Bucket and spade

Got in a cheeky nine holes this evening and learnt a lot. Two holes poor, seven holes good and I'm pleased with progress. Biggest plus points were my chipping and putting. Three up and downs were great rewards for a lot of hard work on my short game. If you've not read it yet I really recommend that you check out the X Factor chipping post, it honestly has revolutionised my game.

The two poor holes were both caused by shocking tee shots, interestingly when I chose to take an iron for safety, I won't be doing that again! My 3 wood is working so much better as I don't try to muscle it off the tee. What I have learnt is that I need to take more care over my preparation before each shot as when I did today I played really well. Following the disaster on 2nd my scoring went bogey, bogey, par, par, double, par and then blew up on the 9th. By that stage the sun was low and to be honest I wasn't really concentrating after slicing my first tee shot out of bounds.

What I also learnt today is that my bunker play has gone from bad to worse. I'm now leaving the ball in the bunker having previously been airmailing the green. Obviously I'm concerned about hitting too far and quitting on the shot. On both the 2nd and 7th today I took three strokes to get the ball out of a greenside bunker, that is quite simply not good enough. I'm planning to have a lesson on Tuesday but really need to focus on my iron striking so I'm going to download the Golf Monthly Short Game App bunker videos. Hopefully they will be as effective as the X Factor chipping clip. If not I'll be taking a bucket and spade with me on future rounds to keep me entertained as I set up camp in the sand traps!

51(36) 20 points
4(3), 11(5), 4(3), 5(4), 5(5), 3(3), 7(5), 4(4), 8(4)