This past weekend I had the house to myself. The wife and the daughter who still lives at home were both out of town, so I had the rare opportunity to do whatever I wanted. The forecast was a bit dicey Friday night with a chance of snow, so I wasn’t sure if golf would be in the cards on Saturday. When I saw that we had gotten a tiny bit of snow overnight, I decided to hit the slopes in the morning. There was no accumulation in the open areas, so I was pretty confident that the golf course would be open in the afternoon.
The plan was to ski for a couple of hours, then try to walk 18. Part of me just wanted to take advantage of the fact that I had the freedom to do it. At 53 years old, I also think it’s important to push yourself physically from time to time. Finally, one of the benefits of living in the western part of Virginia is that the climate allows you to do things like this if you’re willing to play when it’s cold.
After a couple of hours on the slopes my legs were starting to feel fatigued. Knowing that that I had a hilly five-mile hike with a heavy pushcart ahead of me, I decided to call it a a day. I headed home, swapped the ski gear for my clubs, changed clothes and drove out to the course. There were only about three or four cars in the parking lot. Apparently when it’s 34 degrees and windy, not too many people head for the links. Usually when the course is this quiet, I’ll try to push the pace to get as good of a workout as I can. However, since I had already skied in the morning, I decided to take it more slowly.
My expectations for the round were pretty low. My round from a few weeks earlier hadn’t been great. While I had done some indoor work on my swing, I hadn’t hit an actual golf ball since that last round. This was also going to be my first round with the different righty blades from my new set, having swapped out the PW, 8i and 6i for the 9i, 7i, and 5i. I fully expect it to take a few rounds to get my distances dialed in. Also, given the cold and wind, I expected that scoring would be a challenge.
It turned out to be a very solid round. I teed off on the first hole with a lefty driver into a strong headwind. I struck the ball well, but it ballooned in the wind and only went about 180 yards, leaving me about the same distance to the hole. I hit a partial righty 3H that finished just left of the green. Fortunately, I was aimed at the right side of the green. Had I hit the same shot aimed at the middle of the green, the ball would have landed in the small creek that runs up the left side. I hit a solid lefty pitch shot, then two putted for bogey, which I’m usually happy with on the first hole.
On the second hole, a short par 3 over a pond, I thinned a righty 7 iron. It landed just short of the green and started rolling down the bank back towards the pond, stopping just a couple of feet short of getting wet. I then hit a really good lefty wedge up onto the green. When I climbed the bank onto the green, I saw that it had and settled about 5 feet from the hole. I made the putt to save par.
That’s pretty much how it went for the round. While I certainly hit several good shots, I got more than my fair share of good breaks along the way. I bladed a lefty wedge than still managed to find the green, setting up an easy par. I sliced three lefty drives pretty badly, but in each case, I was able to carve righty shots back in play and far enough to allow me to reach the green with an extra shot. In total I got up and down for par four times. I never made worse than a bogey for the day and managed to sneak in a tap-in birdie on one of the par 3’s. I ended up shooting a 79 for a differential of 12.5.
In terms of stats, when I look back at this round, I logged eight shots that I consider to be costly. There were two lefty shots that I hit really thin (low point control), even though I got a lucky result with one of them. That same shot could have easily sailed over the green and led to a double bogey. There were the three lefty drives that I sliced, which I’m categorizing as lefty face direction. There was the thin righty iron on the second hole that I’m categorizing as low point control. Even though I managed to get up and down for par, it just as easily could have rolled back all the way into the water. There was a righty hybrid that I hooked off the tee that I’m categorizing as righty face control, and a righty chip shot that I hit so poorly that I was lucky to two putt to save bogey.
Compared to my prior round where I identified 13 bad shots for a score of 15 over, this round had 8 bad shots for a total of 8 over. Adding up the total lefty and righty errors for the two rounds totals 14 lefty and 7 righty. Intuitively, the gap in errors between left and right feels correct.
Ultimately the purpose of tracking the stats is to inform how to best utilize my limited practice time. Whether this turns out to be useful remains to be seen. While two rounds do not create a very large data set, I’m already seeing one likely trend that seems accurate. So far nine out of the 21 total errors are categorized as lefty low point (4) and lefty face direction (5). Even without the stats I know that lefty low point control is something I need a lot of work on, and it is something that I’m already working on with my divot board. However, face direction is going to be tough, as that is not something that I can work on at home.
Alternate Golf 