The Mid-Season Analysis

This has been a funny year on the golf course for me.  For some reason I have not been nearly as consistent as I was in the past few years -- I'm still having some good rounds, but I'm having a lot more bad rounds than I'm used to.  My initial thought was that I'm not playing as much, but in looking at it I've actually played only 1 fewer round through July 20th this year than I did last year (27 vs. 28).  Over that time I've had 8 rounds in the 70s (vs. 7 in the 70s through this date last year), but I've had 7 rounds in the 90s (as compared to 5 last year, one of which was at the extremely difficult TPC Boston).

So... what happened?

Well, let's look at some stats:

As you can see, many of the numbers are pretty similar, especially in the short game areas.  Even my par and birdie-or-better percentages are almost exactly the same (which, obviously, means I'm having more blow-up holes this year).  But there's a big difference in fairway percentage, where I'm hitting 16% fewer than last year, and (probably in part due to the fairways being down) greens in regulation are 12% less than 2010.


In order to tease that out a little more I looked at my driver fairway percentage and my 1-hybrid fairway percentage (which are the two clubs I hit off the tee most often).  The 1-hybrid percentage is roughly the same (about 50%), but my fairways hit with the driver is dramatically down (23% worse than last year).  


I think the difference is more philosophical than anything else.  Historically my bad miss off the tee has been the pull-hook; last year I really focused on taking the left miss out of play with the driver, hitting predominantly a fade (which was in general my natural ball flight with all my clubs).  This winter, though, I worked at the range on getting my hands more inside, which has resulted in a little bit of a lower ball flight and a more natural draw.  And the stats again bear that out -- of my misses, 61% are to the left this year (as compared to 49% last year).  I'm guessing that relates to the most telling number: I'm having 3 penalty shots per round this year, vs. only 2.1 per round last year.


It looks like going forward I'm going to have to re-commit to the power-fade off the tee and take the pull-hook back off the table.

The Heat (The Humidity)

Maybe I'm getting old.

Maybe it's that my back and shoulders don't loosen up as easily when it's cool out.  Maybe I'm like a Dominican pitcher who only gets going when the summer weather rolls in.

Just call me Pedro.

click for larger image

For some reason, I play my best golf in July.  There's really no question about it.  See the chart on the right side -- I'm almost a full 2 shots better on average in July as compared to any other month.  I seem to have a "hot streak" almost every year in July when I feel like even par is legitimately in play almost every time I take to the course.  In 2009 I whipped off 78-77-75-74 over an 8 day span; in 2010 I had rounds of 75, 76, 77, 78 and 79.  And almost every one of those rounds has been played (at least as far as I remember) in sweltering heat.

The past 2 days have been 85-95 degrees and very humid in the Boston area.  And I'm +8 over 36 holes during that time span.  Yesterday, at Butter Brook, I shot 73.

Yes, that's right, +1.

I don't want to go through the hole round blow-by-blow, but thinking back on it there were a few key shots:

2ND HOLE, 1ST PUTT  After making bogey on the 1st, I hit 5 iron to the middle of the fairway and 8-iron to pin-high about 18 feet from the hole.  I putted that one a good 15 feet past, and missed the come-back for a dreaded 3-putt.  Grrrrrrrrr. (+2 for the round)

4TH HOLE, APPROACH SHOT  After hitting the right side of the fairway on the dogleg left, I pulled a 6-iron into the greenside bunker, leaving myself short-sided with a bad lie in the sand.  I got out of the trap but had an impossible putt (from the top of a ridge about 25 feet across the green with the cup about 3/4 of the way down a hill.  And... I hate 3-putts!!!  (+4 for the round)

8TH HOLE, TEE SHOT  The par-3 was playing at about 165 yards with the pin in front, slightly down wind.  I hit 7-iron directly at the stick; it landed about 6 inches in front, bounced and then spun just a bit to the side, 3 inches from the hole.  There were 2 members of the grounds crew up watering the green at the time; both said they couldn't believe it didn't go in.  Closest I've ever been to an ace.  (It turned out, by the way, that the two on the green were, in fact, the owners.)  (+2 for the round)

16TH HOLE, 2ND SHOT  After reeling off 10 straight holes at par or better (-2 over that stretch), I had just made a bogey on the difficult par-4 15th and stood at +3 on the 16th tee.  The odds were against me, but eagle on the par-5 16th (which I'd managed before) would go a long way.  My drive, unfortunately, did not go a long way -- only about 225 yards, but in the middle of the fairway.  According to my GPS I had 277 to go, which meant I didn't have enough club unless I got a real favorable roll out.  I went with 1-hybrid because the trajectory would be low and I usually do get a lot of top spin; maybe -- just maybe -- it would get me home or close to where I could chip in.  I told myself to stay smooth, don't overswing (because that almost always gets me to snap-hook with my hybrids)... and I pured it.  I watched at it sailed down the right side and caught the slope from there and ran toward the green.  From my position on the fairway it looked pretty good, but I couldn't tell for sure if it got home or not.

It was home.  3 feet from the pin.  Tap in eagle.  (+1 for the round)

I needed to get up and down
from 82 yards in a bunker.

18TH HOLE, PUTT  I made a fairway-green-2-putt par on 17, which meant it would take birdie on the 18th to get to even par.  I do not play the 18th hole at Butter Brook well (average 0.9 strokes over par, with 4 double-bogies or worse in 17 prior rounds from the black tees).  To make matters worse, my tee ball settled in the fairway bunker about 85 yards out on the right side.  I hit about as good a shot as I could from there, pitching wedge to the middle of the green, 22 feet from the hole (I paced it off).  The putt was a double breaker -- slightly uphill and left-to-right over the first two thirds, and then just downhill and right to left over the last 6 or 7 feet.  I picked a line that was starting about 6 inches left of the hole... and that's almost exactly where it ended up, 6 inches left.  Oh well.  +1.  (Shot efficiency 0.930, my personal best.)

This was the putt left for even par.

Hopefully I won't have to wait until next July to come that close again.