Ever wonder why your golf scores look like the monthly trend charts for the Dow Jones Industrial? Why can’t you build any consistency into your game?
Admittedly, it’s early in the 2014 season and my scores to date (92, 77, 78, 83) are a small sample size, but the inconsistency has me concerned. I thought to stabilize and hopefully see steady improvement from week-to-week, I’d rethink my approach to work more like a professional trader on Wall Street. In an attempt to remove the impact of market fluctuations on my portfolio, I will employ some technical analysis, which simply defined is using the examination of critical pieces of past performance data in an attempt to predict future behavior. In my case, I’m going to attempt to drive performance instead of predict it. Good luck to me.
Tomorrow, I play at Poolesville, the site of the ugly opening day debacle. I reviewed performance notes I’ve kept on all the rounds played at Poolesville since 2010 and picked up three trends.
- Ball striking was inconsistent especially off the tee which repeatedly had me playing out of trouble, and didn’t improve until mid to late round when I benched my driver. Last week I wrote about the great experiment I was considering with driver benching on par-5 holes, and it starts tomorrow. Driver is out of the bag and replaced with a 5WD.
- On good ball striking days, I noticed a tight connection between arms and torso and my pre-round full swing practice usually included focus on making a shorter back swing. When I try to make too full of a turn, my arms continue back after my shoulder turn is complete causing me to come up and out of my spine angle and hit loose shots. Today’s practice will be a bucket full of 3/4 pitching wedges to get the feel of a tight connection.
- Poolesville’s greens are undulating and fast. When I opened my stance with the putter somehow my feel for distance greatly improved and I putted well. Not sure why this was the case but an open stance is in the game plan.
After reviewing data from Poolesville, what irks me is that I usually found solutions (adjustments) late in my rounds after my mistakes had impacted my score. Hopefully by adding in what’s worked during past practice and play, before I start, I’ll have a more enjoyable experience. Maybe tomorrow is the start of a long bull run and a look at more opportunities from the fairway! Anyone ever tried this approach out there?
All About Golf 
Brian
Great article. I think your approach is spot on! Driving success instead of bumping into it is the only way to get better at golf. I would be interested to here how things go. Funny, you benched your driver for a 5wd, I benched my 3 hybrid. I look forward to hearing about your results! Swing smooth and putt well!
Cheers
Jim
Thanks Jim. The 5wd for driver was a straight swap to ensure 14 clubs. I will be hitting 3wd and 3 -iron off the tees.
Brian
Good Luck Brian. i am all over the place myself.
Pete, I had a day (yesterday) that was all over the place as well, in my preparation for my round today using this experiment. Will have an update later after my 18 holes. Thanks! Brian
I look forward to reading of your successful round
Pete
First round with the experiment is in the books. I had to modify the plan and actually played my round with the driver in the bag because of some very poor practice shots with the 5WD the day before, and lack of confidence in the club, but did not hit driver on the par-5 holes as planned. From a strategic perspective this was a success. My course had three par-5s and I hit poor tee shots on all three, BUT did not get in serious trouble and was able to give myself a look at the greens with my third shot on each. I used the driver judiciously on the long par-4s and drove it decently. The first par-5 was playing 565 and I skied my 3WD and after another solid 3WD on the second, still had 167 yards to the flag. Perhaps if the par-5 hole is long enough and has a water carry on the third, it may be worth taking the driver off the tee? I need to think on this, but the experiment shall be continued because the good course management allowed me to card a decent score (81) during a bad ball striking round and left me feeling frustrated but still in control of my game. The objective here is to reduce or remove the big numbers from the scorecard. Stay tuned for future episodes of “As The Driver Rides The Bench.”