Confessions of a Hacker: Racking Them Up
Any club golfer worth their salt knows what a cruel mistress the Monthly Medal can be. The tees are set right back, pins cut in awkward spots, rough grown out…. and perhaps most importantly, the inability to simply pick your ball up during a disastrous hole as you might in a stableford competition. Your whole day can come crashing down in a 15 or 20-minute span. But how do you react?
Starting on the 10th hole last Saturday in Yowani Gold Club’s Monthly Medal, I was a shot ahead of handicap after six holes. Things were good. Even a triple bogey on the par-3 16th (after the tee shot carried the water, the green and the back right bunker before coming to rest against the butt of a tree) was no more than a metaphoric flesh wound. The water-laden par-4 17th hole though, that was another story.
A terrible 5-wood fanned waaayyy out to the right found a watery grave off the tee.
Dropping two.
With 200 metres of water carry to the green and trees obstructing a safe path back left to the fairway, I pulled the 5-wood again with the intention of ripping it past the right side of the trees and carrying the water to find the putting surface. It whistled off the face at a rate of knots…. about two metres left of my intended line and into the furthermost right branch of the last tree (about 40 metres ahead on my left), from where it cannoned down into the turf and then bounced into the water.
Dropping four.
With about 165 metres to the pin and 150-ish to carry the water, I took 6-iron and hit it a touch heavy out of the rough. It threatened to land safely before hitting the concrete edge on the far side of the lake and bouncing back into the deep blue.
Dropping six.
The point of entry was only a metre or so in front of the previous shot, so the same club stayed in my hands. A little heavy again – this one found a watery grave a solid metre or two short of solid ground.
Dropping eight.
Hitting the ninth shot from essentially the same spot as the fifth, I dropped back to a 5-iron and finally made clean contact, overshooting the green. From here it was up-and-down for a crowd pleasing 11. The round was, for all intents and purposes, over.
Rudyard Kipling once wrote “If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same”. Clearly, the man did not play many Monthly Medals in his time. But he raises a pertinent question – how do you handle yourself when golfing adversity comes knocking?
At the professional level, what goes on between the ears is one of the most critical factors in separating the elite players from those who struggle to maintain their Tour cards. In the second round of the Abu Dhabi Classic last week, Rory McIlroy provided an excellent example of how to keep your cool and get your round back on track when things go awry. He made two double bogeys on the front nine (including one via a two-shot penalty for wiping sand off the line of his shot when he was still off the green) and a third early on the back nine that looked like a 15-handicapper special, complete with hitting a chip shot across the green and into a bunker. Yet he kept going, added a string of birdies to his three doubles and signed for an even par 72.
Whilst McIlroy didn’t win the tournament, getting out of Friday’s round with a 72 enabled him to contend for the title during the back nine on Sunday. A lesser player may have, in poker parlance, ‘gone on a tilt’ and found themselves with a monster Friday score and maybe even the weekend off.
Here’s where you say “My club competitions are almost always just the 18 holes – your analogy is moot”. In some respects that is true. However, club golfers often only get to play once or twice a week, and thus carrying some confidence from your last round into your next one can be very important. As frustrating as it is, there’s some value in being able to tell yourself “I played pretty well bar one or two holes today” as a primer for your next hit.
With another competition round booked in for the next day, I focused on trying to keep some confidence going into it, playing the last ten holes in square with handicap. The nett 79 final score was an ugly one, but 16 holes of 1-better-than-handicap golf had me feeling good about the prospects of a better outcome on Sunday. As for Sunday’s round, it brought with a new mental challenge – one that will be the subject of next week’s column.
Previous ‘Confessions of a Hacker’ columns:
(1) Seeking help
