Happy to say that today was my third round in a row in the 70’s. Despite the amount of rain we have had this week I got out yesterday at Theale and today at Sandford, and although the courses were wet and boggy in places the greens were in very good condition.
Yesterdays round at Theale was an early game as the weather people were predicting rain from around 11am onwards. I tee’d off on my own at 7:30am planning only to play nine, but the weather held and a pal called John caught me up so we played most of the round together. On the front 9 I did par 18 pitching, and the back 9 was par 18 chipping. I’d say I was playing good consistent golf on Saturday, nothing amazing but also nothing bad – the sensible strategy certainly seems to be paying off
Fairways : 46%
Greens in reg : 39%
Putts : 29
Score : 79
Par 18 pitching : 25
Par 18 chipping : 23
Today at Sandford I played in the Handicap knock-out competition against a great chap called Harry. He played off 19 so I had to give him 9 shots. Having noted these on the score card I noticed that he didn’t get any shots on the last 2 holes so my game plan was to make sure I stayed no more than 1 down as I thought I could win those last two. We had a great battle, never more than 1 hole between us. I’m happy to say I managed to go one up on the 17th and halved the 18th so my plan worked very well. I’m now into the third round which is quite exciting! Here are the round stats:
Fairways : 60%
Greens in reg : 29%
Putts : 32
Score : 79
I’m very pleased with the greens in regulation stat. Last year I was happy if I hit 2 greens in a round but now I am averaging around 7. There is definite room for improvement with my chipping and pitching as you can see from the par 18 games. Unfortunately I only got to do these once this week due to the weather (2 or 3 is the aim), but once things start to dry up and the evenings get even lighter I’ll be round the greens chipping, pitching and counting to see how I improve.
This week I’ve also been running 3 times. I used to play loads of football (soccer) until a few years ago, but my cardio fitness has not been so good since taking up golf. I’m planning on running a half marathon later in the year having been inspired by my girlfriend and so plan to keep the running up.
Next week will be exciting as I’m off to Cornwall for 9 rounds of golf in 5 days! Thankfully we are using buggies for some of the rounds (that’s if they are still in use due to course conditions!). I’ll have lots of stats to report on next week.
I’m in the process of building a web application to keep track of all these stats. It will help me (and maybe you) keep track of practise and playing stats. I’ll post some more information up here as soon as I have it.