Going backwards (driven to distraction)

I played the monthly medal yesterday which was also the qualifier for the Royal Ascot Cup (matchplay) in very difficult conditions. There was a very strong wind which had made the greens dry and they were very, very quick. In fact the wise old heads in the club reckon they were as quick as at anytime since the course opened.

I was partnered with two integral members of the club. One was Mick Mills, who has christened me "pro" for the amount of practicing I seem to do. He's always wonderful company to play with and his exuberant personality is normally only matched by his outlandishly coloured trousers. I was a little disappointed in his blue and green tartan pattern which were somber compared to some he's worn (think John Daly). The other member of our group was one of the club director's Andy Davidson or Sir as I called him (you never know when a bit of deference will help with lowering the subs!).

My day did not start well. The last thing you need to be doing in a medal is throwing shots away so an opening tee shot out of bounds on the par 3 first and subsequent triple bogey start was not a good sign. I recovered well enough to hit the fairway and green in regulation at the par 5 second but a three putt didn't help the cause. I finally managed a par at the 4th and then a good up and down at the 5th got things moving. I even managed another up and down at the 7th (stroke index 2) and by the time I'd made a routine par at the ninth I'd gone out in a respectable 7 over gross which considering the first hole and the strong wind was pleasing.

And then the wheels came off. I hit a horror drive into the thick stuff on the right of the tenth for a double bogey. Nice. A good sand save for par helped steady the ship and then I lost all control with the driver. A big slice on twelve was followd by an even bigger one on the fourteenth that cleared the thirteenth hole. Only about forty yards right. The only score I seemed capable of was double bogey and so it was a real shock to the system at the seventeenth to actually hit a stonking 5 wood at the 218 yarder. Admittedly it was downwind but I've never been long before and I guess the shock was too much for my short game and I hit a ropey chip. I did manage a great drive down the last but fittingly it finished with a three putt.

I wasn't alone though and a lot of the field struggled in the wind. In my own group, Mr Mills had used his handicap allowance up by the 3rd after a nice 10 down the second and a 7 down the third. He'd already had five penalty shots and nine putts walking onto the fourth tee. To be fair he never dropped his head and kept playing and cracking jokes. Sir (or Andy to his friends) also had an iffy front nine but came back much the strongest of the group and played some consistant golf as the wind got stronger.

The upshot of it all is that I inevitably got another 0.1 back onto the handicap and so I'm officially 12 again and definitely heading in the wrong direction. Having looked at my statistics on Scoresaver 2 (a great bit of software and well worth getting if you want to see how your game is fairing) it is obvious that having only hit 42% of fairways this season my driving has been a root cause of my bad scores. I don't know what it is though as it only seems to be on the back nine that I'm having trouble. I hit 5 out of 6 fairways on the front nine and only one on the back (at 18). The stableford last month was the same. 4 out of 5 going out and 1 out of 6 coming home and that was at the 10th.

Why is it going wrong. I think the answer is a combination of trying too hard , a loss of timing and a quickening of the tempo resulting in a good old fashioned yahoo at the ball. Tempo is something I had been working really hard on last year with my teaching pro and we were getting much more consistancy. Ironically I don't have a problem with my fairway woods or irons. I'm not going to press any panic buttons just yet and we'll see how it goes. At least the "pro" managed to beat the joker.

As Churchill said this isn't the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. The bad weather and sodden course are consigned to history and I need to focus on my short game and working hard on keeping my tempo with the driver as the round progresses. It's only a blip and any score under par has me back to 11 in a flash. Onwards and upwards.

Total number of lost balls in 2010 = 7