(Texas) Scrambled

I played in the rescheduled Turkey Trot Texas Scramble on Saturday held over from December and all that snow. It's a team format and every player tees off and the team then decides which ball to pick. The player who's ball is in play, hits his next shot and the others all play from the same spot and so on until the hole is completed. Every player had to have a minimum of five drives each.

I played with two great guys Jeff and Dave and we really got on well. We gelled as a team and managed to go out on the front nine in four under par thanks to five birdies and a solitary dropped shot on the 7th. The back nine was a tougher proposition and by the time we stood on the 17th tee were were level par with two birdies offset by two dropped shots for the seven holes played. However we girded our loins and Dave hit a sweet drive to the front edge of the 17th green and then holed an outrageous fifteen foot right to left breaking putt for an unlikely birdie. Not content with that, Jeff took it upon himself to roll in an equally unlikely birdie from the back edge of the final green in full view of the early starters. With the combined handicap taken off, our six under par total was actually a nett 59.2 and looked pretty competitive.

We sat in the bar trying to get some feeling back into our bones. It was perishing out on the course and the wind swept straight into you and personally I wasn't warm from the moment I started until about an hour after I finished. As each group came in and failed to threaten our score things were looking good. We were down to the last group and they were on the green in three and only about ten feet away. I don't know why but there was an air of inevitability about it and so when Andy Hall, one of our greenkeepers, nonchalantly holed out for birdie the writing was on the wall. However the scores needed confirming. In the end, that putt was critical and gave them a gross score of 65 less a team handicap of 6 for a nett 59 and we were beaten by a measly 0.2. Not even a whole shot. Gutted and bugger were two words that came to mind.

There was a second trot on the Sunday (separate event) and so I used it as an excuse to hit the range. It was much warmer than the day before as the biting wind had gone. I haven't really done much work on my swing in 2011 as I've been trying to play as much as I can. I'm not hitting it brilliantly but there were signs in the scramble of it starting to come together, apart from the short game which is under more pressure than the Egyptian President.

I hadn't been hitting it great and the eureka moment I had at the range the other Friday hadn't manifested into the "the key". If anything it had made things worse and I was swinging the club way too flat and causing myself all sorts of problems. I wanted to get back to a simple takeaway straight back and then a turn of the shoulders so I had a much steeper swingpath so that I could really feel I was on top of the shot at impact and compressing it as I'd been doing after my lessons at the end of 2010.

After a lot of hard work, a few truly awful shots mixed in with the good ones I managed to feel as though I was back on track. I was hitting it very solidly and felt much happier with my game. I'm planning to hit the range again this week and see how it copes after the stress of a full day at work and in preparation for the stableford on Saturday. I am wary of another false dawn and go into the competition hoping for a respectable showing but prepared to accept a 0.1 increase if the worse happens. In fact 13 (four competitions and I may be there) is a much truer reflection on where my game is rather than 12 or lower. It isn't firing but then again do I want to peak this early? The good news is that new member (and hopefully my new regular partner) Mike Stannard has got in with one of the Saturday greedies and had a solid 37 points (and still didn't come close to taking the pot) and so he'll be able to carry me until I find my game again. I've decided I need a chipping lesson but really want to wait until the greens get a bit dryer and run better and the fringes aren't too muddy. I think an Easter refresher and then hit the season square on.

As Yazz and the Plastic Population said....."the only way is up"