‘PRIDE COMES BEFORE A SHANKFUELLED FALL’
In the last month I have experienced both my best and worst performance on a golf course. As regular readers will know, I played Beef Johnston recently. We met for the first time at Beef’s home club North Middlesex GC to promote our new podcast Beef ’s Golf Club. The plan was for Beef, still recovering from a thumb injury, to caddie for me over nine holes to see how low I could shoot. Two things happened that made for an incredible day. Firstly, Beef couldn’t resist the thrill of competition so teed it up for the first time in nine months. Secondly, I shot low... VERY LOW.
After both parring the first hole there was no pretending this wasn’t becoming a game of matchplay. How many shots Beef would give this 13-handicapper remained up for debate, but as things turned out I wouldn’t need any shots at all!
I’ve had a few rounds recently with a decent back nine. In fact, I wrote recently that I had experienced ‘the glimpse’ – that brief run of holes that gives you a hint at your true potential. I’ve had three rounds where I’d made up for pretty shoddy starts with a back nine of two or three over. And a couple of rounds which contained two birdies. Inevitably, thoughts of a single-figure handicap have started to float around my head.
Well, at North Middlesex, alongside Beef Johnston, with cameras filming every shot, it happened. And THANK GOD we filmed it.
I felt relaxed, even if I wasn’t playing on absolutely top form. A couple of pars, a couple of bogies. Familiar territory. I’d never played with a tour pro before and what struck me most was how relaxed Beef was. Not having played properly in nine months, and having experienced golf in the most high intensity environments, knocking it about your home course with your podcast co-host is as low-stress as it gets.
Yet sometimes, we amateurs are guilty of making every round a stressful affair. And oddly, the worse we are at golf, the more pressure we can put on ourselves.
Well, Beef’s demeanour rubbed off on me. He also gave me some great tips, excellent shot advice (and the odd bad read on putts). When we teed up on the final hole, we were all square, one over.
I’ve never played nine holes to one over, so this was already the best round I’d ever played. All I needed was par on the par-3 9th for a personal best. I also stood a very real chance of winning, off scratch.
Then it happened. I teed it up on the 149-yard par three and stiffed it: 18 inches for birdie, and even my dodgy putting couldn’t ruin this. I could hear the invisible crowd going crazy, I could read the leaderboard: Robins – E 1UP.
You can watch the video on our website. You can do what I do and watch it every day if you like. But don’t, as I did, get too carried away.
Two days later I stepped onto the tee at my home course to play in a matchplay tournament, my opponent a solid 11-handicapper. With the safety net of three shots in my locker, I split the fairway with my opening drive. It was a done deal.
Oh Icarus! For all you have fallen, but still you flew! Dear reader, I fell.
A regulation 9-iron to the green for a two-putt par flew at a 90-degree angle from the line I was aiming, into a large pile of earth. Which was odd. I scrambled a bogey and halved the hole. On the 2nd, a regulation 7-iron to a large par 3 green did the strangest thing. It flew at a 90-degree angle from the line I was aiming, out of bounds and into the driving range. Which was also odd.
With the golfing Gods cackling at my hubris, I was visited by something I ’d heard tell of but had never experienced before: the shanks. Obviously I’ve shanked the odd ball on the range or on the course, but I’ve never had THE SHANKS. And by crikey did I have them. It was so bad that I had to adjust my tee shots to leave me 180-yard-plus approaches to greens as my hybrid and three wood were the only clubs I could make any kind of contact with. I hit 15 shots GW-6I that round, and only one of them wasn’t a shank.
The absolute worst of it is the panic, the dread of hitting simple shots without any of the knowledge of what you’re doing wrong. It’s wise to not fiddle with your swing on the course, but what happens when you have no choice but to try every single combination of set up adjustment, ball placement, swing thought and club tweak just to get the ball in the air?
What happens? Your round is a tire fire and you lose the match.