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.

Goodbye 2009 . . . You Were Bloody Smashing!

So, end of another year & hasn't it been bloody great!

The year started pretty quietly, missed out on a few tourneys I would have liked to have played for one reason or another. Didn't play the IPC in January, although cleaned up in the cash games down there. Missed the Deepstack in February although went deep in a side event.

March marked the big move to Dublin & was also fairly successful in being the last standing of my team in the fantastic Eglinton Team event & also winning €3k in the Westbury EOM (end of month).

And The Winner Is . . .

Tonight marked the final Irish Poker Ranking event as well as the night of the Irish Poker Ranking Awards.

Going into this event I was 7th in the rankings meaning there was a decent chance I would be one of the automatic qualifiers for the STT in January. The one potential problem was the fact that the last ranking event was worth double points meaning there were a few people within over-taking distance if they went deep.