After my first full pre-season for 8 years (when I was 18) I managed to win my club championship yesterday (at Cradoc GC in Wales) yesterday, we play 36 holes on one day best gross wins!
I play off 5 so don't normally have a chance but I played great, shot 1 over in the morning and level par in the afternoon to finish with 143 (1 over) winning by 3. My new exact is 4.1 and really its been down to hard work on the range and even more hard work on the short game, lessons with my assistant pro who has coached me for about 10 years now, and a great saturday with David Llywelyn a few weeks ago with our county team when he gave us a day long short game clinic. I've been hitting the ball very well lately and just missed out on a great round the previous sunday dropping 4 shots over the last 3 holes with a bit of poor course management and a couple of bad shots to shoot 5 over, 4 over would have won me my category in men's open and 3 over (or a par up the last!) would have won me the whole event.
Obviously as well as the hard work the equipment I used helped, I changed from my trusty 990's to a custom fit set of combo 710 MB/CB (2, 4-7 CB and 8-PW MB all X100), my cleveland wedges to 3 oil can vokeys (50.08, 54.08, 58.08) also custom fit and I'm also carrying a 910 F with an X100 steel shaft again custom fit. Also in the bag was my png G2 8.5 driver with Grafalloy Prolaunch Blue 65S shaft and my old school TeI3 sole stamp Newport which was refurbished the end of last year. Yesterday was the first time I used the new ProV1x in competition as well, finally ran out of the old model so gamed the new balls, and they feel great!
The moral of my story is work hard, use the right equipment for your game, get fitted!! Also that a bit of adversity/disappointment makes you stronger if you learn from it, I crumbled the week before but I went out to enjoy yesterday and kept myself on an even keel even when I made mistakes, which everyone does!
Thanks to Titleist because of all the parts of my game I had to think about, my clubs and my ball (also my FJ glove and shoes) were not in my mind I trusted in them!!
Now I have to look forward to the Tournament of Champions we have at my golf club where all of the Welsh club champions are invited to play a 36 hole tournament in September, the caliber is very high so once I've had a rest its back to work on the short game and to remember to keep enjoying the game I love!!
Dan