Patience is a virtue. I remind myself of this every day, especially those days that involve golf. This past weekend I had one of the best 9 holes of golf and one of the longest most trying rounds to date. The later round tested my patience and I feel I came out on top.
There were brief moments of sheer frustration with the slow pace of play and the group of 6 guys that somehow went out together before us, but that’s life. You can’t always get from point A to point B in the amount of time you had planned on it and you deal with it.
Besides learning that I can deal with this on the golf course now much better than I could previously, I also learned that fast greens still get the best of me. The course I play at most (Balboa Municipal) has slower and softer greens compared to some of the other area courses as does the short game practice area I frequent.
This has wrecked havoc on my putting and chipping the past couple of weeks as I have played courses with faster greens. I started getting back over to Torrey Pines to practice putting as their practice putting greens are in great shape and provide a great way to practice for these type circumstances.
Chipping though I’ve got to take a different approach to how I practice. Up until this point it has been about getting the ball to the target. My new approach is consistently landing the ball where I need to be. Focusing on where the ball hits and how high it travels in the air on its way there.
My thought process behind this is that it will allow me to adjust to the speed of the greens much easier and efficiently. Right now I approach each chip or pitch shot the same regardless of green speed. This way I take into account where the ball needs to land, not what I normally do from that distance no matter what course I’m playing.
Despite all this, as I said earlier I shot one of my best 9 holes to date making the turn with a 44. This would have been even better but I put up two triple bogeys near the end. One of them was on a par 5 and on my approach shot I put the ball to the right in the rough. We looked for it for a good 5 minutes and couldn’t find it. I’m still baffled as to where that ball ended up. It couldn’t have landed more than 10 feet off the fairway but we couldn’t find it.
The other was a par 3 that I just screwed up on and carded a 6 after a horrific tee shot OB and my one 3 putt on the day. But none the less, it was a 44 with 5 pars, 2 bogeys and the 2 trip bogs. We got out late and didn’t get to finish the round, but I’m hopeful that the first sub 90 round is just around the corner.
Hell, 44 is still a great score. Fast greens are a challenge for me too since I’m also stuck playing muni courses which don’t maintain the greens like they should.
I used to practice putting in my basement growing up. The basement had a really short threaded carpet (the cheap stuff). Putting on it was like putting on a dry, very fast green. Although the shot was always straight without any break, it helped to get my touch down. I would just place a 3″ cutout of paper on the carpet as my hole.
I’ve definitely done that same thing at work when it was raining outside. I put on the carpet into a coffee cup. Getting back out on the Torrey Pines practice greens has definitely helped and I can feel my confidence and putting ability improving already.