Scratch By 50: State Of The Game Update

Graham Averill will turn 50 this year and he’s freaking out. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He’s a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. Welcome to his midlife crisis. 

OK, I’m almost two months into this crazy goal of trying to reach scratch by the time I turn 50 so I figure it’s time for an update on my game.

I started the process as a 13 handicap with some glaring swing problems. I got a golf coach (Sam Hahn, CEO of L.A.B. Golf), joined a golf club and spent the first several weeks of the project overhauling my swing with Sam’s guidance, working on everything from the grip to the follow-through. 

So, eight weeks in, with a lot of hard work under my belt, I’ve gone from a 13 handicap all the way down to a … 12. Yep. I’ve dropped one stroke from my golf game. 12.0 on the nose. Please hold your applause until the end. 

Let’s get into the details. 

The process 

The first several weeks of this process were devoted entirely to swing work. I was hitting into a net, watching myself on video, adjusting the tiniest movements and trying to bake in certain patterns. I didn’t play much real golf for weeks. It was very early in the season and I was content with attempting a huge swing overhaul. The swing work needed to be done and it’s still an ongoing process. But within the last few weeks, I’ve become more comfortable with my “new” swing and I’ve been playing rounds where I’m trying to score. 

So how much golf am I playing? I haven’t quit my job and I’m still married with kids so I wouldn’t say the amount of golf I’ve been playing is “obscene.” But it’s pretty close. There are periods when I have to travel for work but generally I’m at the golf course four to five days a week for at least a couple of hours a day. That breaks down to two practice sessions a week where I’m focused on specific movements or skills, and two or three rounds a week. But those rounds are mostly nine holes because I don’t have time to play 18 often (see: wife/kids/job above). 

Overhauling the swing was an uncomfortable process. There was a buddy golf tournament in the middle of that work where I shot 103. I pulled every single ball hard left into the woods. Literally, every single ball.

Sam told me changing my swing would be a long process and it would take time before it started to deliver big results. He estimated about six months. We’re still working on various technical aspects but the swing is in a place where I can take it to the course and not shoot triple digits. Which leads me to …

What’s working 

Honestly, my swing feels pretty great right now. I’m compressing the ball with my irons more often and I’ve increased my distance throughout the bag. That extra yardage hasn’t come from more time in the gym; it’s come from adjusting my technique and incorporating my core into the swing. I have an actual turn now instead of just shifting my shoulders. It’s made a big difference in consistency as well as distance. 

The driver has gone from a liability to an asset in the last couple of weeks after addressing my setup and trying to shift from a draw to a fade. As a result of that work, I’m hitting a lot more fairways. 

Generally, I have fewer bad shots per round overall. You know the shots I’m talking about: the occasional chunked wedge or out-of-nowhere slice. They’ll still happen but they don’t seem to accumulate like they used to. 

As a result, my scores are coming down. Over the last couple of weeks, a standard nine-hole round is four to five over par. I’ve shot a few 18-hole rounds in the very low 80s in the last few weeks, too. I had a terrible round last weekend with two triple bogeys on the back nine and came out with an 87. At the beginning of this process, I would have been pretty stoked to card an 87. Now I feel like I should run a lap to punish myself. 

According to the software I’m using to track my rounds, I’ve made the most improvement in the last few weeks off the tee and around the greens: driver and chip shots. 

All of the other shots?

What still needs work

I mean, kind of everything. Yeah, I’m hitting more fairways and getting up and down more often but there isn’t a single aspect of my game I don’t need to improve. 

But I know in order to make the biggest dent in my handicap, I need to focus specifically on two areas: approach shots and putting. 

I’m giving up an average of 2.9 strokes per round on shots between 50 and 150 yards. When I have a 50- to 75-yard shot into the pin, I’m hitting the green just half of the time and when I do hit the green, the ball is eight feet further from the hole than the average scratch player. 

I might be finding the short grass off the tee but these approach shots are killing me.

Oh, putting. I’m losing 1.9 strokes per round on average with the flat stick. If I’m 20 feet out from the hole, there’s a 15 percent chance I’m going to three-putt, which probably isn’t that bad, but I’m losing almost all of my strokes on the shorter putts. The six- to nine-foot range is my kryptonite with just a five percent make rate. I need to start dropping more of those but the most frustrating (and embarrassing) aspect of my game is the three- to five-footers. I’m making a third of those. 

That’s like making 33 percent of my open layups in a basketball game. That’s sad. 

In other words, I’m leaving a lot of strokes on the table when I’m really close to the hole. I’m not closing the account. If I was a character in Glengarry Glen Ross, I wouldn’t get any coffee “because coffee is for closers.” 

But here’s the trickiest thing I need to work on moving forward: somehow, I have to learn how to stop thinking about my score and just try to hit good golf shots. It sounds easy—be present—but the only quantifiable aspect of golf is the score. The title of this project is all about the score. Yet, I have to find a way to let the score go while I’m in the midst of a round and just focus on one swing at a time, because letting go of the end result will ultimately deliver a better score. 

Golf. It’s weird. 

I knew trying to reach scratch wasn’t gonna be easy. I knew the shots weren’t gonna come off fast. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth trying.

Am I satisfied with my progress? Hell, no. But I am encouraged. We’re still early in the season and I’m giving myself a full year for this project. My swing is in a good place thanks to Sam’s help. I believe I finally have a solid foundation to build on and a process that will help me continue to improve. 

Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 about how Graham came to terms with his driver. 

Scratch By 50: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Driver