100% Mental Golf: Round 1

This was my 3rd round of the year but the first round where I felt totally committed to  Golf is 100 % Mental.  First let me tell you what these posts will be about.  They will be description of the rounds on a very basic level.  I find that reading about or listening to shot by shot descriptions of rounds to be very tedious and boring.  The round will be divided into two parts.  The first part will be the good. The second part will be labeled problems, those things that kept the round from be being better.  I will not elaborate much on the  problems or what I think caused them.    I plan on making these posts be very positive.   I may go into a little more depth when I find the solution to the problem but until I do, I am not going to go into the why of the problem.   I played last Tuesday and the conditions were coolish but calm,  with temperatures in the mid to upper 40’s and the course was  very damp and muddy.  The greens were pretty good considering the time of the year.  I shot 80 which at Scenic Valley is 8 over par.

The Good.   My ball striking was very good considering I had not played for a solid month.  Out of 14 drives I only hit three that got me into trouble and my recovery out of the woods was so good on one particular hole, that I birdied it.  I had three birdies and the putting was good as two of the birdies putts were  between 20 and 25 feet.   My iron game was good along with my chipping. My visualization process for the long game worked really well.  I will elaborate more on this process as the season goes on, when I think I have a process that really works.   For this Round number one I was seeing the shots very well especially off tee.

Problems.   Putting, yes the putting was good and bad.  I three putted twice from inside 30 feet, and missed 2 really short putts after some pretty good chip shots.  The thing though that kept this round from being a mid 70 round, which would have been  pretty remarkable considering the time of year, was the failure to execute the 25 to 45 yard pitch shot.  Twice it took me not 2, not 3, but 4 strokes to get down from approximately 25 to 40 yards, which led to 2 of  3 double bogies.  These negated the 3 birdies, to say the least. The mental process failed me for these shots and I will see if I can correct this miserable problem.

So round one is in the books.   I did not have any swing thoughts, made no swing adjustments during the round, and was happy with my mental process for  putting even though I had my ups and downs on the greens.  There may be a chance to play at the end of the week but not too sure.  See you next time and happy golfing.