Borrowed Rounds – The Club Championship Series
‘The weekend warriors major’
As we enter the new year we see social media feeds begin to drown in people’s goals for the coming year. The original idea I had for this series was also to introduce it around that same time frame, however I didn’t want this to get lost in the noise of these posts. This series is not just focussed over the course of a single year which is the central pillar to those ‘new year goal’ posts, but rather to be over the course of several to follow along with the process of improvement of my golf game in the limited time available.
For every club golfer there is one weekend in their clubs competition calendar that holds more grandeur than the rest, the club championship. This competition is the pinnacle for most of us mere mortals, we will never get the chance to play for a green jacket or hold the claret jug aloft. However in the eyes of this hacker the club championship affords for something even greater than that, it gives the winner of this prestigious event to be named that champion golfer of YOUR club and often includes having your name emblazoned upon an oak panelled board for all to see.
For me personally, this season’s club championship will be the first I have ever taken part in excluding junior ones. I left the game after my junior days and in my 2 previous years as a member of a golf club diaries just haven’t aligned to allow me to take part. This year will afford me the opportunity to play in a competition I have waited a long time to enter.
This series will be focussed around my progress towards the club championship at my home club. In each 3-4 week installment I will be documenting the improvement steps I have taken during the timeframe and how they have impacted my overall performance.
The culmination of this initial season of the series will obviously be the tournament itself and seeing whether or not I achieve my goals. This will then drive the aims/goals for next year’s series.
In this introductory installment I’ll be setting my overall goals for the tournament which will be accompanied by several ‘sub’ goals designed to put me in the best position to reach the overarching goal.
Tournament Goal
- Break 80 in both rounds
My tournament goal is pretty simple for season 1 of the Club Championship series. Simply to break 80 in both rounds. I have no deluded aspirations of winning the tournament this year, my game is not in the right place to do so. Instead I want to set something that is achievable but challenging enough that it is going to push me out of my comfort zone to achieve. I want to use this year as a litmus test to see how I hold up in the self imposed pressure of the 2 day event and to also challenge myself to play to a consistent standard across the 2 days. Last year the best i shot around the course was 81, a score which I actually shot 4 times in my 6 recorded rounds at the course last year so it feels a realistic target to aim for.
Sub Goals
The aim of each of this sub goals is to enable me to improve in such a way it will be beneficial to my overall tournament goal:
- Lose 3 stone
Although not directly golf related this will help me over the course of the tournament weekend. I’m currently around 3 stone over weight which combined with an old rugby injury on my knee means after a round my body feels broken. The plan to achieve this is via a combination of running and bodyweight/Kettlebell golf related workouts. Not only do I want to lose weight I want to increase strength and power in a manner that will have a direct correlation to golf performance.
- Process,Process,Process
This sub goal relates directly to following a set mental process for each and every shot. My main issue as a junior and to this day is being too much in my head when standing over the ball thinking too much about my swing rather than just ‘letting go’ and playing golf rather than golf swing. I have recently had some advice around a simple process to be followed pre and during shot. The key to this like anything is consistent application and measurement of this application. To do so each round I will be making a note of my ‘process’ score for each shot receiving a positive score for a well followed process and a negative if i skip a step. By focussing on increasing my process score round to round, my actual score should track in the other direction and hopefully decrease.
- Single figure short game
The biggest weakness in my game is from around 100 yards in. My mind goes blank and it’s almost as though I disconnect resulting in a horror show of short game execution. The amount of times I have a 40-60 yard approach to a par 4 and walk away with a bogey or worse is scary. In situations where a par should be the very worst i score i find myself fighting to save a bogey. The above goal of the process should alleviate some of those mental yips I face but I also aim to combat this with a combination of course specific short game practice and measuring the outcome of my short game shots to provide me better feedback on how it’s going. In terms of the practice initially it will be kept pretty simple doing simple drills in my garden but I will then progress to using some launch monitor tracking at my local driving range to play different short game games to provide feedback. For ‘in-game’ tracking of this goal the eventual plan is to get some form of GPS tracking software that I can fit to my clubs to then track strokes gained on short game. In the meantime i will be measuring just some simple stats such as green hit from approach, number of up and downs, number of 3 putts etc.
- 1 weekly Structure practice session
I have often fallen into the trap of just beating balls away at the range with no focus and then wondering why these purely struck shots with no real aim have no translation when I’m on the course. This goal is to help get the most from the limited time I can give to practice and that the improvements gained during these sessions are then seen to the course. With that said the session will follow the 5/5/5 format. So the first 5 will focus on execution, so performing a drill focussed on mechanics, in my case a lot of this will be using a connector ball. The next 5 are then hit without the accessory and focus on the feel it created, describing the feel in one or two words which then will become a trigger to link the sensation to the intention. The next 5 are then hit full process picking a different club and target after each so no autopilot shots to the same target.
Now the goals are locked in please follow the journey and see if i can reach my overall goal. The next instalment of the Club Championship Series will be up around the end of this month, so until next time, enjoy your golf!
