Counting Down The Minutes

6.15pm on Thursday February 2nd 2012 cannot come quick enough. That's the time of my next lesson with Rhys ap Iolo my teaching professional at Downshire Golf Complex. He is a man with a big, big task on his hands especially if yesterdays game in the roll up is anything to go by. Abject, demoralising, incompetent, and embarrassing are some of the more positive adjectives I could use. A sum total of twenty five points with four of them coming courtesy of a last hole birdie.

Where is it all going wrong? Well all I know yesterday that the tempo was way too fast and for some reason I was lifting out of the shots. I thought that was a fault banished to the vaults of my personal golfing room 101 but clearly not. It leads to a myriad of bad shots including topping it, check, pushes and slices right, check and the odd fat effort. Check.

If that was bad enough the ones I did manage to make a good contact on were all slinging right to left hooks. Not bad if you can trust yourself to do it every time but when you're chucking in a galaxy of other no-no's then you stand over the shot mumbling some ancient Inca poem and praying that for once it will go close to the vicinity of a green or fairway. Add in a double hit out of a bunker and the day's misery was complete.

Dear God - please let me find the golf course with the next shot

It had all started so well. I made par at the long 228 yard par three first courtesy of a slinging, running hooked tee shot to the front edge and two putts and salvaged two points for a nett par at the next. On the third the drive went way right and I hit a pretty rotten approach which somehow found the green. I three putted but it was still a net par. And then the rot set in. Big time. I missed the green from 103 yard on the fourth with just a wedge in my hand to chuck a shot away. On the fifth I blasted my six iron approach twenty yards right of target into thick rough. The recovery flew the green and lets just say I didn't trouble the scorer. I thinned my tee shot on the par three sixth straight into a water hazard. Nil points for the second hole running.

Even when I played with a modicum of sense and laid up on the seventh after finding the left rough off the tee, I missed the green with just a sand wedge, chucked in a shanked chip and managed to get up and down to rescue a point. Another blow out on the shortest hole on the course courtesy of a bunker shot over the green. The final nine was brought to an earth shattering conclusion with a double hit out of the greenside bunker. A massive ten points and I was close to walking in and calling it a day.

That would have been defeatist and if there is one about Homer's odyssey in 2012 it's that I'm going to grind out every measly par or point on offer. No quitting and even if it's the game from hell (and yesterday was getting that way) then we're fight until the end.

Every shot is worth something - no quitting in 2012 - grind it out and you'll reap the rewards

I made a nett par on the 10th to lighten the mood a little although the second shot was a fat short of the green from a good drive. However the hooked tee shot on the par three eleventh found its target for a much needed par. I gave that straight back at the next when a topped drive put me on the back foot straight away. A chip and a putt at the thirteenth for par was the last hurrah for the round and although I made a nett par at the penultimate hole I stood on the last tee just wanting to get back into the 19th for a drink.

I hit a decent enough drive, low and hooking but it found the fairway. I hit a similar shot with my five wood for my second and that too found the fairway some 105 yards from the flag. Bearing in mind I'd already missed two greens right from similar distances, (and as you will know if you've read my guide to the eighteenth, there is a lake that cuts in on the right of the green) and so I was determined not to repeat previous errors. In the end it was the swing of the day and deposited the ball six feet from the cup. I rolled in the birdie putt. The previous seventeen holes didn't seem quite such an ordeal.

Faced with the prospect of an afternoon trawling around DIY stores and the shops wit the good lady wife I snuck off too the range in the afternoon. There was some better stuff but i think the issue is a case of getting the club too trapped again and having to use the hands to recover. It certainly felt as the hands were flipping all over the place. We'll see what Rhys makes of it all on Thursday.

In the end, it was only a social game and so the handicap didn't suffer although I left the club a few quid lighter. It's just frustrating that the solid ball striking I've enjoyed before Christmas has disappeared and that when I do recapture it at the range I can't then take it onto the course. I'm sure there is a link there somewhere but we'll take it a step at a time. Get Rhys to find the fix on Thursday and build upon the firmer foundation. It isn't the time to be peaking yet and so we'll file these bad rounds in the "experience" column and move on. Right now though I'm counting down the minutes until 6.15pm on Thursday.