Graham Averill turned 50 this year and he’s going crazy. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He started this project as a 13 handicap trying to get to scratch in a year. Now it’s an 8.2. Welcome to your mid-life crisis.
Tournament golf is difficult. I’ve spent the last few days completely immersed in the competitive game from walking the ropes with Jacob Bridgeman during the Biltmore Championship PGA Tour event (more on that below) to playing in my first competitive tournament. The PGA Tour event was enlightening. The amateur was sober.
I come from a pretty good golfing background, so I had relatively high expectations when I entered the Skyview Open, a two-day tournament that celebrates the history and culture of black golf. I played well while traveling during a work trip and followed that up with a couple of rounds with some friends from high school where I got to show off my new game. Before starting this project, my friends and I had matching handicaps and we ended up every time we played more or less even. This time I beat them both by over 10 shots and I really didn’t have my “A” game.
So I felt good when I signed up for the Skyview as an experiment for this project. I wanted to see how my game held up under intense pressure and the Skyview seemed like the perfect opportunity to test my game in a legitimate tournament atmosphere. It is a two-day event with a competitive amateur division and a separate pro division. It typically attracts the best golfers of the region, so I had no illusions about winning the thing, but I thought I would at least put a decent point. I was familiar with the course and knew it had difficult greens, but forgiving fairways. In the past I’ve hit it long enough to have easier approach shots on the par-4s and a couple of the par-5s are within two reach for me.
That’s not how the tournament played out.
The first day started off pretty well. I was nervous as hell, but managed to shake off that restless energy and started my first 18 with three pars that included the hardest hole on the course, a long par-4 with a hard approach shot to an elevated green protected by bunkers and burly rough.
I did everything right. Find fairways, hit approach shots and putt in two as you should. And then I carded a triple bogey after hitting my tee shot into the rough. At the time, I didn’t realize I could get an unplayable and I lost three shots to get out of the tall grass.
I bounced back with a par, but the lingering emotional trauma was unavoidable. As I progressed into my round, my first miss with the driver came back into my game and I started to pull the ball off the tee in trouble. My iron game was good and I was putting well, but it doesn’t matter when you keep finding your ball just beyond the stakes out of bounds.
I was paired with a couple of really good golfers that first day – a 26-year-old relatively fresh off a D2 college golf career and a middle-aged guy who won the tournament last year by posting back-to-back 69s. They were both bogeys, but even with my initial triple bogey, I hung with them through the front nine thanks to some pars and a lucky birdie.
But I piled up a couple more triple bogeys on the back and finished with a 90. It was a high score but I knew I hit the ball well enough to make some improvements on the second day. I played safe off the tee and hit it away from danger. With this strategy, I could drop several shots during my second round.
I believe this is what experts call “naivety”.
In fact, I kept the ball in play more often off the tee, counting my slight draw with my alignment, but the rest of my game fell off. My irons were inconsistent and I took a case of the three putts.
Side note: I’m convinced that putting is 1% skill and 99% headspace.
I ended up with a 94. Even worse than that score? I didn’t have fun. My playing partners were great and it was a great day to be on the course, but my swing felt so “off” that I started to dread the holes in front of me. I feel trapped. I’m not the type of guy to retire, so I played the last few holes dragging my existential dread with me, ending up bogey, par, bogey.
I walked away from the tournament with a new respect for golfers who can play well in these situations, but I also spent some long, uncomfortable moments questioning my involvement in the sport. Why waste time trying to hit a small ball into a hole at the end of a field? I should spend my middle age running marathons or painting landscapes. Sitting in a field painting sunflowers sounds beautiful.
The frustration and self-doubt lasted 12 minutes, but when I got out of my truck, I recognized my tournament disaster for what it was: just a bad golf. And that wasn’t the only bad golf I’ve experienced recently.
I mentioned walking the ropes with Jacob Bridgeman at the Biltmore Championship. I got to see first hand how he collected birdies on his way to victory. But I also saw another pro going the other direction, scrambling for pars and bogeys as he hopped from bunker to bunker. He is a professional golfer and he was playing very human golf in front of my eyes.
And that past Skyview champion I had to play with during my first round had a bad day too. He returned on the new again, picked up an eight somewhere along the way and decided to withdraw from the tournament on the 18th hole after losing his ball in the woods. It was obvious that this guy was good at golf, but he didn’t have it that day. Like I didn’t have it that day.
I am six months into this golf modification and my swing and game are still very much a work in progress. I have cut a lot of shots off my handicap and made some improvements but nothing is cemented. I’m always grooving into new moves and old swing faults always come back when I’m tired or under pressure. It’s just how it is now.
And in a way, pooping in a tournament feels like a right of passage. It’s incredibly uncomfortable because you’re caught out there with just the terrible “C” game you brought to the course that day and you’ve holed out 18 times. It is a very specific type of torture. And it is possible that I really like it.
Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to improve golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 where Graham learns if his golf game can travel.
The place Scratch By 50: Tournament Golf is different appeared first MyGolfSpy.
