Reflections

I was at the club earlier watching the 18th green slowly submerge under the torrent of rain and was mulling over where I'm at to date whilst waiting for my full English to be served.

I've got some shiny new sticks which is always nice and gear wise I'm pretty settled which is good. I'm confident with all my clubs in the bag. In terms of Homer's odyssey it's been slow progress. I was really smoking the ball at the beginning of the year but the snow that came put everything on hold and I've never really recaptured the swing I had then. In fact, truth be told, I went backwards and its only now that I'm starting to feel like it's coming back a little bit in terms of the full swing. My short game is still in hibernation.

Competitively I've only managed two rounds so far. My 2nd place in my division in the January stableford was a pleasant confidence boost especially as I only had 14 points going out. I didn't actually strike the ball particularly well but I managed to make a lot of putts. I only had 31 putts for the round and a 33% par save figure tells its own story. A lot of missed greens but managed to get it up and down.

Ironically in my other competitive round I only scored 25 points and on the front nine in particular hit the ball much, much better. However I missed some greens and on the day the short game wasn't there and although I only had two more putts, my par save percentage was a lowly 19%. It just goes to prove that a good ball striking day doesn't mean a good scoring one.

So what about the new tougher Homer. Well he's there near the surface and was definitely on show for the first competition. I'd normally be a little hard on myself after the first nine with only 14 points but more for the way I was playing but I really ground a result out. Even in the other round where it would have been easy to let the head drop I kept trying and had total faith in my new swing changes..

So what have I learned to date? There are a number of issues that need urgent attention and in particular my chipping. My teaching pro should be back to full fitness following knee surgery and so treatment for my ailing short game is at hand next weekend. My range swing and my course game aren't one and the same thing. I'm actually swinging better on the course, which is where it actually matters, but I'm not practicing well and getting way to caught up in trying to replicate technically correct swings as opposed to grooving something repetitive and functional. It may be a case of over egging the pudding practice wise. I'm going to the range this week to break my new irons in but after that I'm thinking of one range session per week to just keep the swing ticking over until the lighter nights. From there it'll be all about shots from inside 120 yards, chipping and putting. These are the keys to shave the shots off I need to reach single figure nirvana.

I've now got a decent partner since my good mate Hywel Lloyd has joined me at Royal Ascot. He's currently off 17 but exceptional value for that and can play much lower and will undoubtedly be single figures before the end of the Summer. We are playing well as a team and have entered a number of the team events in the competitive calender. I was focussing on winning from purely a personal perspective but my 2010 challenge has widened now and we'll see how well our partnership performs.

All in all it hasn't really been the start to the year I wanted, primarily from meterological interference. However it's March tomorrow and the clocks change at the end of the month. Hopefully the course will dry out and reopen soon and I can get down to some serious playing.