A quick reminder of my goal for the end of 2024: get from a 10.5 to a 6.5 index (which means regularly shooting around 80 at Saffron Walden Golf Club).
I am currently at…10.5
Sunday 12th May
With three kids and a wife who quite often works weekends, Sunday golf is a bit of a rarity for me. This weekend, though, I did manage to get 18 holes in for the Sunday Stableford at Saffron Walden.
This was a 7.20am tee time – early mornings are often the best time for me to get out, but it definitely takes a couple of holes to limber up (and at that time of day I’m not going to be getting to the course with more than about 10 minutes to spare).
This fact nicely was demonstrated on the first two holes today, where I managed a 7, followed by a 6. The 7 caused by a wild drive on the 1st into some really thick rough, which took a couple of hacks to get out of.
On the 2nd hole, I half-topped my tee shot but it went down the middle. Somehow, though, the ball was nowhere to be seen. This has to be one of the most frustrating feelings in golf, and I didn’t have the desire to go back to the tee, so accepted a ‘blob’ and moved on.
Things improved a bit from there, including a textbook birdie on the 8th (holing a 15 footer after a really nice drive and approach), but two more doubles on the card left me 11 over par.
Eagle time!
For us ordinary golfers, eagles are very rare beasts indeed.
GolfShot has my eagle scoring at officially 0%, even though I have had a few over the years. Sometimes they come from a lucky chip-in or perhaps holing out on a par 4. This one, on the par 5 10th, was a ‘proper’ eagle: a piped drive must have gone almost 300 yards down the middle, leaving around 200 to the front of the green. I hit a really pure 6 iron on the perfect line to leave it about 10 yards short of the green, with the pin about 10 feet from the front. The putt was dreamy – perfect speed and perfect line to hit the centre of the pin and drop for a three!
The rest of the back 9 was steady – hitting some nice shots but not quite taking advantage of some good positions. An unfortunate 7 on the tough 17th turned what could have been an 84 or 85 into an 88, but this definitely felt like good progress. +5 for the back 9 (and could have easily been +2 or +3) is definitely much closer to where I want to get to.
This was also just a glorious morning to play golf – warm sunshine, good company and the course at Saffron Walden was in absolutely tremendous condition (including that thick rough and some pretty slick greens).
What have I learned?
This was my second 88 in a row, but I’m definitely swinging it better. 50% of fairways is OK, but I’m still not converting enough of my good tee shots into greens in regulation, and also still not getting up and down often enough.
Still far too many doubles and trebles on my card. You just can’t score well with those, so I have to get better at minimising the damage when something does go wrong. I also definitely need to get off to better starts and either play a bit later in the day, or just get up earlier and warm up more.
Dave McLean