October . . . Where Do I start?

So much has happened in October already & it's only half way through!

I played the medal back on the 4th, got married on the 8th, somehow managed to play in the ILGU Silver Medal Final on the 10th & had my clubs stolen a few days later!

As I was walking down the isle, the last of the ladies up at the golf club were teeing off. I can honestly say I wasn't even thinking of this at the time, I had more than enough to be concentrating on.

The wedding was awesome, I never expected to enjoy it half as much as I did & I had a few days off work afterwards so I didn't plan on coming back to planet earth any time soon.

The Wedding

So the 'big' day finally arrived, it seemed like something which was initially planned 2 years prior steamed towards us at a ferocious velocity.

The Cake - Tasted just as good as it looks!

The day started early, yes there were girlie things to be done like hair & make-up, it was my wedding day after all. But let's get our priorities straight, Ireland were playing Wales in the rugby! And what's more we had a chance of something huge, huge at international level, only the quarter final of the World Cup. Unfortunately, even though there was so much promise, it was not to be &Wales proved worthy winners in the end. I guess I didn't have too much time to stew over the result as from the point where the match ended, my time was no longer my own to control.

ILGU SIlver Medal

So it's the day before the wedding, my mum's house is manic. I'm trying to escape the lot of them burying my head in the laptop, so far it's working & they're leaving me alone :)

I just got a phone call there a short while ago from the Lady Vice Captain Sheelagh to tell me I'd won the ILGU Silver Medal. My first reaction to this is "What's the ILGU Silver Medal?". She explained to me how there are two medals awarded to each club every year, a silver & a bronze, silver being for handicaps under 20 & the bronze for handicaps over 20. As my medal results between April & September (the specified qualifying period) were the best in the club for handicaps under 20, I'd won the Silver Medal for 2011.

The Last Medal

I guess you could say October was to be a busy month. However just before the wedding there was one final thing to wrap up, 'Golfer of the Year'.

The last medal of the year, the October Medal was scheduled for the actual day of our wedding, 8th October. This meant Rob had to miss it even though he was in contention for the men's GOY. Luckily enough though, the ladies club are also able to play their medal on the Tuesday before the medal weekend. With the wedding on the Saturday, I headed out early that Tuesday after working all night to try & revisit some form I'd been showing signs off a couple of days beforehand when I managed 35 points in the weekend competition.

In Search of my Swing

Taking time off golf, even for 3 weeks proved to be a disaster. I was playing better than I could ever have hoped for but golf is time consuming & with regular trips to Belfast required to finalize the arrangements, something had to give. I'd also been on a severe diet which didn't help matters as my body had changed shape which inevitably meant so did my swing.

$hitty September

I'm now starting to see the consequences to not playing regular golf, my swing sucks. It's been fairly frustrating not being able to make it happen too. South County is relatively exposed to the wind when it gets going & I guess this month has been one of the worst for gale force winds but I can't even use that as an excuse, I'm playing really bad golf & I don't even have the time to fix it. My abysmal results above speak for themselves.

Annoyingly Little Golf in August

August was busy month for non-golf things. With the wedding creeping up on us we had no choice but to make a few trips to Belfast & arrange men suits, rings, invitations etc.

Hen Weekend

 
With the wedding a mere 8 weeks away I headed north for the obligatory hen party.

Personally I could have easily given this hen party a miss, the truth is I had no desire for any gimmicks or embarrassing dressing up whilst crawling through all/any pubs we could find. Thankfully my sisters know me better than that & arranged for a somewhat unconventional day & night out.

Joyful July

June was disappointing, especially as when my swing worked the shot was better than ever, I just felt like I needed to run out the variance of this new swing. I made the effort & I went to the range a lot after the Lady Captain disaster. I'd also taken the time to look over some online videos, just to try memorize some drills before shots. Anything that made my practice swing go right first time was going to help right? I think I actually got more out of the online videos this time than last time. I have a lot of golf theory in my head now & these instructional videos are more relevant than ever from that aspect.

June Summary

June was a bit of a mixed bag as it turns out. I managed a very decent 2nd in the June Medal, wining my class, only to have a complete nightmare in the Lady Captains. I somehow managed a 10 on the very first hole of the first day after a battle with the green side bunker. Needless to say the bunker won :( My only consolation was that I had a week to try get my act together for the final day.

May . . . Dismay

The lesson definitely helped, no doubt about it, following that 31 points I had that afternoon, I managed 39 points the following weekend. However that's where the good performances end :(

The weather hasn't been great lately & I'm not sure if that's a factor, but I never did like playing in the wind & rain. It was a bad time to lose form as well given there were 2 majors this month, the May Medal & the Professional Prize. Both of these weekends were really windy, extremely windy in fact, however I really should have done better. I can't quite explain what's different, I know in my head what I need to do & how to do it, but for the last couple of weeks I'm just not able to join up the dots like I was before.

Lesson Time

Raymie Burns, SC PGA Professional

With 2 months worth of momentum & a spanky new handicap I had high hopes for this month. As delighted as I am to have dropped so many shots so quickly there was only one thing that would please at this stage & that's to get my handicap even lower. Finally I have a respectable handicap, but I have high standards, so I'm not planning on settling here. Time for a fresh angle to lose a few more shots.

I booked a lesson with the South County Pro, Raymie Burns. Raymie had a hell of a reputation to live up to, from what I'm told he was a great striker of the ball back in his playing days & was regarded by many as a huge natural talent.

On 1st May I arrived at the course for my 30 min lesson. First thing that struck me about Raymie is that he's very technical. This was great news for me, this I could work with. He asked me what I was looking out of the lesson, what I wanted to improve on. I'm not sure he was expecting the answer I gave him, "I want a swing like the ones you see on tv", quickly followed by "I'm happy to start from scratch, I just want to do it right". As he smirked, we got to work.

Awesome April!

I still don't think I've come down since the hype of last month. I joined a proper golf course, met some really nice girls, gained the option of playing with them every Tuesday, watching loads of golf tips online, going to the range regularly. In fact I feel I'm improving every time I play. And just when I thought nothing could top March, along came April!

 

The Start of Serious Progress!

Since the St Patrick's Day Cup it's all been about improving. I've actually started to not hate the range, I guess the on course results improvements have helped me focus. I've also been reading up on golf tips online & watching loads of online video clips. It's astounding how much free help there is online, & effective free help at that. It's been back to basics for me for a couple of months now, but this time I'm doing it right & I already see a huge improvement. I've also been heading up to the course when I can for practice. South County has great practice facilities & before this enthusiasm novelty wears off, I plan to improve whatever way I can.

St. Patrick's Day Cup

So the weather was rubbish & the frost course appeared to be a permanent feature, however I was truly bitten once more by the golf bug. Whilst my main objective to work on my handicap was on hold due to non-qualifying, I was keen to play as regularly as possible to help get my handicap down in any way possible.

The first competition in the club diary (excluding the regular weekly tournaments) was The St. Patrick's Day Cup. It was nice to see such an active time-sheet, something my previous club could definitely not compete with, although with this brought a desire to not screw it up. This was the full 18 holes although qualifying still hadn't started for the season.

Time To Meet The Members

Just under 2 weeks ago, I got a text message from the lovely Lady Captain Pauline up at South County to see if I fancied a game with her & couple other of the lady members up at the club.

Whilst I was delighted to be asked, & relished the opportunity to compare myself to other lady golfers, I admit I was petrified that this could be a huge embarrassment. I'd only ever played golf with Rob's mum before & she had a very laid back attitude towards golf, & she also knew I was only a beginner, plus I knew her! But, now, playing with people I'd never met before, & also after looking up their handicaps on www.HowDidIDo.co.uk - these girls could bloody play!

New Golf Club picked out . . . Now for that handicap . . .

Given the financial climate, it was obvious enough that anyone paying silly money to join a golf club needed their heads looked. Over the last few weeks (as well as most of our snow ridden winter) I've spent a fair amount of time looking at courses within a 45 min traveling distance that fell within a reasonable budget. Again, in golf, typically you get what you pay for. But when you're faced with top quality tracks with annual subs of less than €2k, & in some cases €1k, it would be madness to shell out anything more. I also had to bear in mind that whatever we were faced with cost wise, would be doubled as there are two of us.

Change of Direction

For some reason I got very distracted from blogging and also eventually got reasonably distracted from poker.

I made a decent profit from poker in 2010, enough to get me into 5 figures and even managed to scrape into the Irish Poker Rankings final at the end of the year. For those that aren't familiar with it, the IPR final is effectively a free-roll for the top performing tournament players in the country.