Pulling it apart...

Went to the Heath on my lunch break and spent 30 mins working through my wedge shots. I have now disciplined the quarter swing and have the three swings (quarter, half & three quarters) working pretty well. I have no idea about distance yet. You can't pace it out on the Heath as it's like concrete and the balls zip off in all directions. I'll be pacing it out next time I practice at the club and I am hoping to get a DMD for my birthday so I can learn exactly how far each one goes and use that knowledge to good effect on the course.

My practice also brought home some of my frustrations and I must admit to feeling a little blue on my return. My short game is so much better than it was and I'm now hitting the green from further away meaning I'm having to putt longer distances, sometimes up/down a tier. That said I've maintained my number of putts average, so I just couldn't fathom why I wasn't scoring lower.

So I loaded up Scoresaver 2 and just pulled apart my stats to identify the problem areas. I now know that there are six holes I am yet to par and unsurprisingly they are a core component of my nightmare nine. On any given day there are 9 holes that I tend to perform well on and 9 that cause me varying degrees of difficulty. On three of those holes my average score is actually going down, suggesting that I am improving how I play them. On the others I've decided to rethink my course management.

The fourth of the nine is actually our par 3 18th, which has water to the back and the right of the green and a line of trees to the left of the green. There is a tight entrance to the hole and on more than a few occasions I've ended up in the drink and failed to get up and down. I'm considering laying up in the future, chipping on and aiming to secure par / bogey that way.

Which leaves five problem holes. The first of the bunch is the 4th hole and I have no idea why it causes me so many problems. I'm usually losing a couple of shots off the tee trying to hit it too hard, then I'll maybe hit my approach in the bunker, onto the wrong tier of the green or into the gorse. It's a 382 yard par 4 and I'm currently averaging +4. New plan 6/7 iron from the tee, same again from the fairway, chip on and putt for par.

Then come the run of 4 holes that wreck my card 12 - 15 (stroke index 10, 6, 4, 2). Par for this run is 17, I average 26.8. So even if I'm playing well up to that point I go and whack on another 10 strokes to my scorecard. Solution? Same conservative strategy as I'm adopting elsewhere, lay up and try and get up and down.

I have no idea whether this will work but I hope that by taking this approach to dramatically reduce my scores on my poorer holes I will be able to see a marked improvement in my results.