This month was my dad’s annual trip to visit and we knocked out 5 rounds in 7 days. The following week I played again for 6 total rounds. This is also marks the end of my maximalist club career.
- Ending Handicap: 16.1
- Starting Handicap: 17
- Skytrak Rounds: 12 (23 YTD)
- Skytrak Range Sessions: 1
- Real Range Sessions: 1
Practice
I purchased my hitting net and Skytrak at the beginning of August and had my first session on August 4th. In August, I played 11 times with a 3 foot gimmie range and my average 18 hole score was an 88.03 (putts are estimated once you’re on the green).
In September, I played another 12 rounds on the Skytrak and averaged 84.06. I did play courses more to the tune of 6000 yards and I got a little more acclimated to swinging inside my garage. Moving forward I’m going to start tracking these rounds more formally.
I also had one formal range practice session along with putting and chipping. 5 of the 6 rounds I played I also spent about 20-30 minutes warming up before the round which helped mitigate a first hole triple.
Overall it was a solid month of practice and I’m intending to add actual range sessions to my week’s moving forward.
Actual Golf
As mentioned, it was my dad’s annual visit to me and we made good use of the time playing 5 times in 7 days. My low score for the month was 82 at the local muni and my highest score of 93 was at TPC Scottsdale.
Raven Golf Club was my first non-scramble round of the year and I hacked my way around the course.
I followed that up with a solid round at Estrella where it was near impossible to miss a fairway, but the 3 times I did I lost a ball.
Whirlwind Devil’s Claw the next day was more of the same with the driver and the law of averages hit me with the putter. Fortunately, I had several strings of pars to offset the poor putting.
TPC Scottsdale was the highlight of the week and I had several blow up holes that derailed any chance of a good round. Apparently I didn’t learn from the day before that not compounding mistakes you can still break 90.
Ken McDonald is the local muni and a very forgiving course where it’s almost impossible to lose a golf ball which resulted in my best score of the month. The greens were some of the slowest I’ve ever played and it was the one round without a warm up so a couple early 3 putts hurt my chance of breaking 80.
And finally, Whirlwind Cattail I had a respectable round going but holes 11-13 I went Double, Triple, Triple and with that so did my chance of playing well.
This month was an anomaly for me playing 6 times and will likely only play 0-4 times a month going forward. Desert golf has been a change of pace compared to Midwest golf. Rough is non-existent right now in September and trees are essentially a non-factor.
Misc
With September in the books, I’m looking forward to starting my minimalist golf journey with 7 clubs in the bag. I’ve got a tee time booked for Kierland this upcoming Sunday so my time is coming.
As your average golfer, switching to a minimalist setup is already making me want to do a fitting, purchase new irons and optimize my loft gaps for my new adventure.
Minimalist Golf 