MaxEntropy's Progress

[MaxEntropy]

It occurred to me last night that, like some of you have done, I should have started this thread a couple years ago to track my progress on league night.... Oh well, it's never too late, I guess.

After a good round a couple weeks ago, my league handicap* dropped to a 6 (for 9 holes). This is my fourth season in this league, so I've really only had a well-established handicap for ~2.5 seasons as it takes pretty much an entire season to establish. Looking back at my history, my handicap was a 10 when we started the 2019 season and a 9 when we started last year. This has given me some perspective - it is the long trend I should be concerned with and I like this current trend, especially given the amount of time (or lack thereof) I am afforded for practice.

As I (and Arccos) currently see it:

Strengths:

Putting - I typically average ~30 putts per round, with a recent low of 26. I understand this can be misleading and is a direct result of whether or not I am hitting greens and/or how well I am chipping the ball.

Short Game - Fairly consistent, but a little more hit-or-miss than putting. I've mentioned elsewhere that I got new RTX Zipcore wedges this year. Fresh grooves = good. I also changed the lofts from 56 and 60 to 54 and 58. This has taken a little more adjustment than I expected. The partial swing "calibration" in my brain is still stuck on my old wedges so I find myself long too often, especially now that the greens have firmed up.

Distance: According to the age/handicap charts available, I am pretty long. I've had a couple drives over 300 this year and my Arccos Smart Distance is ~260.

Weaknesses:

Tee Balls(!!!!!) - If I could get off the tee with more consistency (or at least narrow my dispersion cone substantially), I have no doubt I could regularly shoot in the high 70's or low 80's. I've shot 80 twice, but have never cracked the barrier. Mostly through this place, I have a better understanding of what I am doing related my club face and path based on flight, but the struggle for me is making the adjustments needed to correct this. I know I could benefit from lessons. Two kids in college at the same time limits disposable income, but one will be graduating in August. Once she's done, I plan to sign up for some lessons.

Irons - I used to think irons were a relative strength. Then I started using Shotscope and Arccos, both of which indicate otherwise. I think the reason I thought they were a strength is I generally hit them solid - not nearly as many thin/fat/shanked shots as many of my peers. The challenge is direction, so I still miss too many greens and have to lean on my short game to get up and down.

Distance: OK, so I hit the ball pretty far for my age. It can be a weakness because the extra distance extends my dispersion cone into trouble that shorter guys don't have to worry about.

Plan: I guess I don't really have a formal plan, beyond springing for some lessons and committing more time to practice. Looking at the numbers from my driver fitting for the Epic Speed test, I average about a 7 degree outside-in path. My face-to-path is all over the place and results in everything from a dead-pull to a high flare and everything in between (sadly, with near equal probabilities according to Arccos). Since the path is fairly consistent, how difficult would it be to self-fix a face-to-path issue and what is a simple way to effect it? Grip change? Long term I hope to correct whatever flaw(s) are causing the outside-in and the face angle inconsistency.

So that's the background.... In the future I'll update the thread with progress and performance in league play.

 

* In my company, we used to have a "golf association" that ensured rules were consistent among the various leagues so our handicaps would be portable from league to league and is NOT USGA conforming. Even though the golf association no longer exists, all the remaining leagues have agreed to abide by the historical rules. In my view, the most significant differences are we use the best 8 differentials out of last 16 (so handicap can be established within one season - typically 18 weeks), all hazards/stakes (prior to penalty area designation) are treated as lateral hazards, and lost balls are drop with 1 stroke penalty at a location agreed upon by the competitors (in the interest of pace of play). We are also allowed to "fluff" our lies. As long as I have been tracking scores over the last 20-ish years, these are generally the rules under which I have scored. I have no idea what my handicap would be for a USGA-conforming calculation, but don't really care as I never plan on playing in anything more competitive than our league. So yes, the handicap I have in my profile (~12) should be taken with a grain of salt.

[cnosil]

Good luck and i always find it interesting to hear what other people are doing to improve 

[MattF]

33 minutes ago, MaxEntropy said:

Once she's done, I plan to sign up for some lessons.

I can't recommend Randy at Windmill Training Center enough.

[Kenny B]

I'll be tuning in from time to time to see how you are progressing.  Best of luck!!

[sirchunksalot]

Best of luck to you and hopefully this'll be the year you crack the 80 barrier. I love the progress threads and hearing how others approach improving their game. I'm gonna be following this one!

[tony@CIC]

8 hours ago, MattF said:

I can't recommend Randy at Windmill Training Center enough.

I'm back to see Randy next Friday. The big stick needs a lot of help - it's the most inconsistent club in my bag.  @MaxEntropy I highly recommend Randy, however, be forewarned he's booked far in advance. 

[MaxEntropy]

New work responsibilities have had a bad effect on my participation here (that and the mobile browsing being a terrible experience that last few months). It occurred to me that I should have been providing some updates to this thread.

Over the last couple months, my handicap has been bumping between 6 and 7 (currently a 7). While I was in some mind-numbing training a couple weeks ago, I did look at my scores for the last two seasons a little more closely. Last year I averaged 42.9 on the front and 46.1 on the back. This year, through last week, those averages are now 42.4 and 44.6. I am encouraged by the fact that scores on both 9's are dropping and the difference between the two 9's is also dropping. Historically, across the whole league the back is 5 strokes harder. On paper, it doesn't really seem that much harder, but I guess the scores don't lie when you are talking about two years worth of scores with 16 guys.

Tonight is the last "official" league round, then we have 2 weeks of playoffs followed by fun days until the time change makes it too dark to play. My team is not really in the running for anything (other than making sure we don't end up in last place making us the planning committee for next year's outing), so the next few weeks are about padding personal stats for me. We award a "league MVP" that is the highest point total for the entire season. For each match, we have 9 hole points, 4 stroke play points, and an adjustment for how many strokes are were over/under our handicap. As of right now, I am in the lead for league MVP with second place 17.5 points behind me, so not quite locked up mathematically, especially since MVP points are tracked during payoffs and I will be on vacation next week, so I'll get 0 and I'll have to hope my nearest competitors have down weeks.

So what's the difference between this year and last? Just a hunch, but it has to be off the tee. Starting the season with a better fitting (but not fitted) driver seems to have helped. The Epic Speed test, with a properly fitted shaft, seems to have helped a lot. I don't want to give away too much from that review, but if you have followed that thread, you know that something about this club/shaft combo has helped "eliminate" the left side for me.

OK, not eliminate entirely, but it is way down and the left misses tend to be less tragic than they were. If you read my Epic Speed intro, you saw this as my baseline:

It's hard to pick a target with that kind of distribution.

I still have issues with the right but I think I have identified the primary drivers behind those high flares that no course is going to contain. The nice thing is I now feel comfortable aiming to the left side again now that the two-way miss is more like a one and a half way miss.

Anyway, I'll make a point of updating after the season ends.

[MaxEntropy]

Hmmm, so apparently I was wrong about MVP scoring during the playoffs. Even though I plopped a turd on the course last night, my lead was big enough to end up winning I. I don't know what it gets me, beyond bragging rights (maybe a few $ and/or a sleeve of cheap balls), but I'll take it.