Experiment: THE RESULT

Well I conducted the Great Stableford Experiment on Sunday and although there was no quantum leap iin my socre, there was in my thinking. The Greensomes competition at the club had a shotgun start and despite teeing off in near darkness I hit traffic on the 15th hole and decided to call it a day. I amassed 23 points from the 14 holes I completed but that does not tell the whole story.

I normally get off to an awful start at my course. Played a little too conservatively off the tee and hit 4 iron into the front left hand bunker. Now normally, I would be thinking about getting the ball close to the hole for a chance for par. With my new thinking I knew that I'd score 2 points with a 5. As a result my objective was just to get out of the sand cleanly and anywhere on the green. Managed to pop it out at the front of the green and hit a great putt leaving me a simple tap in for a 4 and 3 points. The new approach was working already.

Made a good connection on the 2nd tee but its a really tight hole with trees lining the right hand side. The ball just drifted right and kept going and cleared the trees to finish OoB. No panic I thought a 7 gets me two points. Hit a solid second tee shot to the heart of the fairway and laid up leaving myself a full PW in.. Two more putts, two more points.

Up until now I had thought conservatively but this changed on the 3rd. My tee shot went right and I needed to chip over a bunker to a tight pin. Conservative would have seen me hit a normal chip ensuring I cleared the bunker and try to make it back with two putts. But the ball was sitting up nicely meaning there was a reduced risk of thinning it if I played a flop. So I assessed the risk/reward (I honestly have never done this much before) and decided the risk was worth it. Left myself a tantalising 10 foot putt for par but read it all wrong and tapped in for a four and two more points. Double bogey, double bogey followed for another four points and I was sitting pretty after 6 holes with 13 points and not even playing my best golf!

I repeated the flop shot decision making process on the 6th and this time left myself a four footer that lipped out. Damn it, but then again another 2 points. Tee shot on the 7th and I got greedy. Hit a hybrid as I would do normally but was thinking about a net eagle as this is a par 5 I can hit in two. No surprise that I found OOB. Reminded myself of what I had achieved on the 2nd and played in much the same fashion, but unfortunately missed the green with my wedge and two putted for an 8 and a point..

By this stage I was quite lonely, and quite mentally drained. Playing on my own was taking its toll with no respite, camaraderie and most importantly banter. What happens in these moments? Swing thoughts creep in, that's what happens. You will not be surprised to hear that the entire round collapsed at this point as I miserably hacked my way along 8, 9 & 10. I collected myself on the 11th and hit my wedge to the back of the green and two putted for a par and 3 points. Three more double bogeys each worth two points and my round for today was over.

What I realised today is that despite my best efforts I have been inadvertently thinking like a scratch golfer, trying to make par from the tee of each hole. This has placed extra pressure on my game and affected my shot choices negatively. I hope I can take this new mindset into my future approaches to golf.

I also realised that swing thoughts are bad but as I'm currently working on swing changes they are to a degree inevitable. In the future I'll try to think of JC Anderson, smile and get back to just hitting the blinking thing!