$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.