The 2024 golf season has been a bit of a shocker for me. As I await the ladies to tee off for the second day of the #olympicGolf I reflect on a better round in a tumultuous stretch of #badGolf that has led to my handicap, rather embarrassingly, being soft capped.
I’ve probably not been playing as much as in previous seasons but the level of play in 2024 has been horrendous. I have seen my handicap rise from 2.4 to 6.1 with the past 10 or so rounds being with an * – once your handicap rises by 3 there is a slow down on the acceleration rate.
My scoring average is about the same as 2021 and I’ve got a very low birdie rate, especially compared to last year, and my pish score count (doubles or worse) is about 2 per round currently.
However, as I progress in a 6 days stretch of golfing days I got my act together yesterday and had a calm, and somewhat good round for a seasons best 72 – level par.
I did not play outstanding. I did play very solidly and although a couple of errant tee shots cost me a bit I was never really in too much trouble.
I decided to play from the blue tees, so 5400 meters compared to 5900 yellows. We’d had bucket loads of rain and from the previous days play even, I know that the ball would not be rolling. My driving average previous day was about 10m down so I was happy to play the shorter course.
Blues means that the par 5s are very gettable and although I didn’t hit any in two I did get to within 50m of the green every time. I f*cked up the first par 5 but managed to birdie two of the other three so I definitely took advantage.
The highlight hole was the 7th hole today.
A snap hook drive left me in the bunker about 180m from the tee. The lie was not ideal. It was plugged in concrete like sand right against the lip. Not ideal.
I tried to get the ball forward smashing a sand wedge as hard as I could, but the ball barely moved. It hit the lip and rolled back into the centre of the bunker. Saving bogey was going to be really hard. Maybe I should have taken an unplayable in that situation, but if I would have had to drop in the bunker anyway there would have been no advantage.
So I was now 5m further away from the hole with about 130m from really compact concrete sand. I caught it a little fat and got the ball to about 35m from the pin.
Lying 3, I had a pitch over another bunker to a short sided pin location. What the heck, flop shot from hell – this would be a great up and down. I caught it great and almost slam-dunked it. It caught the pin about 1m from the ground, hit the edge of the hole and ended up 2cm from the cup.
I escaped with a bogey, avoided the dreaded double or worse. This kind of set me up for the rest of the round. 2 holes later I snap hooked a drive and had to play sideways again for another bogey but that was the last one.
6 out of 7 fairways and 7 out of 9 greens led to a two under 34 coming in. It was steady all the way and gives me perhaps a little hope for the rest of the season.*
Can I get my handicap down to season start level? I doubt it, and don’t really care. Last year was exaggerated by 2 fantastic rounds that were outliers. I am happy where I am at the moment.
I am just happy to reach this level once in a while and have the knowledge that it is possible. Today I play Seaside.
.* Golf will come back and bite me in the ass for sure!!