a 43 to finish and a total score of 87 and a Nett 74. Missed out on second place in a four player countback in the B grade on the day.

With Easter this weekend my golf efforts will be in the clubhouse working the bar for the many tourists. The club has a two person aggregate Stableford competition with Guest day a seasonal recruitment event held. I do not really enjoy playing the pairs events all that much and I have done a fair effort in membership recruiting so I will have a weekend off in competitive golfing. Have a Happy Easter all, “Hit ‘em straight all.”

Thankyou for your time and attention, Geoff

Footyhead's rd 1 review Carlton V Richmond

Back for another rollercoaster Australian Rules football season the one eyed 100% biased Carlton fan Footyhead.



Thankyou for your time and attention, Geoff

Professional golf coaching is a good thing...

28/3/12 Wednesday. One advantage of having a plan of sorts with golf coaching and the resulting practice is the ability to isolate problems and target them in training. Instead of discovering new faults and fixes for faults through conversations with playing partners, a golfer must find a coach and listen to advice given. Then get to the range or backyard and practice what has been passed on. As with all advice given by other golfers no matter how well meaning it has been intentioned all that has been done is to store it away in my knowledge. What this advice has done is make it possible for me to understand what is being described and taught during coaching. I have always been a astounded to hear golfers critique professional coaches and using advice given by Billy Club-Golfer as the counter point. 

It has been apparent to me over the past three years that there is no problem with receiving coaching from more than one professional. In my instance this has never had any major differences. An effective golf swing, which is the core of anyone's game, is what is required to be established from coaching. What I do now is not perfect, yet it is 90% better than the one I began with. In 2009 my game did not include using Drivers when playing competition as there was no possibility of knowing where the ball would go off the tee. Putting and chipping was equally erratic yet I was practicing and getting better. Dropping 9-10 strokes from the 36 handicap when I began playing that first year.

That was improvement of course, but now I play of 13 having halved the handicap from then. Now playing with all clubs available and working on a consistent game to go the next level towards a single figure handicap. Still play with golfers who when I started were on the same  level as I and are playing off significantly higher handicaps still. The difference is that my planning and coaching has followed a designated path.  

Establishing and maintaining the practice schedule this week has been the focus. Beginning on Monday the short game faults which had been so destructive of late were concentrated on, with chipping and putting drills. Being satisfied with the results on the day is one thing, getting out and playing holes to see if the practice had a lasting effect would be the proving ground.

Added a little extra pressure during the practice rounds played by using the #2 hybrid off the tee on the par4 and 5 holes. This club needs some game time to get accurate and consistent off the fairway and tee block. With winter beginning to loom in coming months using long irons is a preference that has to be rationalized. I will lose a lot of game effectiveness in the winds that howl around the course sticking with irons. In tandem with using the hybrid this put my long to mid iron play into effect for approach shots and going for the green. Which meant that the need to chip onto the green was needed throughout the practice rounds.Still a long way to go in hitting greens in regulation. 

The practice so far this week has delivered improved chipping and there were no problems at all. The decision to extend the use of the 56 degree wedge to 50m in practice was a good choice. Not once did I even come close to playing the stabbing swing with no follow through, which caused so much damage to the weekend rounds. 

Putting always needs work, still messed up a couple of putts that went short or wide of the hole. Given that I do no pre-round warm up before playing that was acceptable. In the main it was all good confident putting with only one that was significantly short. Dropped some good long putts as well as consistent confident putting strokes on 9 out of the 10 holes played.
Thankyou for your time and attention, “Hit ‘em straight all.”

 Geoff

Bordertown Spring Open this weekend...

26/3/12 Monday. Two days of competition golf this weekend again and the result is more improvement. Whilst the coaching and range practise has been very beneficial since January the game time has been the clincher in getting better at the game. Have been getting very close, playing to handicap and in to the zone of breaking it. What is stopping this is poor putting and chipping.

The Kingston round on Saturday returned 35 points. With two holes, that following good drives fell apart after the second shot, both three putt greens as well as too many chips. There was another three putt hole that was the only wipe on the scorecard as well. Scoring 1 point out of these two holes, from the 4 that should have been the result. Then at Beachport on Sunday a three hole run of bladed chip shots resulted in a double bogie, bogie, double bogie and 3 points out of the possible 6 expected were gone. No three putt greens at Beachport although the bouncy greens did result in a couple of putts jumping aside from the hole and missing. As was proved by a playing partner who putted hard at the hole every time and off a 12 handicap scored 43 points, that method is the way to get the ball in the hole.

There were some stroke playing reasons for the poor chipping and putting results, the cause though is what has to be fixed. Lack of confidence is corrupting my short game and improving the mindset is going to take some specific effort. In practice my short game and putting is not excellent but much better than the return in competition rounds. The problem is that accepting my current level of ability and not surprised when the chip or putt played is not the best, I am accepting failure. Looking at my figures in an 18 hole round there is two or three holes being destroyed by the poor short game. Approximately 85% of the holes are fine but the 15% of failure holes are all a result of the same errors.

I will not accept the failures and am working on correcting the faults. A lot of progress has been made in 2012. To sit here and know that the problem areas in my game are identified as chipping and putting. There is not much needed to improve them, hitting through the ball when chipping, and believing in my putting ability. The latter is going to come from more practice as always and continued improvement in competition results. Fairways hit is now at 50 % GIR is still low at 11%. At Kingston, 6 GIR and Beachport, 8 GIR was a significant improvement on the 2 year average percentage. The important statistic is the hole results with 47% bogies, 28% par and 20% double bogies the biggest numbers.

The chipping is going to be rectified with adding to my existing practice routine over 10 and 20 metre shots. This will be setting up on the practice fairway and hitting out to 50m distances with the 56 degree wedge. I feel that working on better accuracy is the simple key to better chipping. The putting does suffer from this failing, too many putts from 10m away from the hole end up with 3 putt results. On top of that is the realisation that with improving GIR I am going to have to keep on getting better accuracy with the mid to longer irons as well.

Talk is not what gets the improvement and today on the range this was put into effect. In the main it was all good, the error percentage was 15% from each series of balls when using the Wedge to 50m. Interesting was that the #8 iron had the same 15% error margin at 110-120m as well as the #6 iron in the 140-150m distance. The error was the same in each instance also, instead of hitting through the ball I play a short swing pulling the club across the ball and slicing to the right. Doing this on the range though in an environment with no pressure gave me the identity and cure for the fault. The putting will get a work out later in the week.

Practise is in preparation is for the two day Spring tournament at Bordertown this weekend. Having played the winter open at Bordertown the past two seasons the coming event is something that I feel will be benefited from the recent two round weekends. Playing both in the one competition again and at a course that is suited to my golfing limitations. Adding the advantage of not getting up to work at 5.30am before a 130km drive to play I should be a little fresher for the second days play. Thankyou for your time and attention, “Hit ‘em straight all”

 Geoff