We've reached that point on the calendar when you need to start thinking about your New Year’s resolutions. Here is my Thailand golf resolution.
Keep a history of each golf shot you hit during every round of 2007. It will be both beneficial to your golf game and fun. And it's easy! After each round, when possible and fresh in your mind, record the shots you hit with each club.
The way to do this is to design an easy to use chart where you can quickly list, following the round, the good, the bad and the ugly shots you hit. After you design a chart, have enough copies made and put some sheets in your golf bag so that you'll have a clean page ready when you want to record the results of a round. Or, set up your own Excel spreadsheet so that you can quickly enter your golf round into your PC as soon as you reach home.
As an example: number the holes (1-18) down the left hand side, allowing one lined space per hole down the sheet. Across the top, enter columns about one inch wide for (1) drives, (2) fairway woods, (3) long irons, (4) short irons, (5) chips, (6) pitches, (7) sand shots, (8) and putts. Leave space at the bottom for miscellaneous remarks.
When you fill in your chart, put a plus (+) for a good drive and a minus (-) for bad one. If the drive is in the fairway, circle the + or -. Use a simple + or - for all the other shots, except putts. For putts, your code should be L (for lag), M (for medium length), and S (for short). On a bad lag putt, enter an L-. On a good medium putt, enter M+ and so on. You can improvise on your personal code; it's not hard and can be fun.
You should have a place to enter the date, score, and type of weather you played in. You'll need space at the bottom of your record-keeping sheet to total the results of the various shots. For example, how many drives you hit well or poorly over 18 holes, and how many fairways you hit; and how you did on lag putts (anything in the 20-60 foot range), medium range (5-15 feet), and short putts (4 feet and shorter). Only using the number of putts during a round can be a very misleading statistic; on some days your chipping and pitching will be so good that you won't use as many putts as normal. You have to keep a record from numerous rounds to get a true picture of how you are doing around the greens.
When you become mired in a slump, as we all do from time to time, compare the sheets you kept while playing well and see where the main differences are. That will be an invaluable aid in figuring out what you need to work on to improve your scores.
As you see you scores improve, this just might become the one Thailand Golf New Year’s Resolution you will resolve to keep!
If anyone has a good system of their own, please post a comment or I would also be most interested to hear about it privately and can be reached at my Thailand golf vacation company.
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