Games Gone To Pot

greyc · 05-05-2009 10:33pm #1

This time 2 years ago I was playing off 9, after last Sunday's comp my exact H/C is 11.5. I haven't played off 12 for at least 15 years and I don't know where I'm going wrong.

I seem to be hitting the ball as well if not better than 2 years ago but I just can't seem to score. I regularly play with 4 & 5 handicappers, and my drives are up with theirs, but every round I seem to have 1 or 2 really bad holes & I end up with 33 or 34 pts, or 4 or 5 over my H/C in strokes.

I've embellished my scores for the last month on howdidido & the stats are as follows:
F/Ways Hit: 52%
G.I.R: 29%
Chips Up & Dn: 54%
Sand Saves: 33%
Putts per Rnd: 32.6

I suppose the GIR looks to be the worst stat, but I can't put my finger on why i'm missing them so much. If there's one shot which I consistantly play badly, it's the 3 wood off the F/W, regularly knock it down.

Anyone any tips or advice.

conman · 05-05-2009 10:49pm

your right about GIR, but if you are missing so many greens, and you average 1.75 putts per round, then you can see straight away there are a lot of dropped opportunities.. as we all know the most important part of our game is in short game, or 100yrds in... maybe some 9iron up to putter practice is required, and a bit of confidence gained..

Niall09 · 05-05-2009 10:49pm

Go get yourself a lesson. You haven't told us anything in which we can help you with

jampotjim · 05-05-2009 10:50pm

greyc wrote: »

This time 2 years ago I was playing off 9, after last Sunday's comp my exact H/C is 11.5. I haven't played off 12 for at least 15 years and I don't know where I'm going wrong.

I seem to be hitting the ball as well if not better than 2 years ago but I just can't seem to score. I regularly play with 4 & 5 handicappers, and my drives are up with theirs, but every round I seem to have 1 or 2 really bad holes & I end up with 33 or 34 pts, or 4 or 5 over my H/C in strokes.

I've embellished my scores for the last month on howdidido & the stats are as follows:
F/Ways Hit: 52%
G.I.R: 29%
Chips Up & Dn: 54%
Sand Saves: 33%
Putts per Rnd: 32.6

I suppose the GIR looks to be the worst stat, but I can't put my finger on why i'm missing them so much. If there's one shot which I consistantly play badly, it's the 3 wood off the F/W, regularly knock it down.

Anyone any tips or advice.

Well for a start drop the 3 wood.. As 1st off if you are knocking it down and having issues with it drop it from the set and put a new one or something like a rescue 16* in there..

Must be mmissing more than the 3wd as the greens in reg is quite low espically for somebody who wants to be a single handicapper

Mister Sifter · 05-05-2009 10:53pm

Sounds like you're having a bad run... don't let it get you down though. Very hard to put a finger on it from looking at a few stats, but just comparing your own stats to my own (5 handicap) and your greens in reg stat is pretty low. Mine is around 56%. Your putting stat is pretty reasonable though.

When you don't score on a hole, what's typically the problem? Take your last round or two... when you've buggered up on a hole, can you pinpoint the shots that caused it?

conman · 05-05-2009 10:56pm

if you are buggering up holes mainly on the back 9, maybe its fitnesss / stamina...

Kevinmarkham · 05-05-2009 11:16pm

I agree with Graeme - don't let it get you down. Every golfer has despaired at their game once in a while (or more often than we care to admit).

Forget statistics for the moment and focus on course management. If you're not hitting GIR, don't keep trying. Literally, take one round and don't go for every green. Lay up 20 yards short of the green rather than going for it from long range and being stuffed in a bunker of behind a tree. I'm not suggesting that you use this long term, but it will build your confidence and improve your short game at the same time. I'd hazard a guess that when you stand over a second shot with your 3 wood you're thinking, 'just don't knock it down'. So play a different game with a different mindset and see what happens.

What's your course?

stockdam · 05-05-2009 11:39pm

greyc wrote: »

F/Ways Hit: 52%
G.I.R: 29%
Chips Up & Dn: 54%
Sand Saves: 33%
Putts per Rnd: 32.6

It looks like you are having a few three putt greens if your stats are correct.
You miss about 13 greens but get up and down in say 7 of these - so at least 7 one putt greens. That means that you have at least 3 greens where you three putt (to give you 32 putts and not 29).

Your stats still don't add up.

You hit say 5 greens in regulation but say you 3 putt three of these - 3 over par.

You miss 13 greens but 7 of them you save par and 6 of them you bogey.

I make that 9 over (I've ignored sand saves).

I think you maybe don't get up and down as often as you believe and my guess is that you need to work more on your short game.

greyc · 06-05-2009 6:39am

Thanks for all the feedback, just a couple of replies to some of the comments.
I had a lesson last Oct, and while he made quite a significant change to my swing, (I was taking club back too much on the inside), I feel that I've mastered the change quite well.

The GIR is obviously a problem, maybe my alignment is off or something, but it's not that I'm missing them all to the left or right, they also can be long or short. For example on one hole last week I had 165 yds to the centre of the green from the middle of the F/W with a slight breeze behind. I took a 6 iron which I usually hit about 155yds, but my ball landed on the back of the green and rolled down a bank at the back, took a 5.

Putting probably is a problem as well. Comparing my stats to other Cat 2 golfers on howdidido they show that I 1 putt 30% of greens, whereas the avg would be 25%. My 2 putts are 59% compared to 66%, and 3 putts 11% compared to an avg of 9%. Obviously my 1 putts are high because I'm missing so many greens.

I'm playing later on today, I'll post later let you know how I got on my first day off 12.

conman · 06-05-2009 10:29am

greyc wrote: »

Thanks for all the feedback, just a couple of replies to some of the comments.
I had a lesson last Oct, and while he made quite a significant change to my swing, (I was taking club back too much on the inside), I feel that I've mastered the change quite well.

The GIR is obviously a problem, maybe my alignment is off or something, but it's not that I'm missing them all to the left or right, they also can be long or short. For example on one hole last week I had 165 yds to the centre of the green from the middle of the F/W with a slight breeze behind. I took a 6 iron which I usually hit about 155yds, but my ball landed on the back of the green and rolled down a bank at the back, took a 5.

Putting probably is a problem as well. Comparing my stats to other Cat 2 golfers on howdidido they show that I 1 putt 30% of greens, whereas the avg would be 25%. My 2 putts are 59% compared to 66%, and 3 putts 11% compared to an avg of 9%. Obviously my 1 putts are high because I'm missing so many greens.

I'm playing later on today, I'll post later let you know how I got on my first day off 12.

i cannot figure out my distances yet, so im hitting long and short of greens, but im getting there, have to take some time to measure my distances.. I was pushing a lot of irons right, and was dufffin a fair few, the pro i met changed all that.. now i have accuracy / line almost perfect, its just the yardage i got to figure out yet..

any tips on working out yardages?
what i have been doing is marking the club i play on certain par 3 lengths, or if i get a stroke saver and calculate a shot in to the green... but im finding that every club seems to go about 160yds.. lol..

f22 · 06-05-2009 10:53am

conman wrote: »

im finding that every club seems to go about 160yds.. lol..

You should see an average difference of 10 to 15 yards between clubs.

GreeBo · 06-05-2009 12:38pm

greyc wrote: »

The GIR is obviously a problem, maybe my alignment is off or something, but it's not that I'm missing them all to the left or right, they also can be long or short. For example on one hole last week I had 165 yds to the centre of the green from the middle of the F/W with a slight breeze behind. I took a 6 iron which I usually hit about 155yds, but my ball landed on the back of the green and rolled down a bank at the back, took a 5.

That sounds unlucky more than anything else. On most greens the trouble is all at the front. Do you usually miss them short or long? any pro will tell you that most of us miss short as we calculate our yardages based on the best we can hit each club, rather than the average we hit each club. So I personally wouldnt worry about missing long too much, may have been a flier, perfect contact, etc. Obviously if you start missing them all long you need to redo your yardages.

I cant imagine there are many par4's where you would need to hit a 3wood (or anything like that!) as your second shot, unless you are trying to make up for a bad drive. Remember that even off 9 you are only "supposed" to be hitting 9 greens in regulation, dont ruin a strokes score by going for everything, especially if you are playing badly.

I would +1 trying a round where you dont go for everything, especially when you dont need to. Get yourself playing to 12 before you start trying to play to 9 again.

Best of luck.

greyc · 06-05-2009 2:20pm

conman wrote: »

i cannot figure out my distances yet, so im hitting long and short of greens, but im getting there, have to take some time to measure my distances.. I was pushing a lot of irons right, and was dufffin a fair few, the pro i met changed all that.. now i have accuracy / line almost perfect, its just the yardage i got to figure out yet..

any tips on working out yardages?
what i have been doing is marking the club i play on certain par 3 lengths, or if i get a stroke saver and calculate a shot in to the green... but im finding that every club seems to go about 160yds.. lol..

Just back after playing a round and it was hard to know whether things were better or not. I had 35pts which wasn't too bad considering a gale was blowing the whole round.

I generally don't have trouble with yardages and we're allowed use GPS devices in competition so I always know exactly how far I have left. Generally I can hit my PW 115yds and 10yds extra for every other club up to 175 for my 4 iron.

One thing I noticed today near the end of the round is that I may not be making enough shoulder turn, I may have more of an arm swing. When I had a lesson last Oct the pro was getting me to keep the clubhead outside my hands the whole way back. I've been concentrating on this swing thought since then, and perhaps I'm forgetting to turn my shoulder.

The one main fault I've always had is a tendency to "reverse pivot", and to combat this I've been trying to keep my left knee as still as possible on the backswing.

Anyone got a good tip for initiating the backswing, cause I'm afraid if I just think about making a shoulder turn, my left side will collapse and I'll also take the club back on the inside.

Rikand · 02-09-2021 12:44pm

No idea how to report posts on mobile so paging @charlieIRL @slave1

slave1 · 02-09-2021 1:36pm

Message received, post deleted, may as well close thread too, years old

Games Gone To Pot

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