Every Tuesday at 5:30 a group of us go out to one of the local courses after work for a short 9-hole round. It’s always an interesting outing for me, because despite my golf game improvement the Tuesday 9-hole rounds have continued to be my worst rounds. I can go play decent any other day of the week, but something about Tuesday is holding me back.
In trying to figure this out, I started to consider the differences between Tuesday and every other day:
- I have little time to decompress between leaving work, changing, driving to the course, and setting up on the first tee. Most Tuesdays that time can be as little as 20 minutes.
- Every other day I warm up on the range and putting green. I’m lucky if I have a few minutes to get on the putting green on Tuesday and warming up on the range is just not happening.
- I have difficulty concentrating while playing on Tuesdays. It’s probably because of not having the opportunity to decompress and change my thought patterns.
If I want to start playing better on Tuesday, it looks like I need to work on my mental game a bit, and perhaps leave a little earlier to hit the range with a small bucket so I can get loose.
Despite the rain potential, we did play yesterday. I shot a 48, which I’m not happy about at all, but I struggled with my concentration and my swing (accuracy was off). My lack of concentration is somewhat expected, but I guess those 5 days off probably helped my body but didn’t help my golf swing. Putting was excellent, though, as I made a few 15+ footers and averaged 1.56 putts per hole.
Having said that, on my last shot I decided to put a little more body into the swing, and I ended up hitting my 7-iron about 190 yards, which was 25 yards past the center of the green I was aiming for. It was on target, though, so I was happy about that, but disappointed that I realized on my last fairway shot of the day that I had been using my arms too much and not enough body – plus I was perplexed by the 190 yd 7-iron that came out of nowhere (my 7-iron is usually 160-165 yds).
I was hoping to get to the range tonight, but it’s raining. I need to figure out how to practice when it’s this wet out.