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 a 7.8. Welcome to your mid-life crisis.
Can you have too much of a good thing? Ice cream, bourbon and Taylor Sheridan tv shows, sure, but what about golf? Is it possible to play too much? That’s the question I’m pondering as I sit in an airport, finishing a golf trip with my son and wondering if I’ll be able to schedule a round for tomorrow at my home course.
I play a lot of golf – usually two or three rounds a week with a couple of practice sessions – which is a lot compared to your average person with a day job. It is possible that I have played too much. It is also possible that I did not play enough considering what I’m trying to do.
Let me clarify the question. I don’t wonder if the amount of golf I play affects my work and home life. It would be a reluctant yes. I’m sure too much on the course. I will do it in therapy later. I wonder if the amount of golf I play has a negative impact on the quality of my game. Am I playing too much? Or should I play more?
One of the reasons Sam Hahn jumped on board as my coach is because he went through a similar journey when he was in his 20s. He got to scratch in an accelerated timeframe and he did it by giving himself completely to the sport. He played 36 holes a day, every day. The shots fell off his game.
I have met some other people recently with similar approaches. A guy plays twice at two different courses every day. Another dude I met bought a simulator and played 18 holes every day on his lunch break. All these people made massive improvements in their game in a short period of time.
I certainly feel like I’m at my best when I’m on the course constantly, grinding away day after day, but at this point in my journey, just the banking volume of turns is not the ticket. The magic sauce seems to be a mix of practice sessions and scoring rounds. Hahn agrees.
“I don’t practice much anymore,” Hahn says, adding that he’s fallen into a groove of 18 to 36 holes a day. “But when you’re always working on great moves like you are, you can’t just play all the time. You have to practice those moves on the range or in the simulator.”
I also came to appreciate taking small breaks from golf during the last six months of this project. I’ve noticed that my game seems to suffer when I go day after day without rest periods. My swing definitely breaks down when fatigue sets in, but more significantly, I have a hard time focusing on the round and hitting my feet.
Imagine having chocolate cake for breakfast every now and then. She is really capricious. Now imagine having a chocolate cake for breakfast every day. The whim is taught and you will start to worry about diabetes. The volume seems to degrade the situation somehow.
I have a friend who swears he plays his best golf after taking a couple of weeks off. The break allows them to reset, maybe even forget some bad habits. He might be right, but he’s not actively trying to improve. He’s just out trying to enjoy a ride with friends, which is great. But that is not my purpose here. The clock is ticking and taking a couple of weeks off would be counterproductive. More importantly, taking a couple of weeks off from golf sounds terrible. That would be so sad.
But a day or two away from golf every two weeks seems to help me recharge. I also scored better after a short break. I mentioned the golf trip with my son. We flew to Utah and played two desert courses, The Ledges and Copper Rock. I had to finish a bunch of work before the trip and we had a long day’s drive to get to Utah, so I went two whole days without golf activities. I was worried about how my swing would hold up, but I played really well. We went into both courses blind, which always makes me nervous, but my swing was in a good place. I had a nice shade working off the tees that I could count on to find fairways, my irons were crisp and I didn’t putt like a complete idiot.
I lost some shots due to poor course management (which is to be expected when you don’t know the nuances of a course), and my long approach shots continued to be just a hair off target. But I shot an 80 and 81 on courses I’ve never played before and had fun doing it.
The scores were neutral in terms of my handicap, but the situation helped me answer my question about how much golf I played.
Yes, I need to play more.
But I also need to make sure that I take the opportunities, so that I can play my best.
Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch by 50 where Graham hits the highs and lows of golf in the same week.
The place Scratch by 50: Can you play too much golf? appeared first MyGolfSpy.
