I waited until April started to write the end part of my March progress.
The first medal of the season came along on the last Saturday of March 2025.
I prepared for this round much differently than any other round I have played in 12 years. Between myself and Paul Moultrie of Mind Body Golf, we have put in place a pre-round process that lets my body get ready for my round. It starts with the alarm going off at 6am. I wake up, have a coffee, get my golf bag ready, and put it in the car, I then go through my 30-minute warm-up routine, grab a shower, get dressed, and leave the house at 7:20am. That’s the steps, in that specific order. Instead of a pre-shot routine, this is a pre-round routine, and again Paul and I have decided that it’s non-negotiable (where applicable)
Now, at this point if you have read the previous months blogs you might think “This is all a bit over the top” well…some might say that, but I enjoy having routines, it helps keep me in the present moment, instead of thinking too far ahead. A skill that’s definitely needed when out on the course, and a skill that doesn’t just happen, you need to practice routines, just the same way you would practice technique. That’s how I feel about the matter.
The forecast wasn’t looking great, but the inclement weather wasn’t supposed to hit until around 1pm, which meant I would have been off the course by then. Started with a normal Scottish West Coast 15mph breeze, and then within an hour this had picked up to around 20mph and gusting at around 25mph. The weather played a massive part in the scoring. 50 guys went out, and over 20 walked off.
I planned for wind, I played my “wind game” but it was probably far too early in the season in terms of competition rhythm. I shot an 89! Miles away from where I would like to be! There were a few positives from the round. Firstly I drove the ball pretty well, and considering what I was saying last month about my driver issues and lack of practice with it, the competition driver doesn’t let me down. Secondly, I finished the round with 4 pars heading in, and this was when the wind was at its strongest, and thirdly, I stuck to my gameplan and pre-shot routines, I never deviated once.
So all in all I can take these three positive things and keep working on my improvement plan. As a result, my HCI went up by 0.3 taking me to a current handicap index of 13.5, a bit annoying, but not the end of the world.
So that pretty much brings me up to date.
Success in golf depends less on strength of body than upon strength of mind and character.
At the time of writing this next part, it's April Fool's Day. Ironic!
My plan this month is to do even more work on my game. I will maintain the exercises and frequency of the stretching and mobility sessions, i will keep going with 1 lesson per month, but on top of that, I will hit the gym at least once a week, probably on a Tuesday so that I can do heavier stuff and give myself ample recovery time. I have given my son a brief of the exercises I want to do and he has set me out a programme (He practically lives in the Gym). I still realise that I need more natural strength and speed, this is what the next part of the plan will be focussed on.
This month I will also introduce speed training to my process. I have listened to a few podcasts and seen some info online which indicates that speed training could be another asset in my quest to fulfill my season goals.
April is an important month as we have two club championship qualification rounds and I would like to be qualified after my second round. The way our club works is there are 4 qualifiers played over April and May, and your best 2 net scores out of the 4 rounds count towards your qualification score. In the club championship, 15 players qualify to play in round 2 with the current champion being seeded in position 1 without having to go through the qualification process (that’s the perk of winning the Championship the previous year). In the 12 years I have been playing golf I have only qualified once. This comes as a wee bit of a surprise to most people when I tell them this, but as I have documented, my health got in the way.
Two sub-80 rounds should see me qualified, and the lower the scores the higher I will get seeded, so qualification is important, but being seeded a bit further up the qualification list would be ideal.
A big scheduling decision
I have also made another decision this year. I won’t be playing in any club team matches in the county comps. There are a few reasons for this. The number one reason is that there are a few matches scheduled for a Friday night before a Saturday qualifier. Now having played in the team since day 1 and having won a few county comps I feel that I need to give myself every opportunity to play well on medal days.
When you play on a Friday you get home late and then have to wake up early on the Saturday to go play the medal, and in this case, a qualifier. Experience tells me that I’m not quite fit enough for this, and I have a different goal this season.
Team mates have asked “Will you miss not playing in the team matches” and I have visualised not playing and it feels fine. Normally I can visualise a situation and feel the way I would feel about it there and then. I thought about it for as long as I needed to. I’m happy with my decision. Besides, it would be good for others to get an opportunity to experience playing against different people on different courses in a competitive environment.
Week 1 ends with…
I was in the Pro Shop at my local course where I have a great relationship with the people who work there, and I asked the question “Do you happen to have any speed sticks kicking around?” The answer was “No, sorry” but what we did find was quite interesting. The aluminium swing trainers that you see at some ranges and practice areas were taken away a while ago from our range, however, the pole that was part of the contraption was still there. This thing weighs about as much as 5 clubs and has a club grip on the end. It’s made of solid steel. I picked it up and thought, “Hmmm, this might work”, so I borrowed it and took it home. Over the next couple of days, I spent 10 minutes a day swinging it. At first, very methodical swings, slowly building up to a full swing. It was really difficult to swing this thing. But I built up to a point where I was swinging it as fast as I could. Now, doing things like this with my body and arthritic state, I need to be careful that I don’t injure myself or set off an arthritic reaction, so it was carefully considered full-speed swings. It felt like a workout. And after 2 days of doing this, I thought nothing of it.
That was until I went for some on-course practice on a quiet Thursday night.
My clubs felt like toothpicks in my hands, they felt lighter and I felt like I was swinging with more power on practice swings. Now we could all sit there and say that this may have been the result of being loose, or maybe a psychological thing, but whatever it was it felt good.
I teed off on a short par 4 with a 5 iron. The hole is only 280 yards from the yellow tees. I was left with 50 yards in. Yes, the tee shot was wind-assisted, but I’ve hit my 5 iron to where I would normally be with my driver over the last few years. I knock my approach to about 12ft and sink the putt.
I’m happy with this as would all golfers be. The next hole is a 140-yard par 3. There is a strong cross wind blowing right to left. I go through my process and hit a solid 7-iron pin high. Narrowly miss the birdie putt, tap in par.
The 3rd hole has a stroke index of 1. It’s a tricky hole at the best of times as you would expect from the hardest hole on the course, but with a little help from the wind and 2 solid strikes, I find myself greenside, pin high. I roll the putt up from the side of the green and tap in for the easiest par. I’m -1 through 3 holes. That’s about as good a start as I could hope for.
This is where things get interesting. The 4th hole is a very short par 4 from the yellow tees, one that you should be looking to take advantage of. It probably measures 250 yards… I’m feeling confident and have the idea of hitting a bullet 3 iron, keeping the ball low, and letting the bounce and a bit of luck take over. My tee shot ends up through the green. I’m taking it. The shot that I visualised had materialised. There’s gold in them there books, I tell ya!
My Eagle putt goes a wee bit further than I hope, but I sink the birdie putt from around 5ft. Im now -2 through 4 holes. I don’t care who you are or what level you play golf at, or where you play golf, every golfer is taking that score through 4 holes.
I won’t go shot-for-shot on the rest of a practice round, only to say that my ball striking with my irons remained solid. I start dropping a few balls around the greens to practice some short game stuff and after the 9 holes, I’m pleased with what I have been working on and the direction my game is going.
The point I’m making here is that sometimes, if you are working towards something, it is quite hard to really know for sure if you are making any kind of progress. Moments like this are nice. I am not saying I started to google “How to get on the PGA Tour” or anything like that, but it was nice to see something coming back after 10 weeks of focus, and while all the conditioning and reading of books is great, the main thing is that when I get on the course I can feel a positive difference. And I do.
So that’s the first week in April. There have been a few ups and downs already, but mainly positive things are coming, and if negative things happen, I can just pull out a ton of more positive things that show me I’m on the right track.
How does the rest of April pan out?
Now in week 3 of April, I have had another pilates/conditioning training session and a light touch on some more Inner Caddie methodology with Paul Moultrie. A few more things to add to my on-course management toolset, which I feel are helping, and when the pressure piles on, I think I’m becoming even more equipped to deal with it. When I talk about pressure, I’m visualising shots coming down the stretch where I need to hit shots to scoring positions with ease. This will help in the pursuit of a lower handicap index, but it will also help if I play any matchplay ties this year. The pre-shot routine I have now developed is becoming more and more instinctive, and it’s helping with focus. What I have also noticed is that I can be a bit more aggressive on approach shots, where seasons gone by, I would have erred on the side of caution. This more aggressive approach to scoring has seen some really good outcomes so far, and I will continue to be aggressive with all shots I consider a “Green Light”.
The physical work with Paul and the things I’m doing on my own is becoming a massive benefit, and I feel so much better hitting shots now than I ever did last year. So calm and controlled with every shot I’m hitting. Which is awesome!
I had another lesson with Callum on the 14th of April. The last lesson we had was a driver lesson, and in the last blog, I noted how hard I felt the changes with driving were going to be. In all honesty, I have struggled with the changes when I have been practicing at the range. Stronger left hand, keeping the club face closed as opposed to way open through the swing. I still know that this is the best way to go, but it’s taking its time to bed in. So for this lesson, we revisited the driver. This lesson seems to have made the penny drop. I hit a few terrible shots, probably around 6 or 7, but then bang! I felt it, I timed it, and I like it. Calum never even looked up from his screens and gadgets; he could tell by the sound that it was so much better. I won’t note the distances here, purely because the practice shots were ¾ swings to get the proper feeling, but the one that worked had 50 yards a difference. Now that I have seen this result, I’m excited again. I have a couple of things to work on, and I have a wee rhyme that I can keep to myself to feel the positions I should be in. Through time, this should become natural, and the results should start to come. Longer drives will give me access to better scoring opportunities.
I will get a few range sessions and some on-course practice done this week as we have our first club championship qualifying round this weekend and a sub-80 round would feel good. Even a 79 would help the confidence.
So the last few weeks of April have now passed and the grind goes on. I’m still enjoying the process which is yet to produce real results in terms of scoring, but I still feel quite comfortable with the things that are happening. I can see that good things are just around the corner for my golf game.
So, to sum up the last few weeks’ medal comps, I have played solid in parts of the round, but a couple of things have happened that I thought I had sorted out. Keeping double bogies off my scorecard was the key to a good season last year. But in 3 of the rounds I played in the last 2 weeks in April, I somehow managed to rack up 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s over a few holes. These high scores came out of absolutely nowhere, well… I thought they came out of nowhere. I was speaking to Paul Moultrie about this, and through our conversation, we both concluded that I simply lost concentration. I described to Paul that I had a 145-yard shot into a green. Nothing complicated about the shot, I hit that same shot more than any other shot during range sessions, on course practice, and during rounds. I simply switched off, thinking that the shot was too easy because I had hit it thousands of times. This was a lightbulb moment that Paul and I addressed. Paul’s suggestion was to draw a red dot on my glove. Before every shot, I had to look at it. This was my cue to “Concentrate and Focus”
I played a round using this method, and it worked to a certain extent. I found that I never hit bad shots, per se, and it kept me focused. Shot an 80 on that round. This is the lowest of the season so far, and although it’s by no means where I want to be, it’s a step in the right direction.
I had a golf trip with some friends on the last weekend in April, which was great. Just to play with freedom and not have any concerns for scoring and having a laugh has refocused me for May.
My handicap index jumped up to 13.6 during April, but I have managed to get it back to where I started the season at 13.2 with the 80 that I shot. This time last year I was 19.9, so I still have a great place to work from in terms of achieving the single figure index.
Hopefully, May will bring a few scores in the 70s, which will help bring the index down. Even if I can get it below 13.0 over the course of this month, I would be happy with that. Statistically and historically, I play my best scoring golf between July and September, so if I can gradually reduce the index by the start of July, I feel I can really push on and make big strides.
