Golfing Blues

David Duval

The Golfing Blues

I interrupt my usual blog to talk about getting down at golf. I think most people who have played golf for a while have got to the point where they have just about had enough with the game. It usually comes after a period of particular struggles and a feeling that it’s not worth the time you put into it.

I had myself experienced various minor periods of the blues but had my worst case of it during the middle of my current swing change. I had been putting in plenty of quality time into my practice and although results had been pretty poor had seen enough in terms of position change and shot shape improvement to continue to persevere with the work. However towards the end of last year in spite of some real big progress with my swing positions I couldn’t find a way to get my driver going. The rest of my game was going pretty good but my driving was shocking. Probably as bad as it had been for a long time. It wasn’t just that the direction was bad, it was the quality of strike. For about three weeks I practiced and was hitting some absolutely horrendous feeling shots. But I am not one to give up easily so I carried on with the practice.

However, the final straw came playing a Winter mini tour event at a local venue I won’t name. Arriving on a frosty winter morning I expected the usual decision to either delay or cancel the event due to frozen greens. But to my surprise we were going out. ‘The greens must have thawed out’ I thought to myself. But a trip to the putting green confirmed the opposite. So in spite of the poor decision I go out. The first couple of holes go okay, fairway wood off tee and run the ball in to frosty greens and scrape pars. Then I start to miss fairways and hit into rough, which is sodden. Every shot missing fairway is plugged. Balls missing fairways by yards or greens by feet can be lost in their plug marks. Balls hit on greens bounce through into soaking wet lies. This is not enjoyable golf, made worse by the fact my driver shots feel like I’m hitting a rock with a drainpipe. I left the tournament with one thing in my mind. I’ve had enough.

I didn’t pick up a club for two months apart from during lessons. I made a choice that I was only going to get back to it when I felt a real desire to practice again. Two things brought me back to the game. Firstly, during a lesson I hit my driver and the face cracked, turns out it had a flaw in the face and that was one of the reasons it felt so bad!! But I still wasn’t fully converted back. The final turning point was my coaching trip to PGA Cataluyna in Spain. Good golf course, good condition and the sight of the sun that I hadn’t really seen for twelve months did wonders. My new driver head was a revelation also and suddenly golf became about enjoyment and making birdies and eagles again. My love affair with the game had renewed.

Unfortunately coming back to minus temperatures in England put a bit of a dampener on it, but I finally feel a desire to hit balls and get back to it. The pieces of my swing change feel better now I have confidence back off the tee and I am starting to look ahead to some tournament golf again.

My experienced is shared with another at my club. Neil Padbury, who is featured in some of my earlier videos got the end of his golfing tether at around autumn last year. He has a huge amount of golfing potential but apart from brief periods has never quite has showed the work rate required to push on from a potentially good golfer to actually reaching the scratch standard some would say he should have. As a result his dreams always outweighed the results he achieved. He is currently retired from the game in his early twenties, but I hope this season some good weather will bring him out and maybe give him the motivation to give his well of potential one last run at the big time.

My biggest respect goes to David Duval, he has suffered possibly the biggest career slump since Sandy Lyle, but still comes back to play week in week out. He must have gone through the blues several times but still works hard. I hope that soon he is rewarded for his perseverance.