I always wonder if there is a point where you can play too much and it only hurts your game each subsequent day. I am trying to take advantage of the few remaining nice days we have left combined with the days getting shorter and shorter. There is a nice 18 holer that I hit as often as I can on my way home from Saint Cloud to Maple Grove. I can usually get to Clearwater by 4pm, meaning that I have about a month left before I run out of playable daylight.
So I hit up this course about three times a week for at least one round, two if I am moving fast enough. When I play my normal game and am shooting well, I should be carding anywhere from 51 to 55. However, recently I have been pulling in more and more 57-60s just because of bad kicks, bad luck, and a definite inability to hit lines I know I am capable of hitting. One or two arrant throws, I can handle that, but I have been plagued that I am suddenly looking at missing almost every drive by 10 to 30 degrees. I know what I am capable of throwing, but it is just not working out how I envisioned on the tee pad.
Yet before I can totally buy into the overplaying bit, my aces are up in general as well. In the last two months I have five Cubby aces and two legitimate ones. If anything, I find that I truly need to slow down and concentrate on my form to reign myself back in. For example, last weekend I was out with a group of friends at Millstream (Saint Joseph) and Riverside (Saint Cloud). I was trying to have a good time, which means less concentration on form and more concentration on having fun. At Millstream I found the water four times and hit the mando tree on Hole 4. My worst round there in years. At Riverside I was at least playing best shot doubles. I hit the first available tree off the tee no less than six times. Thankfully I did put up a few good shots as well, all but parking Hole 5. Driving is usually one of the stronger aspects of my game, so during a fun around if I can just drive decently I know I am going to have a blast with my friends. This absolute debacle sucked a lot of fun out of it for me.
As last weekend exemplified, it has been really bad the last few weeks. I am playing almost as much as I would play during the summer when I am not teaching, so maybe it is just too much for so long. I am finding that I need to concentrate more and more to get back the shots that were almost automatic earlier in the year. On Thursday at Clearwater, during my first round I carded my worst round in years, a 60 (I know, it really is not that bad, but my average is usually 5-7 throws better). For the second round, trying to reign in my frustation, I concentrated on every shot, slowing down my process, and really tried to make the shot. I turned around and recorded my personal best there, a 49, and that is with two blown putts and one miracle putt to save par. A night and day round only minutes apart.
I took Friday off because of Halloween, and thanks to the five hours of yardwork I had to do today combined with the double digit hours of lesson planning and grading I still have to do this weekend, all I could afford to do today was to hit up a really small 9-holer.
