Right. The best place to start with this post is right here:-
Click to see full-size image.
We shot 94 first time out on the course. No gimmes, no mulligans, off the mens tees. Same ball the whole way round. I am absolutely over the moon, not just about the score but the way I played.
Couldn't resist with the nice weather today so went for a 5,26 tee time. Took 3 hours to get round and I am beyond exhausted. It's the most exercise I have done in 5 years easily, legs are like jelly.
The longest club I took off the tee was a 6 iron, no woods in the bag. The majority of tee shots were little 7 and 8 irons. I did a really nice job of keeping the ball in play, I treated the majority of holes like the pars were +1 i.e. 3 shots to hit the green on a par 4. It kept me away from trying to do anything silly. Ignore the fairway arrows on the scorecard, I got bored of keying those in.
My ball striking was good enough but not great. There were some lovely pure irons in there but a whole lot of left to ride big fades and a few tops off the tee. I got quite lucky with my misses on a fair few occasions.
My short game was absolutely A+. No 3 putt the whole round is something I am most proud of. On proper greens with ridges and slopes. My chipping around the fine too, nearly chipped in a couple of times and gave myself lots of good chances to make putts. Only one triple bogey and that was on the 17th - a hole that has water up both sides and I was bricking it knowing my score was solid. Played it really tentative and got punished.
Absolutely highlight was the 18th. A short up hill part 4. An 8 iron right down the middle, a pitching wedge to 20 foot and then dropped one in dead weight.
Very excited to show my coach in tomorrows lesson. Need to take a couple of days off as have now played golf 13 out of last 14 days. Let's go and break 90 I guess and might have to buy some woods.
Monday +4, 16 putts, 3 greens hit Tuesday +8, 18 putts, 1 green hit Wednesday +2, 14 putts, 3 greens hit Thursday +5, 18 putts, 4 greens hit Friday +1, 16 putts, 6 greens hit
A bit more erratic this week but today was definitely my best ever round. The first time I have hit 6 greens and could easily have been a level par round. Hit the last 4 greens and had a really good look at 6 and 8. Made a lovely birdie on the 3rd as well from just 5 foot.
I really understand the course now, where you can't afford to miss, how the greens run (awfully) and where the best landing spots are. It should be a matter of time before it comes together and can make a level par round.
The reason I am not getting carried away is that I play these rounds by gripping right down the club and making relatively short swings. That way, I feel like I have total control of the club head and can feel the distance. Once you need to hit it more than 100 yards then I have to lengthen the swing and that's when everything can go wrong. Lose control of the club head direction, the swing path goes crazy and it doesn't go straight.
I need to get back on the range and practice though. All I am doing is playing the par 3 course over and over at the moment trying to go low. I have a lesson this Sunday to work on the full swing. Hitting the main course next week for sure. Will be good to get an idea of where we stand on a full course. If I can get the ball inside 100 yards then will be fine but got to get there first.
Got to share this straight away as absolutely buzzing!
Rounds this week on the par 3 course:-
Monday +9, 16 putts, 4 greens hit Tuesday +2, 16 putts, 5 greens hit Wednesday +3, 16 putts, 4 greens hit Thursday +2, 12 putts, 2 greens hit Friday +1, 15 putts, 5 greens hit
Click to see full-size image.
Hit a few poor tee shots in this round but got some good luck with running out onto the green. Got so pumped making a 10 footer for par on the 8th and sunk two 20 footers including the birdie. Heaped pressure on myself on the last two holes, feels great to find something I can really push myself with.
Booked a lesson on the range next week so probably will pop in over the weekend and hit some balls. No real motivation to go on the range anymore when can just play this course over and over again.
Will be on one of the main courses either next week or the week after for sure.
Played golf for around 20yrs and never got better than an 18 h’cap and you’ll be single figures by this time next year. Git!
You would have thought I was useless if you had seen me topping one on the first about 40 yards! Whole different game when I have to start hitting it +150 yards but we will see.
Finally back out on the golf course this week. The par 3 course is unrecognisable since I last played, dried to a crisp. Need to pitch the ball 10-15 yards short of the green to allow for the roll.
Been brilliant getting back out and after a +7 and a +9 earlier this week, put this together today:-
Click to see full-size image.
Beats my best round by 2 shots and I left one right on the lip for birdie on the final hole from 25 feet. 3 of my missed greens were fringes, easily the best I have struck the ball and my putting from all around the greens was excellent.
Probably going to keep playing the par 3 course most days now and get out on the main course later this month.
Goal of shooting under 100 is still on. Going to book a few 1:1 lessons then see what happens on the big boy course. So great being out there today, felt like a proper player.
Finished The Shadow of the Wind last night. Thank you for the recommendations on here, I loved it.
Whizzed through the first 100 pages and the last 100 pages - took a while over the middle. It's a pretty complex thriller that lost me a few times in places but really pulls everything together in a way that was really satisfying.
The setting makes the book, it is so evocative and pulls you into the time period. It's pretty loose with genre - you get big doses of romance, humour, horror etc. That is usually a good thing but it definitely left me a little bored in places as the story meanders and gets a bit convoluted. The writing is just amazing though. I will definitely need to read it again in the future knowing how the story pans out - I suspect I will appreciate it more.
Yep, the garden was like an absolute bog for the last couple of months, front and back.
Am a bit concerned it won't come back to life though. I was going to have a go at it with a rake and I have some grass seed but I don't really know what I'm doing.
Raking and over seeding might make it look a bit nicer short term but I'd guess it needs something a bit more substantial if you want to compete with the Jones's.
I'm not an expert but I have a rough idea based on what has worked on my lawn which was also a bog at one point... Most of it is just common sense to me but there's a chance I'm way off the mark so please do your own research and feel free to tell me that I have it completely wrong. YouTube is a great resource by the way, just search 'lawn care' and you'll have hundreds of tips available to watch.
Assuming every other lawn in the neighbourhood isn't a bog then it's probably just that your soil is overly compacted so can't drain.
Ideally as you have a bit of time on your hands you want to build a soakaway in the bit of your lawn that gets the worst of it. Whichever bit gets the most surface water is where the water is naturally draining to so this is the obvious place for a soakaway. You just need to dig a big f**k off hole (the bigger and f**k offer the better) back fill it with some big rocks that leave lots of gaps, stick some weed protection fabric over the top of that then fill with soil and top off with turf/seeds. Simple but hard work.....
I've never done this before as I have a natural aversion to hard work and it looks like a living nightmare. I did pay someone to do it for me with a machine last year and will probably do it again every year as I was very pleased with the results. I have a soakaway and also did the hollow tine aeration and my lawn looks decent despite having a dog regularly running around on it.
Your problem could just be that your turf hasn't knitted in to the soil underneath because both were compacted. That would mean that your grass only has a few cms of mud to grow in to which isn't great. Try digging out a small section of the lawn and see if you can lift it in a sheet, if you can then it's still turf and hasn't turned in to lawn...... Common sense (not expert knowledge) would suggest that the hollow tine aeration will help this knitting process. Cylinder through turf and soil underneath slowly gets filled and they therefore combine in to one.....
Good luck with it, hope to see some impressive results by summer....
Thanks :-)
Will do some digging both on Youtube and in the garden and see if we can get it back to something respectable.
When I was out fiddling out the front at the weekend, the old boy from down the road came to pass judgement and proudly told me he had astro turfed his whole back garden. Pffff, cop out.
In your situation I'd seriously consider artificial grass for the front lawn or even some other decorative low maintenance option.
It's a small area and barely worth transporting the mower from the back where I assume it lives in the shed. It's also always going to be bare at the edges because the paving sucks all the moisture away and that tree and couple of manhole covers really don't help. It's never going to be a beautiful lawn so anything other than grass is probably going to work better.
Why not have some nice bushes along the front, maybe a few up the sides and then just gravel it?
This is the other Jones's. They had a patch of grass on either side and just finished off pulling it all out and putting down gravel / slate. It does look pretty good to be fair.
Maybe I should think about another option for the front. Those man hole covers are an eyesore.
Click to see full-size image.
I started attacking the back garden yesterday. Lots of dead stuff coming up. I have ordered some grass seed and have some left over compost from last year. I think I will try and re-seed and see if that works. The garden is dry as a bone now but very little alive grass left.
Yep, the garden was like an absolute bog for the last couple of months, front and back.
Am a bit concerned it won't come back to life though. I was going to have a go at it with a rake and I have some grass seed but I don't really know what I'm doing.
Raking and over seeding might make it look a bit nicer short term but I'd guess it needs something a bit more substantial if you want to compete with the Jones's.
I'm not an expert but I have a rough idea based on what has worked on my lawn which was also a bog at one point... Most of it is just common sense to me but there's a chance I'm way off the mark so please do your own research and feel free to tell me that I have it completely wrong. YouTube is a great resource by the way, just search 'lawn care' and you'll have hundreds of tips available to watch.
Assuming every other lawn in the neighbourhood isn't a bog then it's probably just that your soil is overly compacted so can't drain.
Ideally as you have a bit of time on your hands you want to build a soakaway in the bit of your lawn that gets the worst of it. Whichever bit gets the most surface water is where the water is naturally draining to so this is the obvious place for a soakaway. You just need to dig a big f**k off hole (the bigger and f**k offer the better) back fill it with some big rocks that leave lots of gaps, stick some weed protection fabric over the top of that then fill with soil and top off with turf/seeds. Simple but hard work.....
I've never done this before as I have a natural aversion to hard work and it looks like a living nightmare. I did pay someone to do it for me with a machine last year and will probably do it again every year as I was very pleased with the results. I have a soakaway and also did the hollow tine aeration and my lawn looks decent despite having a dog regularly running around on it.
Your problem could just be that your turf hasn't knitted in to the soil underneath because both were compacted. That would mean that your grass only has a few cms of mud to grow in to which isn't great. Try digging out a small section of the lawn and see if you can lift it in a sheet, if you can then it's still turf and hasn't turned in to lawn...... Common sense (not expert knowledge) would suggest that the hollow tine aeration will help this knitting process. Cylinder through turf and soil underneath slowly gets filled and they therefore combine in to one.....
Good luck with it, hope to see some impressive results by summer....
Thanks :-)
Will do some digging both on Youtube and in the garden and see if we can get it back to something respectable.
When I was out fiddling out the front at the weekend, the old boy from down the road came to pass judgement and proudly told me he had astro turfed his whole back garden. Pffff, cop out.
Yep, the garden was like an absolute bog for the last couple of months, front and back.
Am a bit concerned it won't come back to life though. I was going to have a go at it with a rake and I have some grass seed but I don't really know what I'm doing.
Gone are the days when a few weeds caused us problems.
We now have issues with a lawn.
Click to see full-size image.
I mowed it a couple of nights ago and you can see where the lawn has been laid. Its really patchy and it's all in lines. It doesn't feel like a complete lawn but lines of turf with ruts of mud in between.
Any lawn experts about? I have picked up some grass seed, do you just sprinkle it about?
Blonde can still be a great place to come to for some solidarity and I am sure there will be some good ideas.
This time last week, I was enjoying a Centre Parcs break. That seems a long time ago. Trying to adjust to working from home now but it's going to be a very strange few weeks/months.
I know The Body Coach (Joe Wicks) is really not everyone's cup of tea but he is doing a "P.E lesson" every day at 9am. I think they had something like 800k tuned in live yesterday. It's a pretty neat idea to start the day.
At the moment, golf is one of the few things I can do to get out of the house and get some exercise. Since the +4 round on the par 3 course, I have carded:-
I have a pretty clear baseline there so can start to make some judgements on my game inside 120 yards.
Long game - 4/10.
Hitting greens is really hard. My swing is definitely still evolving. I have made some quite big changes to the swing path fairly recently that I will show in a different video. That being said, it is just really hard to consistently hit greens. I am not too wayward, hitting a lot of fringes or small misses. That being said the last few rounds have included 1 or 2 really bad swings that have resulted in a 5 or even a 6. Need to find that consistent strike and club face. Generally my distance control has been fairly solid. Would like to think I could reach a point where I could hit 4+ GIR fairly consistently given the yardages.
Chipping - 6/10
No stats here but, in general, my chipping has been very solid. I feel reasonably comfortable with my gap wedge in hand from a decent lie. I want to start really working on making more up and downs now. I tend to be pretty solid at getting the ball back on the green if I stray, next step will be tightening up so I can get it within 10 feet more often and make more pars. One thing I do need to work on is the 8 iron bump and run, not a shot I get to play very often given the nature of the rough around the greens but have messed up a couple of times.
Putting - 7/10
I find it hard to evaluate my putting at the moment. I feel reasonably comfortable over the ball and my stroke is fine, am just not holing a great deal. Not sure whether that is just not reading the greens well or making poor swings. In the 6 rounds above, I have only had 2 "three putts", both in the same round. I am not throwing away too many shots with the putter, just need to start working on the 10-15 foot range and getting them to drop.
Consistency is really king. Looking at my 2 rounds this afternoon, a +6 and a +7. The +6 included a disastrous triple bogey where I shanked one off the tee into deep stuff. That round really should have been a +4. The +7 round included a double bogey on a 60 yard hole where I thinned one 20 yards through the green then duffed a chip.
I am hoping that we don't go into total lockdown so I can keep getting out on the course this week. Can almost play it daily now to get some air and work on those long wedges. Hoping this sets me up well to get out onto the proper courses in the Summer. Might try and video a few shots from my round later this week if I can get a little tripod to hold my phone.
I finally made it to the end of "A Gentleman in Moscow".
It tells the story of a Russian Count who gets put under house arrest, living his life in a grand hotel opposite the Kremlin. The story spans 40+ years as we follow Count Rostov's life in The Metropole.
The book is very good at making you feel part of Russia. I guess you would describe it as historical drama. If you have even a passing interest in the Soviet Union then this is going to fascinate you. It's really well written, at times a little too convoluted for my tastes. The main character is so well developed and likeable - there wasn't a lot of character development outside of that though. The backdrop of Russia, the Metropol Hotel and the individual restuarants and bars and almost characters themselves, they are so well fleshed out.
At it's worst, the book is plodding, lacking in any real drama, short on character development and too full of big words.
At it's best you get a truly interesting piece of historical fiction that fleshes out a world that I could describe in depth and I feel sad that I am no longer reading about.
It's a mixed bag, certainly not the critical acclaim from me that it has received almost everywhere else but interesting none the less.
6/10
I am parking The Poisonwood Bible for now and book 3 of the year, after all the reccs on here, is Shadow of the Wind (already whizzed through 130 pages this weekend).
It's been quite a tough week. I am trying to keep a close eye on my parents who are really grieving for Max. My poor mum is sleeping with his collar under her pillow and coat by the side of her bed. They are keeping themselves fairly isolated for obvious virus related reasons but life without a dog in the house is proving harder than expected.
I sacked off working from home this afternoon and got out on the 9 hole par 3 course. 875 yards total with the longest hole being 120ish.
First 9 holes, carded +11. That included one lost ball that resulted in a 7.
Went round again and carded +4 which I am absolutely over the moon with. My ball striking wasn't great all afternoon but my short game was excellent. In 18 holes I didn't have one 3 putt and my new putter (Wilson Staff Infinite Buck Eye) was only delivered this afternoon.
Super encouraging and feel quite comfortable plotting my way round. Target for the next few months is shooting a level par round.
Another lesson coming this Sunday and got to work on swing mechanics. I am still coming in too steep so going to get some pointers and a plan in place for the next couple of months. Not going to brave the full course yet, I want to feel really comfortable that I have a shot that consistently goes 150 yards and straight. If I can find that and keep working on short game every week then should be able to break 100 fairly quickly.
So so good to be out on grass in the setting sun, not a soul about. Spending the next week at Centre Parcs. Books, fresh air, board games etc. Can't wait.
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