New Year Aspiration

Yesterday, I shared my rather simple New Year resolution with you. But there is a much more challenging aspiration that lies behind it. Practice is designed to improve performance and obviously I will need some barometer of improvement. My measure for 2011 is my statistic for putts per round. My ambition is to lop off four shots.

This will see my average drop from 36.68 to 32.68. Now I know what you are thinking. PPR are not an isolated statistic and can be heavily influenced by how many greens in regulation you hit, or more importantly, only just miss.

I understand this but I started off with the aim of learning this game from green to tee and wish to plan my improvement in similar vein. This means getting better at both my long putting (pace & break judgement) and short putts (under six foot).

With bunkers my main concern is to consistently get out and on the green. Once I can do that I'll contemplate trying to get it close. However, I am looking to try and get up and down more often and hope my chipping practice will help my putting by leaving me closer.

So my resolution will see me almost double my practice time with the short stick and I hope that this plays its part in helping me realise my aspiration.