Few days ago, folks at the course asked if I'd consider playing in the club championship this weekend. I politely declined.
My golf journey was chartered to develop skill necessary to play and appreciate the classic courses as intended by its architect. Along the way, it has expanded to the study of swing mechanics and the application of that to design a swing and practice regime that can perform from the back tees of modern length courses, for those aged 50 years or more.
In my practice paradigm, periodic forays onto the course serve to gather data to drive the practice, with the ball of choice the blemished ProV1 practice ball. What's typically painful to the score for most, is gold for the practice agenda to me. Along the way, skill has improved and I can now start to see how holes were intended to be played, and enjoy playing them either aligned or against the intentions inherent in their design.
Over the last couple of days, I chewed over my feelings about the championship. For one, it's kinda anti-social to refuse. I've met some good folks there. Bigger issue is the notion of playing for aggregate score. Right now, I'm still working a lot on consistency. When I'm on, it's very good. When not, I can easily go through a dozen balls trying to make the ball do this or that. And, as I've focused on the latest rev of swing mechanics, I've pretty much ignored the impact it has had on distance which is the same as missing left or right. Lastly, the short game, well, still remains a mysterious concept.
Playing a couple rounds where every stroke counts is a different animal. I can't play three ball. I can't try experiments bombing it over that, or pinching it into a tight corner for a one hop stop. Yet, again the other fork in the road beckons, so I started pondering: why not play in the weekend tournament?
On one hand, I don't care what I shoot or how I finish. If 16 I might have competitive aspirations, but instead I'm old enough to be nutty but not delusional. On the other hand, the point of playing in competition is about what you shoot, and since it's a competition, might as well play to win. Like having no reliable backhand stroke in tennis, I know the gaps in my skill, and in this circumstance at this point in time, winning is a rational impossibility.
I'd been practicing mostly from the back tees, while the tournament is from the white tees making the length considerably shorter than the usual 7400 yard workouts. From the back, at least on a hole by hole basis, I've parred them all, and birdied probably a majority of them at one time or another. Since the rounds were for practice, I'd never bothered to attempt to string performance across 18 holes for score as I'm not competent enough to do that, and since I'm focused on finding problems, I've tended to play holes in ways that highlighted where and how I suck. Playing for score would mean flipping that and playing my strengths and avoiding my weaknesses, which is something I've not practiced, and hence probably the source of my reluctance.
Why not? Well, in the end I decided to play as a test of self-perceived strengths. A semester exam so to speak, after about 6 months into this golf kick. The driver's in double cross hell at the moment, yet the 3 wood now has plenty of distance for the white tees. Spend the next three days leading up to the weekend on a crash course of pitches, chips and putting, and the short irons required to play safe. Trust the 3 wood swing that's been grooved to date, and spend a bit of time trying to get control of the driver just in case.
Did a trial run today. Lost 6 shots to three driver shots that continues to get sprayed out of bounds into the wilderness. Putted like a blind man with stone hands. Gotta get mindset to play safe, and choose when to be aggressive. Three days to get that figured out.
I enjoy my daily routine of grabbing coffee, hitting the range in the morning, playing a few holes for data, and then getting back to the range and the Tube to do the homework. This tournament thing goes against that grain and makes me feel uncomfortable. So, that's maybe reason enough to do it.
Should I play to win? With psychotic driver and no short game practice, pretty sure the answer is no. I don't want to get fragmented from the reasons I started this journey in the first place. Clearly, need to mull over this some more.