I haven’t written in a while as I was swamped with multiple client woodworking jobs after I recovered from my collarbone break and surgery. I still have a backlog of jobs but they are starting to spread out giving me time to write about my golf journey again.

This blog will detail the overall SMART goals plan to meet this year. The following blogs will be about how I plan to meet the each of the subset goals I have set for myself for 2019.

Currently I am at a 24.3 handicap on GHIN. I probably should be higher as I haven’t posted the last few Avery Ranch scores which have averaged 99 or so lately. However, I shot recently a 96 there and a 92 at Lions, both of which tied course bests. My putting has regressed recently but my short game is making great strides. My swing is self-taught and I am striking the ball better than ever, but in stressful situations, like mid-iron green approaches, I revert to the arms swing with weak ugly results.

First and foremost I wish to drop my handicap down to 18 from 24 by October. To meet this goal I will work on the following areas. The first five are ball striking goals, in order, the last is a strategic goal that has equal weight to the ball striking goals.

1. Improve chipping and pitching to improve current 1 to 2 Up & Downs per round to at least 5 Up & Downs per round (currently GameGolf has scrambling at 10% and I want to more than double that stat.) I will write a blog about how I will tackle improving in this area.
2. Improve putting from current 1.9 putts per hole to below 1.8 putts per hole (GameGolf – this will get me to below 33 putts per round over 5 rounds which is achievable by July. This requires reducing 3 putts from 2-3 per round to under 1 per round and improving one-putts with the short game U&D improvements in #1 above.
3. For the holes where I have a mid-range (100 to 150 yards) GIR opportunity, I am only hitting a fraction of these due to poor swings due to the stress of the shot. I need to work on high stress exercises on the range to enable myself to hit solid shots on those good GIR approach opportunities. Improve GameGolf 100-150 yard iron approach percentage from current 24% to 45% by August 2019.
4. Continue great progress off the tee with 4-wood, 3-hybrid, and 6-iron. However, need to improve game-to-game consistency – some rounds I hit 60+% of fairways and other rounds I top, pull, or push my tee shots resulting in 30% fairway accuracy. I will achieve regular 55% fairway accuracy by end of summer by grooving the new swing and choosing the least stressful tee shot for the conditions.
5. In order to improve GIR percentage, I will work on accuracy with 3-hybrid and 4-hybrid to green sized targets at 150 to 160 yards on holes with few hazards around the green. GameGolf has me at 34% on 150+ accuracy – I plan to get this above 50% by August 2019.
6. Strategy – Implement a Stress Free game plan for every round of golf. I will track the mental/stress score for every shot and aim for a stress free score of 80% or better stress free shots per round. I will write a diary about how I plan my rounds to make it as stress free as possible.

I tackle each of these in my range practices but there is room for improvement there as well. I tend to spend about 60% on range balls (though 30% of those are pitches) and 40% on short game and putting. For the latter though I tend to do Up & Down drills (score 9 holes of U&D) or 9 holes of lag putting. I need to work on 10 shot chipping and pitching tests and specific distance putting tests (20, 30, 40 ft lag putts).

On the range I need to induce stress on 100-150 yard shots to improve accuracy and ability to hit the greens I’ve been missing with stress-induced poor ball striking on the course.

Accomplishing these changes will result in my breaking 90 soon, especially if I can get in more rounds of golf as I hope I can manage this year.