93 at Golf Club at Viniterra
Not a great round! Easy to excuse the poor performance, but we identified a few areas for improvement as well.
Overview of the Round
I shot a 93, or +21 to par.
I hit 8 fairways, 4 GIR, 39 total putts (2.2 per hole), four 3-putts.
There was incredible wind. I purely struck my new 3-hybrid off the tee (averaged 210 on the sim) and it ended up going 170 yards.
Key insights
Ball flight
My striking was good, but ball flight was poor. I start many balls right of target, and anything longer than a 7 iron seemed to have a pretty strong fade. I never really got the hang of the flight and had difficulty putting the ball where I wanted it to go.
I have some serious swing faults that need improvement. I think my down swing is one of the greatest issues at the moment. Hopefully a few lessons will help me identify what I’m doing, as well as learn how I am supposed to be moving. This should add the consistency I need to get to the green quicker.
Chipping and putting
Regardless of my ball flight, my work around the green will drastically reduce my score. The conditions were so windy that unless I was 155 yards out I had almost no chance of hitting the green and I was settling to lay up. A 155 yard shot on most holes was playing at 170 yards, and with ridiculous bunkering around the green that made it extremely difficult to get on.
On the day I hit:
- 3 greenside sand shots
- 12 chip shots
- 39 putts
Chipping
On 13/18 holes I was around the green needing to scramble and I one-putted only once. Once! On top of that, I 3-putted three times after scrambling.
Better chipping will get me closer to the hole and drastically reduce the distance of putt, which will in turn lower my score.
Putting
On the day I had:
- 1 one-putt
- 13 two-putts
- 4 three-putts
While working on chipping should get me closer to the hole and give me more chances at one-putts, I need to improve my lag putting to avoid the three-putts. The greens rolled great, so this is 100% on me.
Strategy
Going into the round, I felt confident that a conservative strategy of keeping the ball in play would give me a great chance of scoring low. After realizing how horrendous the wind was, it was apparent that this strategy wasn’t going to work.
I found myself laying up off the tee and requiring another layup because I couldn’t attack the green. A 170 yard shot was lengthened to 185-195 due to the wind, and bunkering on the front of nearly every green made it risky to play my longer irons.
The go-to strategy on the day was hit it as far as possible off the tee to give you a chance to hit 125-150 yards into the tight greens. Hitting wedges to short irons made the approach much more manageable, as the approach became much steeper which reduced the risk of those front bunkers.
This didn’t work great for my current strengths in my game. I’m still getting comfortable with my driver, so needing to hit it into tight fairways wasn’t ideal, but fortunately I didn’t lose any balls on the day. I played from some pretty rough lies and needed to play out horizontally in order to get the ball back in play, but at least I wasn’t taking penalties.
Preparation is good, but you need to be flexible! You never know what the conditions will be like until you get out there.