94 - Queenfield Golf Course
Bad round.
Scorecard
| Hole | Par | Score | Fairway | GIR | Putts | Penalties |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | 5 | Right | No | 2 | - |
| 2 | 5 | 6 | Left | No | 1 | 1 |
| 3 | 3 | 3 | - | Yes | 2 | - |
| 4 | 5 | 6 | Left | No | 3 | - |
| 5 | 4 | 5 | Left | No | 2 | - |
| 6 | 4 | 5 | Yes | No | 1 | 1 |
| 7 | 4 | 5 | Yes | No | 2 | - |
| 8 | 3 | 5 | - | No | 1 | 1 |
| 9 | 4 | 6 | Left | No | 2 | 1 |
| Out | 36 | 46 | 2 | 1 | 16 | 4 |
| 10 | 4 | 6 | Yes | No | 2 | - |
| 11 | 5 | 5 | Yes | Yes | 2 | - |
| 12 | 3 | 4 | - | Yes | 3 | - |
| 13 | 4 | 6 | Left | No | 2 | 1 |
| 14 | 3 | 3 | - | Yes | 2 | - |
| 15 | 4 | 5 | Right | No | 2 | - |
| 16 | 4 | 7 | Left | No | 3 | - |
| 17 | 5 | 6 | Right | No | 2 | 1 |
| 18 | 4 | 6 | Yes | No | 2 | - |
| In | 36 | 48 | 3 | 3 | 20 | 2 |
| Total | 72 | 94 | 5 | 4 | 36 | 6 |
Takeaways
Get off the tee
For all the time I spent practicing my driver and 3 wood at the range it sure didn’t show. I hit driver 5 times, and this is what happened:
Hole 1. Push cut right into rough/light trees
Hole 2. Pull OB into woods, lost ball, penalty
Hole 5. Hard pull into trees on the left, got a lucky bounce and it fell right in front of the lady’s tees
Hole 6. Push cut into right fairway, best drive of the day
Hole 9. Hard pull left OB into woods, lost ball, penalty
After 9 I put the cover on my driver in hopes of hitting more fairways. I went from two fairways on the front to three on the back.
Of my five drivers today I hit one fairway, took two penalties (should have been three except for the lucky tree bounce on 5), and hit the shot I invisioned zero times. For as much time as I spent working on that club this was infuriating.
The more maddening thing was that on the back I didn’t do much better with my 3 wood or hybrid. I currently don’t have a “go-to” club off the tee when I need to get it in the fairway. That sucks.
Tempo
My buddy Chris mentioned this several times with his game, and after my poor round it got me thinking about how tempo is affected my swing. I believe (theory, not fact) my woods have a much more violent tempo than my irons do.
I’ve taken pride in having a faster swing speed off the tee. In high school I wasn’t a good golfer, but if I got a hold of a drive I could hit it ~310 yards. Now I’m lucky to reach 275. I think subconsciously that is making me want to swing harder and faster, which in turn is making it difficult to maintain these better mechanics I am trying to pick up.
Today, I must have been missing one or two important things on the tee box which kept me pulling practically every ball. Slowing things down is probably the right move for me to gain more consistency. Once I start hitting more fairways I can start to speed things back up.
Wedges
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - my wedge play is rusty. Whenever I had a chance I was bumping and running, which ended up working out great on a number of chips. Unfortunately there were also a number of times I needed to flop it on the green and I wasn’t working with a ton of grass. I hit these thin more often than not which accounted for a number of the double bogeys on the card.
My game might be able to compensate for a poor driver, but I can’t be bad off the tee and around the green. I think I’ll likely get more strokes back by investing in my short game than my long game.
Next steps
I think there are two main focus areas for me coming out of this round:
1) Short game, 40 yards and in 2) Off the tee
Shore up those two areas, in that order, and I think I find five strokes today to card my +17 to par. We are close, just need to find the last few pieces.