Week 24 Update
Don't Play Alone
Welcome Players! It was a short week as I was out of town Fri-Sun. But was able to get a few good days of habits in and played a solo-round on Thursday before leaving. As the sub-title says, I am not a solo-grinder! Props to everyone that can do it - I won’t be trying again any time soon. Let’s get into the week and prepare for next!
Contents:
Training Week in Review
Habit Tracker
Training Log
Skill Practice
Golf Performance
Wrap-Up
Training Week in Review
It’s always tough to make significant progress during a week where I’m traveling.
But what’s important is to be taking one step forward, never backwards or stagnant, and to that ends the mission was accomplished this week.
I got two good days of home practice in and was able to play a round by myself on Thursday before leaving town Fri-Sun.
I made a commitment to get 18-holes in every week and am happy I stuck to that, as the game-reps are important to improve my course strategy and scoring opportunities aside from ball-striking at the range.
While I didn’t play as well as I liked, it’s another rep in the book and we’ll keep moving forward.
Habit Tracker
Not great not terrible.
I got as much practice in as I could while home so that’s a victory.
Training Log
Resistance Train (Gym): 1
Conditioning (Road Bike): 1
Same as above, not great not terrible. I got 2 good sessions in at the beginning of the week which was as much as I could.
Can’t stress over logistics and other priority-plans so do what you can and move on!
Golf Performance
Ok here’s where we had some disappointment, coming off my best round of the year (94) I was really hoping to keep momentum going and stay <100.
Spoiler alert: I did not.
Let’s set the stage.
8:45a tee time, was playing solo because my playing partner had an obligation come up. Tee’d off alone with a group 3-4 holes ahead so thought I had plenty of space. No warm-up, as I was coming right from work.
No warm-up and having a two-some behind me on the tee-box definitely rattled my nerves a bit. Didn’t get to start the round at a relaxing pace as I’d like, but that’s the way it goes.
The quad-bogey to start the round hurt.
Couldn’t really get it together after that even though I made par on 2. It was a struggle to stay motivated playing as a single, especially when the full round took my nearly 4 hours. Caught up to the group in front of me on 7 or 8 and it was painfully slow after that.
Waited on average 5-10m per hole at one point, usually on the tee box, and it really disrupted my rhythm.
Actually, it prevented me from developing a rhythm at all!
I did not enjoy playing solo. The pace of play sucked, my focus on the greens was poor, and it was overall not an enjoyable time.
I think I’ll stick to playing with partners for not just the social aspect, but it elevates my desire to perform when I’m with people.
Unless I can get a tee time where I’m first-off and can guarantee I won’t have slow play in front of me, it’s just not worth it to play a 4-hour round by yourself.
With that said there’s not much to gain from going into the stats but we’ll take a look anyway:
42 putts, five 3-putts and no one-putts
5 fairways hit and 5 GIR
2 par’s (on par-3’s), no birdies
10 penalty strokes on 5 OOB and multiple sand shots
What’s interesting is that I didn’t strike the ball that poorly, moreso I just lost a lot of scoring opportunities from judgement and tactical errors.
It’s more apparent to me now more than ever that playing good golf is not a result of good ball-striking. While that’s certainly a factor, being able to manage the course and get into positions that you can score from is arguably more important.
The more I play from forward tees and the better I get at ball-striking the more I want to wrangle in my ability to score, which means taking the right shot, with the right club, at the right time.
No easy feat! But I’m motivated to improve in this area amongst all others as I believe it will hav the most impact on my scoring vs. trying to improve other variables.
That and the three-putts. Need to eliminate three-putts!
Wrap-Up
Playing alone sucks.
Traveling is great.
No travel plans for the next 6 weeks or so, so I’ve got a nice opportunity to make a big push towards the low-90’s and improve my course management over the summer!
Will continue to practice, train, and play according to the plan and keep moving forward!
See you next week