As an amateur golfer who loves to work on his game, I find it a challenge to when my balls travel varying distances. There are days when I am crushing the ball where what would normally be a 7 iron, for example, I am hitting a comfortable 8 iron. That is a change of 10 to 15 yards for reasons unknown. I cannot explain why my ball is travelling farther, but it is and I need to embrace that change even for a day. After the round, I try to figure out why I was hitting my ball better on that day than others. Guess what, I do not have the slightest idea why!
Interestingly, I understand the mechanics of a golf swing. Well, at least I think I do. When I am hitting my ball the best, my iron shots are high and land soft on the green. My swing feels effortless and all my movements seem to be in unison like a Swiss watch. I realize that I am lamenting about hitting the ball extremely well, but the challenge is that I cannot seem to duplicate those efforts on a regular basis. Don’t get me wrong, I hit the ball fairly well most of the time, but on those special days, it is the next level of my game.
I often wonder how to capture this elevated success with regularity. I have not figure out how, but I think it requires much more time practicing and range work. Although this does sound like great fun, I cannot see that happening anytime soon. First, the closest range is an hour away and second, I am getting into the area of diminishing returns. For those that do not know: diminishing returns is an economic term where proportionally smaller profits or benefits derived from something as more money or energy is invested in it. So basically I would see minor improvements in my score for a greater amount of work and effort. At my stage in life, I am not sure I am up for this.
I have always talked about heading for scratch, but that dream is faded away as of late. I still want to work on my game, but I have chosen to tinker with my game vice overhauling everything. I am not sad about it, but I figure that the effort it would take (considering the facilities available) and the time would not be beneficial for my overall quality of life. Therefore, I am going to shift down a gear, enjoy my game, and continue to slowly work at sustaining my current game or playing great golf from time to time. Every golfer comes to this conclusion and I think mine has arrived.
Having said all this, I still love it when my game is firing on all cylinders. It is those games that stokes my fire of playing better golf. They happen from time to time, but not as often as in the past. Regardless, golf is still an huge part of my life and I enjoy playing with friends and in tournaments. My current path is a good one and for now I am grateful for every happy moment it generates.
I am grateful golfer! See you on the links!
The Grateful Golfer 
There’s a lot of reasons we may not get consistent distance and I can only talk about me. Two things have always been the basic cause. First and foremost, I swayed. That caused me not to get a consistent strike. One divot might start half an inch before the ball and the next might start an inch early. That of course causes both a loss of distance overall, but also loss of consistency over our distance control.
The other thing was in my choices. If I was facing an uphill shot to a green from 155 I’d pull the 7 iron and try and smash it. Today I know an 80% 6 iron will give me both better consistency hitting the distance, but also hitting the direction. I’m just going to make fewer mistakes.
I’ve worked on turning instead of swaying. I do a much better job of hitting ball first today. My divots are more often coming an inch after the ball than before. Good stuff because that brings much more consistency into play like I said above for both distance and direction. And I still chose to use the 80% swing when I can because it’s still going to be easier to execute without my swing falling apart.
I don’t think I’ve ever done this before but I took the win tonight 5-0-0-0. 15 quarters. lol The big time. Not sure I deserved the win. I felt like I wasn’t in it often enough during the round but I guess I was in it enough when it counted which is how skins games sometimes work I guess.
Got beat over the weekend though by one of our high handicappers. He played the best game I’ve seen come out of him so far. Came within two of me gross and totally wiped me out net. His net was 64. Mine was a one under 71. The first 6 holes and one on the back nine got me. And what’s hard to swallow is it was my putter and my wedges that caused it. My woods, hybrids, and irons all behaved quite well. I think I three putted 4 of those 6 holes. And that’s just not me normally. But it was Saturday. I think I have a mental block on those greens. Never have played my best on that course and it’s a shame because I really like it. It’s always in such nice shape. I used to have the course manager as my next door neighbor so I’ve played it a ton over the years. You’ld think I’d get a feel for it by now, but it always seems to get me. Oh well, next week we’re off to somewhere else because we failed to get a booking in time for a 3rd round there but we’ll be back. One of these days I’m going to shoot a par there. 🏌️♂️😂
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Kevin,
Swaying is definitely an issue for me when chipping from 10 yards. I think I am trying to finesse the ball into the hole instead of chipping it normally. I do sway from time to time with my other irons and it definitely causes distance loss, but like you, I have learned to control the sway and change it into a swing. Congrats on your big win! 😉
Cheers Jim
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