I've been struggling lately. Not terribly so, but enough that my game is not at my handicap level. I'm playing like a 12 or 13. Driver accuracy has been off. I used to average a solid 65% of fairways and 95% or better playable drives. Playable drives is still up there, but fairways are not. Hitting the ball okay off the tee, but can't seem to maintain control as consistently as I was. My short game is not as sharp as it was either. Not that I am duffing or skulling chips or anything like that, it's just that I don't have that chip-it-close consistency I had working. Up and downs percentage is still respectable, but I feel like I am not getting up and down as much as I was. GIRs are down too, but at least I can attribute that to playing the longer tees all summer. However, playing the longer tees has helped my long game some.
Today was another middle of the road round. Not many bad shots, but just not great scoring. Certainly a few poor shots contributed to the blah score. Course was playing very long today after yesterday's heavy rain. It was cart path only. Many of the blue tees were moved back to the black tee boxes, making GIRs that much tougher for me. Hit a choked-down driver into the wind on par 3 6th. Was playing 200 yards. GIR/birdie. Go figure. The wind freshened even more on the back. On 16th hit what felt like a very good drive, but dead into a 15 mph wind. Came up well short of my average drive, leaving me another 200 yards into the wind. Ball was in deep rough. Even though most of the course was mowed, the rough on 16 had not yet been done. So I had a 200 yard shot from a lie that was not really good for a 3W. I thought I could get enough clubface on it. As it turns out, I couldn't. Hardly moved it. Ended up with double as a result.
On par 5 5th, weak drive left me in right rough. Another lie not conducive to a fairway wood. I tried a 5W anyway. Pulled it a little left, hit cart path and bounced hard left into shit. Penalty. Then hit a nice approach, that flew all the way to the pin, which was actually further than I expected. Hit a few yards left of pin, but coming out of rough there was no stopping it. Rolled to the back of the green. 3-putt double.
Next week is the Maryland State Senior Am. I am not playing in it, but the course is being set up and prepared for it. I'm sure that has a lot to do with the difficulty of the course at present. It is playing really hard right now, and I am not playing up to my expected level.
CeeBee says:Hang in there my friend. A minor setback we all go thru.
9/8/17
