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.
Ups and downs, man. Golf is a hectic roller coaster.
For example, I suffered a pretty significant slump a week ago when I played terribly during the first tournament I ever participated in. Honestly, that tournament was the crescendo at the end of some pretty poor play. I spent a couple of weeks before that competition playing average golf – not bad but not good. My swing didn’t feel right. My approach was a little off. And my handicap was growing.
The difficulties with the tournament just put a punctuation mark on everything and forced me to question my decision to play golf.
So, yes, I was low.
And then two days ago, I walked 18 holes with my teenage son and played the best round of my life, shooting a four-over-par 76 on my home course. The tour took a chunk out of my handicap and suddenly, I was riding high and optimistic about the future.
Ups and downs.
It would be easy to gloss over the downs and dismiss them as part of the process – every golfer has bad days so why dwell on them? But progress is not always linear. Sometimes, it gets worse before it gets better and I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have had the best time of my life without those bad days.
Poor tournament play sent me into a spiral of self-doubt that forced me to reach out to my coach for guidance and support. My main problem was the driver. He drove every ball off the tee hard to the left, finding a deep rough. I sent my coach videos of my swing and we got to work. He diagnosed the problem – a severely locked stance that only got more locked with each pull off the tee – and had me immediately address the situation with my alignment. My closed stance was exacerbating my tendency to pull the ball, so his solution was to open up my stance and try to induce a fade.
We started by taking two alignment sticks and running them as tracks, one next to the ball pointing just to the left of the target and the other along my tips pointing further left of the target. Without changing anything in my swing, I started hitting balls with that new open alignment and the impact was immediate. I worked through my bag, hitting light fades with my wedges and irons. When I reached my driver, the slight fade turned into a large, ballooning slice. I sent more videos to my coach and he got me closer to the ball. The slice turned into a baby fade.
I spent a couple of days experimenting with the new setup until I was comfortable enough to take the course. Opening my stance so drastically on that first tee was scary. My miss is on the left but here I was aiming to the left. But I committed to the change and even told my son that he was going to play a fade off the tee all day.
And that’s exactly what I did. I hit a nice fade that landed just shy of the green on the opening hole, a short par-4, and then proceeded to land fades down the fairway all morning, finishing the front nine at one under par. I lost some distance off the tee but the consistency was off the charts.
I fell for a couple of holes after making the turn, hitting a couple of double bogeys after sending a couple of shots out of bounds, but I managed to right the ship and finish strong with a series of pars and a birdie thrown in for good measure.
It was delicious, and really encouraging, especially since I don’t think I had my “A” game. There were the aforementioned errant shots that went out of bounds, but also a couple of chips that I missed and putts that I’d like to repeat.
I know I will never have a perfect round of golf, but I could see room for improvement this round while still scoring well. It is encouraging.
Let me be clear: in no way do I think we immediately “fixed” my driver. I have a feeling that the big stick will be a constant battle throughout this process. It’s frustrating, but I feel like my game is totally dependent on how I hit the driver. If I keep myself in the game, the rest of my game is good enough to score low. But my driver misses are huge and expensive and can quickly tank once. Hopefully the fade will minimize those misses, but I know there will be more lows after this high wears off. I’m sure of it.
But that’s okay. It’s golf. You should enjoy the roller coaster ride, celebrate the wins and learn from the losses. So far, so good.
Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to improve golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 where Graham learns that tournament golf is hard.
https://mygolfspy.com/news-opinion/scratch-by-50-tournament-golf-is-different/
The place Scratch By 50: The highs and lows of golf appeared first MyGolfSpy.
