On Wednesday after my Interview I decided to play at the Par 3 golf course at Bondhay Golf Club. I started with a beautiful straight shot with a 4 iron, which would have landed on the green if only I had trusted my shot to go straight and hadn’t aligned myself for the shot to go left. After a short slightly scuffed pitch on to the green I left my self with a 20 foot putt for par. The putt was dam near perfect but slightly fast and hit the cup and bobbled out of the rim leaving me with a 2 foot putt for bogey.

As luck would have it I decided on the next hole to trust the shot to go straight, this time with my 5 iron I sliced it to the right. Again I was left with a short 25 yard pitch which I totally thinned to the other side of the green, next pitch was heavy barely getting on to the green. I nearly managed to get the putt in for bogey but this time the ball stopped short some 2 inches from the hole for a double bogey.

The following 3 holes all resulted in bogies with two shots going left and one straight. I’m now six over for 5 holes. Then my game turned around and on the 6th hole I hit an outstandingly good shot on to the green leaving me with a 5 foot putt for birdie, which I made. Next three holes I managed pars, although all of them could have easily have been birdies as each short pitch or putt either hit the hole or stopped inches short, I finally finished with a +5, scorecard here.

Felling fairly happy with that score, best here has been +4, but getting a +5 shows I’m getting more consistent on the golf course. The other improvement was that every single shot of the tee was hit sweetly, no heavy shots; just direction was somewhat off occasionally. One thing I’ve learnt today though is not to aim right expecting the shot to go left, so from now on I’m going to aim at the my desired target and no longer compensate for a hook.

The one area that let me down was my short game and the reason is obvious, I haven’t been practicing my short game as often as I normally do over the last 10 days or so, as I’ve been trying to grove my full swing. Another lesson learned; don’t neglect your short game.

After that golf course experience the next day I went to the range. This is where things went drastically wrong. Normally my range game is many times better than my golf course game, not tonight though. To say it was poor is an understatement, as I’ve mentioned before I score my golf range practice sessions out of 10, this ranked a 2, worst rating previously was a 3. It could have been a 1, if I hadn’t actually started well.

So what happened between the two days from the golf course to the golf range? Well I have a few theories. I started my session as per normal, hitting 16 balls with my SW, to various targets to warm up. Then I hit 16 balls to 130 yard target with my 7 iron and then I have a break. During this break there was a guy in the bay next to me trying as hard as he could to hit the ball and for the 10 minutes I was watching him he never hit one that wasn’t topped. I was looking at his swing in detail and thinking what was he doing wrong and seeing several things. Then as I was about to restart the havens opened and as luck would have it the prevailing wind was side on in to the bays, so I was going to get wet.

Putting on my waterproofs I then proceeded with the second part of my practice session, performing so slow practice swings then building up speed all were of the usual quality. Then I went to hit a ball which was totally topped, oh well me thinks haven’t topped one all session yet, so accepted that one. Next shot topped, and the next two shots topped, four topped shots in a row, this never happens. Feeling very disheartened, I make more of an effort with my practice swing and check to see if I’ve started doing something wrong. Everything seemed reasonable, so next ball, hit well, phew I think, whatever caused me to top four balls in a row has gone away now. Wrong, next three shots all topped again.

Something has gone drastically wrong here; I never top 7 shots in a full practice session let alone 7 in 8 ball’s. This is how the session continued, hitting one shot out of 5 decently and all the rest where either topped or massively sliced coming of the toe. I then decided there wasn’t any point in continuing, as all that was happening is I was getting more and more frustrated and couldn’t really pull myself round to fix whatever it was that was going wrong.

So why the massive difference from one day at the golf course and the next at the golf range? Firstly and the most easiest one to explain and give as an excuse is that with the waterproofs on over my coat, jumper, tee-shirt and thermals my swing was being severely restricted and I had no feel in the swing at all. Secondly, I know when watching someone’s swing that is impressive often has a knock on effect with my swing improving. Therefore watching someone’s swing that was less than perfect, (sorry stranger) in fact it was horrendous, could have had a similar and opposite effect on my swing.