My Handicap Has Dropped… | The Scratch Year Ep. 13
My second handicap round on camera started just as badly as the first – but this time I managed to battle back. In today’s episode I’m at Gog Magog Golf Club in Cambridgeshire, needing to shoot an 83 or better to move my index down. Strap in for a rollercoaster ride…
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I quit my job to see if I can become a scratch golfer in one year. Is it possible to go from a 10.2 to a 0.0 in 365 days of golfing full-time?
Follow my journey as I try to understand what drives sustainable improvement in golf, how quickly that improvement can come, and if this mad endeavour is even feasible.
Welcome to my Golf Life Crisis.
46 Comments
Hey, like your journey and content (videos are a bit long winded and I do fast forward) however, good luck in getting there! Any movement in the right direction is progress 💪🏽
Keep grinding, nice stuff!
brave of you to try and lower your handicap playing unfamiliar courses
Good video. Read the book, golf is not a game of perfect by Dr Bob Rotella will help with the mental side, guaranteed to improve your scores. Honest!
If you ever fancy a game after seeing Anders i play at the Leicestershire, about 5 mins away. Would be happy to mark you card for you
Pretty good round. Nightmare start but slightly better short game and the low scores are there. Surprised by the stats, I was thinking approaches and putting wouldn’t have been that high. Looking forward to playing full rounds with the shotscope as I’ll probably be surprised what was good and bad from my own round. First few rounds on camera with a card it’ll soon be the norm and plenty rounds in the 70’s to come
Hi Joel, you did well to keep going and improve on the second nine. At least it was that way round otherwise you most likely would have read another chapter from your book.
-1.12 SG on a single shot takes some doing?! 🤔😂 Good to get the handicap moving in the right direction though 👍
Hello mate, your pitching and chipping is very much from the inside so you are having difficulty with strike. Something I struggle with too so would recommend a lesson or two to figure it out!
Didn’t get past hole 8, don’t say its going to get better shortly then go double, triple! Just be honest. This really irked
SHORT GAME: good to see you start to realize its enormous importance to scoring well. Decision making is the easy part, how about practicing chipping and putting for a couple of hours per day? You will thank me later.
Joel, you also need to consider that you are playing unfamiliar courses in poor conditions. This is fine if it’s in competition with others who aren’t members of that course but the standard scratch (or whatever it’s called nowadays) will be much lower playing a course on a day when only members are playing. This is why, when you play in open comps, the competition scratch will generally go up 1 , 2 or even 3 because everyone is in the same boat. My handicap always goes down more when I play at other courses in county comps etc.
Advice from a golfer that was also wanting to get to scratch. Stop putting so much pressure on yourself keep working on your swing keep up with the lesson, I did get down to 4.7 was my lowest before I had to stop for work and family but hoping to be back this year
Things that scratch golfers do/don't:
– Don't miss inside 3ft
– Do get their lag putts inside 3ft consistently
– Don't double chip
– Don't leave approach shots short of the green
Greens with slopes are your friend, your aiming at the flag all the time uuummm aim for the slopes more and the ball will work its way to the hole, imagination using the slopes, also helps in where you want to hit the ball of the tee. open your imagination up! your doing great keep learning young sir! welcome to the wonderful game,the biggest thing you will learn is it is you against yourself hhahhha the constant fight in this beautiful game. IMAGINATION IS THE KEY.🙏🙏🙏
Keep at it! I joined a club and started playing (after a 30 year break) in Dec. After 2 1/2 months I’m on 9.5 and my goal is to get to 5 by the end of the year. I think that’s realistic. If you have some athletic ability and put in the practice I think that level is achievable for many people. Below that is out of reach for the vast majority of people.
Awesome vid as always bro.
When i was trying to become a teen handicapper it seemed unanimous amongst my club that 19.5 was not teen. 19.4 was. Fortunately I smashed that out of the park with one good round (3 bad ones after 😂) but interested to hear yours and viewers thoughts on that.
Personally I reckon my mates were right.
“Not to give any spoilers”. You named the video the handicap is starting to move 😂
Enjoyable watch
Not a great start and you must have felt like giving up after the front 9 but you persevered and that is a big plus. It shows that despite a bad start you have the mental attitude to forget what has gone, as you can’t change it anyway and the back 9 was much improved and shows what can be done. As you said the short game needs work but that is where a low single figure differs from a higher handicapper they can get up and down from short of the green. I noticed that on some of the putts there was a tendency to move which is why I think you missed a few of the shorter putts maybe have a look at this. However overall an improvement from the previous round just now needs to be tighter!
I would say you rather rush things and your best shots were when you hold your pose.
You need to go and see Dan Grieve. It will be a quick win and probably knock 2/3 shots off your handicap. Speaking from personal experience it saved me 3 shots following his advice.
can i ask about your SG putting? you had a few 3 putts in the round which usually go straight down as a -1 so I'm curious how it came to be +0.31 vs a 5? I put my own shotscope against a 5hdcp and really struggle to get a positive SG even on good putting days, just wondered if you could share some detail about it?
You’re playing courses you don’t know in less than ideal conditions. So well done 0.2 is progress. Was this round filmed prior to your most recent lesson with Anders?
Well done Joel getting close to single handicapper status ! Love the stats I’m using them to target 50%FIR & 40%GIR which focuses the mind & should help to achieve sub 5 handicap.
2 Steps forward & 1 back is the likely scenario but keep going
Keep at it. Enjoying watching your journey.
Haven't checked it but I'm not sure your strokes gained is accurate regarding putting, short game and approach play. With Shotscope you need to measure off each putt on the course then edit the round later. Arccos you can do this in seconds on your phone on the course, I've used both. Just looking at your putting and the strokes gained it gives I don't think it's accurate. There's less than a stroke difference between scratch putting and 5 handicap putting so it saying you only lost about 0.5 in putting to a scratch golfer doesn't look right.
The problem is GPS isn't accurate enough, it can't tell if you chipped the ball to 10 feet from the pin or 1 foot so if you miss the putt it doesn't know if it was a bad chip or bad putt. Did you fire the approach shot to 8 feet from the pin or 20 feet? Both are good shots but strokes gained it makes a difference. You need to go back in and edit all the putt length or the strokes gained really is pretty inaccurate.
If you haven't already read "Every shot counts" by Mark Broadie he invented the shots gained metric, so a great source of info for which stats matter more.
Swing’s improved a lot!
Deeply average pitch shot?!? I think you need to check averages by handicap! That was a really good pitch shot!
Really interesting ! What app are you using to calculate your strokes gained compared to a 5 handicap ? Cheers from France !
I think the weather is such a massive factor in winter golf in the uk.
Get yourself over to portugal for a couple of weeks for an intensive practice camp!
Are you a member of a club? Do you plan to keep putting cards in on different courses? Thanks
I think you would benefit from a read about GYRA. It is a measuring system of your mind during the round and recognizing when there is danger of losing another shot because of your mindset. It is pretty awesome. Your meltdown on hole 5 would not have happened. Also you mentioned that after 7 holes you felt like "in the round". This is something that is covered as well. It seems like you have a bad warm up routine, that doesnt prepare you for putts and teeshots under pressure from the get-go.
First time watching your channel and really enjoyed the video. Our handicaps are very similar and I couldn't help making comparisons – strengths and weaknesses. While watching the round I could see that your longer clubs (Hybrid, long irons) are better. I'd also guess at this present time your avg. driving distance is further than mine (I'm in the middle of re-fixing). What was very evident, based on the observation of this one round, was that your short game is weaker in comparison (I could see this before the stats, but have some solid reasoning). I suspect these two aspects, long game vs 100 yards and in, are roughly balancing things out between us. I did find some of the self critique surprising. I 100% appreciate this is one round, more statistics would help confidence in the analysis. A couple of observations for my reasoning before seeing the stats making me think "his short game could be much better":
(1) putting off the green, now I know this is personal preference; however, this is something I observe in high handicappers – a preference to put rather than chip through fringe, even in winter. This suggested to me that chipping in this scenario is something you'd prefer not to do; therefore, chipping is a weakness.
(2) Focusing on 100 yards and in. From observation, you had a couple of pitch shots that weren't great. I'd say these led to more difficult shots around the green. I'd say this is one of my strengths in comparison to yourself (something I work on, a lot). I do wonder how well this is captured (interpreted) in the data 🤔. Short sided pitch: agreed this is a strategic error based on the previous shot (as previously mentioned, the issue was the approach). The bunker shot: you were out first time, only one instance to critique, so I wouldn't.
I found it really interesting comparing someone very similar in handicap to myself, yet we seem to have very different strengths. I'd love to do some comparisons. I don't have Strokes gained data, but do have plenty of other useful statistics of my progress and ability, mainly gained through my Garmin watch. Feel free to reach out on X @HowIsMyGolf or via blog HowIsMyGolf.com
Hi Joel Love the content your sharing, I started my golf journey 2 years ago I'm currently a 20 handicap but struggling with the amount of information i have within my mind, I'm south Birmingham Wythall so let me no if you would like a round at my local golf club its a wonderful 3 loop 28 hole course all the best Daz
I feel like your ball-striking is much more consistent than when you started this journey. Most of the full shots seemed to go pretty OK. It seemed like winter conditions for short game and putting, and lack of familiarity with the course cost quite a few shots and during the round the inevitable loss in confidence and frustration from a few bad short shots caused many of the bogeys. Easy to say sitting on my couch, but I'd say 4 or 5 shots here was down to mental – need to be able to reset and forget what has gone before. Well done on keeping it together and brining it home pretty well on the back nine.
Joel – I keep saying work on your short game and putting – that’s what makes a low handicapper – glad you are going to work on this. Your driving and irons (mostly) are good enough for now…and give yourself some slack. I recommend you read Dr Bob Rotella’s “golf is a game of imperfect” – accepting a shot and moving on, be in the moment only…you currently play, respond and think like a 10 handicapper…I know you want and so will change this.
I suggest some Danny Grieves short game videos on you tube – there’s one about how to play in winter conditions…raise your golf IQ!
The picture in picture during the round is a little off putting I can't look at both, maybe a hybrid system where you just VO the round but mix in few comments to camera during the round you can then self critique during VO (my thoughts process was wrong/wrong club choice/my heads just gone🤣) this should also speed up filming on course rather than doing full course vlogs if the course is busy. Good luck.
So interesting to see handicap rounds on YouTube. Rounds that actually matter to the average golfers! Nothing better. Great video. Well played again!
Keep going hard, I'm on a similar journey to you. Currently playing off 8.1 and i'm trying this year to get to scratch. Following your journey with intent, and its really good to see how your lessons are structured. I start my lessons next week, and have a garden set up with a net and launch monitor.
Thanks for the content – great transparency as always…keep going.
We’ve all been there Joel, hit it like a god on the range with the coach and it goes array on the course. Look forward to you next lesson with Anders
Some very solid golf in there Joel! Your putting was top class 👍 Keep at it mate 💪
Absolutely loved the book club 😂. I have many similar books if you want to borrow any 😅