May 2025 was quite a tough month as I never hit one of my main targets for this year. All the early preparation work was put in place to ensure that I qualified comfortably for the club championship. The lessons, the psychology, the books, the work on my body. Talk about falling at the first hurdle. I actually felt a bit foolish, but I had a conversation with some members after a round one day and I was taking the piss out myself. We were all having a great laugh about it and I decided to shake it off and go again.
I take this game seriously, but I don’t take myself too seriously.
June 2025 brought about a U-Turn in my decision not to play county golf competitions with the team. For reasons I won’t go into publicly, the road was clear for me to help the team if I was needed, and to be fair, like I mentioned at the start of the season when I stated that “I wouldn’t miss it”…I did miss it. Im not known for this type of U-turn, im usually pretty happy with any decision i make, good, bad or indifferent.
The first 2 weeks of June saw me playing 2 games. 2 away ties. I halved my first match, and a week later convincingly won my second match. I’m happy with that considering these are away ties on more difficult courses than our home course.
This was a confidence booster, this may be the light that the fire needed.
Rollercoaster of humbling emotions
I also broke 80 for the first time this season, this gave me a small cut on my HCI, I came down to 13.4. But another not so great round put me back to 13.8, two steps forward one step back.
To see the HCI going in the direction I want it to was great. Then to see it jump back up…another of Golf’s humbling lessons.
I even went to the range and sorted my chipping out. All it took was 15 minutes. Literally 10 balls. I could have kicked myself for leaving it so long, but the fact that I had addressed what I knew I was doing wrong definitely gave me more confidence around the greens.
If you want to know what I was doing wrong in case it helps you in the future. I was pretty much quitting or decelerating at the point of impact. Trying to make my hands soft to control distance is a technique that doesn’t work for me, but that’s where all the shanks came from. As the club face gets to the ball and I decelerate and soften up my hands the clubface is opening and I’m pulling the face of the club across my body and hitting hosel rockets.
I played a club tie in the first round of the singles competition. I won on the 18th hole with a 40yard chip to less than a foot. Again, these types of things are now making me even more confident. I know that I have the skills for this type of shot, but my preshot routine really helps me execute the shot under pressure. It’s the first time I have noticed the preshot routine actually doing what we put it in place for. I gave my opponent 4 strokes in this tie, but I remained calm even when I was 2 down with 4 to play. Parred my way home, and the rest is history.
I played my 2nd round tie in the same competition and had to give away 7 strokes to my opponent. This was much more difficult against a guy who hit 2 bad shots the whole match. The thing that made it difficult for me was that I hit 2 bad shots straight after him, and never punished his mistakes. My opponent was a worthy winner with the match ending 4&2. The lesson I learned here was to get after the match from the first tee shot. I didn’t find my rhythm until the 5th hole. Looking back I could have been 3up at that point, but I was all square. Lesson learned!
A bad attitude is worse than a bad swing.
What did tomorrow bring?
I had scheduled to play a club medal competition the following day, Saturday 14th June.
The weather looked awful, 90% chance of heavy rain, 20-25mph wind. After the previous night I honestly didn’t fancy it, and this isn’t normally my attitude.
My tee time was 8:15am, I was still sitting in my housecoat at 7:45am, because I had decided not to play. And then something happened…I looked out the window and the rain was off. Cue the Benny Hill music. Normally at this time in the morning I’m as quiet as a mouse in my house so i dont wake anyone. Not this morning. I was running around the house, making so much noise. The course is only minutes away, and I knew I could make it within the time limits for checking in.
On the drive to the course I told myself that today, no matter what happens “be aggressive” with everything. Tee shots, approach and putting.
I started the round with a bogey. That’s no biggie, I normally start the round with one of those.
The thing that really got me fired up was my tee shot, it went further than it normally does. There are a couple of things I changed during the week leading up to this competition. Tee the ball slightly lower, keep the driver head low and slow on the backswing. That’s it. It really is that simple. I found an extra 20yds on average, and at times more.
In comparison to the night before I was hitting every single target I looked at. In the end I shot equal to my best ever score of 71. Which is only +5 Scratch! I narrowly missed a putt on 18 for a 70, which would have been amazing, but I accepted the equal best 71 for a few reasons. It was better than the last 71 I shot last year because the weather was harder, and I had a hypo mid round, which I managed to deal with quite quickly.
I ended up winning the medal comp with a nett 59, which no one begrudged, but that wasn’t my focus at all.
Overnight my HCI came down from 13.8 to 11.1.
To say I’m ecstatic about that would be an understatement. Its at the lowest its ever been and I’m only 1.2 away from my season target of “Anything in single figures”
June has a couple of weeks left and I’m super confident and positive about the next few weeks.
Can I achieve my goal in that amount of time? Let’s see.
Index...going down
At this point I’m only 4 and a half months into my pursuit of a single figure handicap index. I have my index sitting at a very respectable 11.1
The season ends in October, so that gives me approximately another 4 and a half months to hit my goal. Now the tricky part is, I have a lot of good counting scores coming off over the next 5 weeks or comps. If I can maintain the 11.1 or even get below 11 and maintain that through the next 4-5 comps then I will be in great shape for getting into single figures.
I have decided to treat reaching single figures as my own personal club championship, since i made a mess of qualifying for the real club championship lol
I have lowered my expectations and decided to just have fun and enjoy my rounds. Not saying that I don’t enjoy my golf, but I was far too focused on long term outcomes during individual rounds. To say I may have clouded my own head without even realising would be an understatement. But as i noted before i can have these conversations and realisations about myself.
Matchplay you fickle format!
Getting off to a slow start in ties was something that I feel I needed to address for the rest of the season. And that came with the next opportunity in a doubles tie. I play with my Father in Law (who at 70yrs old is still a very able, steady player off 17) Our opponents were getting 5 shots and 8 shots respectively, which can sometimes be a massive advantage, especially giving away 8 shots to an opponent, who can be very steady on his day.
With the mindset of starting fast we got to work. We won the first 3 holes and took control of the match, with our opponents struggling a bit. We were never down in the match and finally wrapped it up on the 16th hole with a 3&2 win. I expected the match to go the distance, and I was prepared for extra holes. As a doubles team we played really well with neither of us “giving away” holes, which is quite easy to do when playing doubles.
That was a good win and a good lesson. To try and carry this into the rest of the remaining ties will be the key to personal success when trying to win these club “majors”
The following night…League match. We were away to North Beach who play out of The Darley in Troon. The team needed to win this match if we were going to give ourselves any hope of winning the group and qualifying for the quarter finals. With this in mind we were still confident of getting the 4 points.
For the first time ever I was playing in the first group of matches due to my recent handicap reductions. This didn’t bother me as I believe in my game and my plan. I got off to a bad start in my match, and couldn’t find any rhythm (as much as i tried) What let me down? The driver.
Lost 4 balls off the tee, this gave my opponent 4 out of the first 6 holes. 4 down after 9 is not ideal, but I still thought I could play my way back in, but it wasn’t to be. I was 6 down with 6 holes to play, then suddenly the rhythm that I had been looking for came back. In my mind I still thought I could get a half out of the match. 5 down 5 to play, 4 down 4 to play. I hit a cracking drive straight down the middle of 15, my opponent’s tee shot was 20yds behind mine. His approach was chunked. Standing smack bang in the middle of the fairway with 120yds to the middle I knew this was a nice solid 9 iron for me. I practice this shot a lot, I felt confident. If I get this to the middle of the green and 2 putt, my opponent might not enjoy the pressure of losing 3 holes on the bounce.
Caught the ball thin, watched it run up to the green then through the back of it. The back of the green is surrounded by trees and bushes. Absolutely dead, could be a lost ball, and that’s the match lost. I find my ball. This is where things get interesting. I cant get to the ball if im playing right handed. I have an idea! I took my driver out of my bag, turned it toe down, held it left handed and got on to my knees. All I need to do is make contact with the ball and it might pop out to a better spot. We were all laughing as I assumed the craziest looking stance you have ever seen.
This was Seve and Tiger all rolled into one. With a 1ft backswing I made contact with the ball as hard as I could…and would you believe it, the ball came out. This was probably the most creative golf shot I have ever pulled off, and when your opponents and playing partners all give you a wee round of applause it feels great. I’ve put the ball to a spot where I have a decent chance of maybe chipping in to win the hole. My shot ended up just outside a foot from the hole. I had made a great effort at trying to extend the match, but on this occasion I left myself far too much work to do. Told my opponent to lift his ball, shook hands, and had a laugh about it. My opponent then confessed that he was “shitting himself” as I was winning holes. He probably didn’t want to be the guy that halved a match from 6 up with 6 to play, but I wanted to be the guy that came back from that, what a story that would have been.
Whats the lowest my handicap index has ever been?
I played the Saturday medal the following day with very little sleep, I was done in from the night before. I NR’d on my round due to a lost ball that I thought I would have found. It didn’t bother me, I had no counting score dropping off, so it was a free swing.
My HCI is still 11.1 after that round, however I have a few decent scores dropping off in quick succession, so my focus of trying to be at the same handicap after July has still got to be the focus. I will get back to the range a few times with the remainder of June and keep working on the things that I feel are still needing sharpened.
With a week of June remaining I have entered into two more club competitions. One of them is a Wednesday medal, and with a score of 77 dropping off I really need to match this, or better it to maintain the 11.1 index. I played the round really well, and with the exception of two double bogies I finished the round with a 74, that’s better than my expectations and the following day I’m down to 10.8, I’m now only 0.9 away from breaking into single figures. The good thing about this round is that my short game was really good. Chipping and putting in my opinion has always been the difference between a good round and a great round in terms of scoring. I did get a little bit lucky on the 16th hole when a slightly mistimed approach knifed its way toward the green, it hit the pin quite hard but remained on the green. We all joked about luck and I said “Thats got birdie written all over it” sank a 12ft putt for the birdie, that was a great feeling. I could have been walking off that hole with a 5 and feel that I made amends for one of the double bogies with that huge slice of luck.
Standing on the 17th I learned a big lesson. With wind into us I had a 3 iron in my hand. I love hitting my 3 iron off the tee, I usually put the ball where I want it to go. On this occasion a thought popped into my head before I hit my tee shot “hitting 3 iron in this wind is going to hamper your chances of a par” I switched to my driver and proceeded to pull it straight left, out of bounds. Damn it! I think that’s the first time in 12 years playing this game that I actually changed my mind with a club in my hand. There is something to be said about sticking with your gut instinct in this game. Hopefully it’s another 12 years before I do it again.
So with my index sitting at 10.8 that ranks me 4th out of 71 members for HCI. Considering the start of the 2024 season I was sitting on an index of 20.1 and ranked 34th. I’m taking that all day long. That’s nearly 10 strokes off my HCI in 18 months!! I have learned 2 or 3 lessons this month. Matchplay, start faster, lower my expectations and trust my gut instinct when it comes to my gameplan.
