Pulling The Tiger's Tail

It's been a quiet old time in terms of playing and practice. I've been fully booked over the last few weekends and therefore unable to play and have struggled to find the motivation to grind it out on the cold range knowing there was no chance to put practice into play. A full golfing sabbatical is almost unheard of for me but to be honest I've not missed it as much as I'd feared. Given the weather in Berkshire over the past two weekends especially the gale force winds, I can't help feeling I dodged a bullet. Inevitably there will be repercussions next week when I start to hit the driving range and I can't help thinking it's going to be messy, out of kilter and frustrating.

However as always, it hasn't been totally quiet on all fronts. I've had some interesting times online. Firstly, an acquaintance from the Golf Monthly Forum (Golf Monthly Forum) has started his own blog. It's his first foray into these murky waters but it's well worth a look at the world of a Coventry Golf Addict (Coventry Golf Addict). You'll notice this big banner "I'm coming for you Homer" my nickname for many a year (this blog was nearly Homers' Odyssey). That's fine Fish my old mucker. Bring it on. I love a bit of friendly rivalry and the fact that both of these humble offerings are getting some attention from the Golf Monthly Forum members will intensify the battle once the 2016 arrives. I've known him online for a good few years now and enjoyed his company at a number of Forum meetings and he's one of golf's good guys. I hope he can achieve his personal targets for next year.

All well and good. However, as is the nature of the beast when using an online forum, the peace didn't last long. There was an interesting thread about someone having golf lessons and seeing some excellent progress (Lessons Work). As regular followers will know, I am a big advocate of lessons and have regular tutelage. I've worked hard on my game in 2015, especially around posture, and tempo which have been the main focus in the long swing, and have had a number of lessons around the short game to find something I can trust and which works under pressure.

I happened to innocently post my support of lessons, with a word of warning about needing to keep working on drills and ensuring old habits don't slip back. All good or so I thought. Someone then posted that if I was having these lessons and they were so good for me why hadn't my handicap tumbled and indeed why had it gone up. And like a fool, having had the tale of the tiger well and truly tugged I bit.

In my defence, and as I posted, I firmly believe that a handicap cut is only one barometer of measuring progress. Granted the whole ethos of this blog is my pursuit of a single figure handicap, and so my last statement will seem totally at odds with that, but in my own mind, the need for a more robust swing, with the better tempo, allied with a stellar short game (in my dreams a day will come when that happens) is the initial steps to getting these cuts. This is why I've worked so hard on slowing the tempo down, giving me more time, reducing the number of moving parts in the swing and improving the striking. And on the whole I have been more than satisfied with the work I've done under the gaze of Andrew Piper at Lavender Park. As for the short game, it has been a different story. As in the last few years every time I see real progress, I seem to regress backwards. I've been caught between techniques and philosophies, not for the first time in recent seasons, and it is still a source of endless aggravation.

The upshot of course was I bit into what I think was an online fishing line and my whole ethos and progress got shredded. Having let the dust settled, it has got me thinking. No more than that, it has got me well and truly fired. If you're going to pull this tiger's tail then you better get out of the way of the teeth when it turns around. My resilience to get to my single figure goal is now re-invigorated and I am even more fired up for 2016. Of course people are entitled to their opinion. They may think they have point and they may even think they're right and my lessons aren't working. It simply isn't a view I share. The great thing about a forum, it's a place where opinions are exchanged openly.

My winter work has been been all about the short game, especially the scoring zone from 30-70 yards out and improving my pitching. Add in some better chipping, more success holing out from 2-3 feet and more improvement from bunkers and then mix that with the work I did in 2015 on posture and tempo and I'm convinced I can really kick on next season. With my golfing mojo back and the range calling next week, the hard work starts again with gusto.

It also got me thinking about my 2015 season. Was it really that bad and have the lessons not paid off. Well let's start with the handicap. It's what most use to measure progress. I started at 11.7 (12) and at one point we did teeter over to 13 when I hit 12.5. I now sit at 12.2 (12) so the whole thing has moved by half a shot. I managed to banish the ignominy off hitting 13 with a third place in the October stableford and a nice 0.3 cut. Over twelve months given the number of competitions I played, is half a shot really that bad? Not ideal when you want to get to 9, but I'd hardly say it's the end of the world.

If that's a negative, lets look at the flip side. I had a win back in the June stableford which was my first competition win at Royal Ascot in several seasons which qualified me for the annual "Masters" invitational for competition winners only. First time in a couple of years for that too. I also got through regional qualifying in the Golf Monthly Forum "Race to Hillside" event at Blackmoor. I came second overall but with the winner not being able to participate I got in. Having got to the illustrious links course, I finished third overall out of the seven regional winners and picked up a few quid as a result. Again hardly hold the front page stuff but a solid enough effort.

I thought it would be interesting to look at my statistics from 2014 alongside those from 2015 and see what had changed.

2014 Statistics

The most obvious number here is the greens in regulation (GIR) of 26% which was better than handicap. My driving (FIR) wasn't too bad at 44% but the putting numbers, my sand saves and my par scrambles (my short game) were very disappointing. It was very clear where a lot of my weakness lay, in the short game, which is why I wanted to have lessons in this area. My handicap stayed constant having started and ended at 12 and having re-visited these tonight for the first time in a while they flag some areas of improvement. It was around this time last year I had my first lesson with Andrew Piper and it was him who wanted tempo and posture to be my two areas for the long swing.

2015 Statistics

This is where I think it gets interesting. Driving accuracy is down by 2% to 42% which is annoying but is not the end of the world. A lot of these drives off target have found the semi rough which has left a shot into the green. However it is the green in regulation figure down to a miserable 19% that is the biggest concern. This is a big drop and not good enough. What has surprised me is my putting has improved to 31.9 putts per round and I think I can get that even lower. My sand saves have doubled from 12% to a very strong 24% which I consider testament to the my hard work this summer. However most pleasing of all is par scrambles which I've improved from 16% to 22%. Granted my shoddy approach play and lousy green in regulation number has given me far more practice than I was anticipating. Despite messing around with techniques and thinking I wasn't going forward the numbers seem to tell a different tale.

Let's be honest, numbers on a blog aren't the whole story. However they do show some interesting trends. I wasn't aware I was missing so many greens and that's something I'll be sharing with Andrew Piper when I have a lesson in the new year. The bottom line is, there's room for improvement across the board.

So what can you the reader take from this latest rambling? Well the bottom line is beware if you pull the tale of this tiger. I don't mind critique where it's deserved but if you post about my ethic, my approach and lessons being a waste of time and money then I will respond. That's not an invitation to log on and test the theory. That slightly gnarly statement aside, what Fish's blog, or Robin Hopkins to give him a full mention, has done is given me something to compare myself against and motivate myself with to get better. I have a plan over the winter to work on the scoring area, which I feel will keep scores ticking along even when I'm not hitting it that well.

I'm itching to get back to the range and after a few days away this coming weekend to see family, I have a couple of weeks to get back into the old routine ready to work hard on my game over the festive period, including some practice rounds to see how my game is shaping up where it matters. I want to play even more than I did in 2016. I enjoy playing, even on the bad days. In fact I enjoy my golf, whether it's working on my game, a weekend roll up with the usual cronies, a competition or a Golf Monthly meet somewhere. That's still something a lot of people find hard to comprehend. They see this pursuit to single figures as all consuming and sucking me dry. I have always had a solid, dogmatic approach to a lot of my sporting pursuits, in fact a lot of areas of my life and golf is no different. There's a single golfer deep within. Whether I bring it out in 2016, the year after or the year after that, it will happen. I can't wait to see what the new year brings.