Par From Afar - Anybody following?

[BoadieBroadus]

After all the threads about goals and whether someone would take a year off to get to scratch, wondered if anyone else was following the Par from Afar blog. Where the chap has taken a year off to get to scratch from just being an average social golfer.

Poor chap got seriously torn to shreds on here when he announced it, but i was interested to see if it could be managed so i keep up to speed with it, and to be fair he's doing a decent job on the blog even if the scoring doesn't look quite on track.

His method is obviously not to get a handicap until right at the end (which was advice posted on here at the time) so it's hard to say what he's off at the moment, but going by his scoring, he's 6 months in and playing to 15-ish. Scratch from there in 6 months looks an enormous ask, but interesting to see how far he gets.

Just curious, given the savaging he got on here when he announced his blog, if anyone else was paying attention and had any thoughts on his progress... should he be wished well, or would others prefer him to come up short for having the temerity to suggest it could be done?

 

[RGDave]

I've just had a quick look at the blog. As there seems to be a charitable aspect to his efforts, I'm not going to criticize.
Personally speaking, I have little interest in blogs and have always been sceptical of the get to scratch thing. Fair play to the guy though.

 

[User20205]

Sorry I haven't bothered. Sometimes it's possible to feel a bit jaded with the amount of golf blogs around.

From memory wasn't he trying to go round in level par, which obviously isn't the same as having a scratch handicap.

At the time it sounded like an ego trip dressed up in charity packaging.

 

[BoadieBroadus]

No i think the idea genuinely was to get to a scratch handicap, that's what it says on the site anyway... I think there is possibly some truth to therod's impression of the challenge... when people do things for charity it usually involves some sacrifice and hardship - giving up work and playing golf for a year i don't think struck people on here as such a terrible thing to have to endure....

Anyway, if you wanted to get to scratch in a year, after 6 months you'd really need to be playing to... 6 regularly at the max? His plan is clearly to be regularly shooting par towards the end and then put in 3 cards, but under congu rules they can't dish out a Cat 1 handicap straight away(???), which means that he'd still have to work down from 5...

Seems a big ask, let alone starting from a playing ability of mid teens with 6 months to go...

 

[HawkeyeMS]

I think, given six months in he is playing to about 15 then the reaction of the forum was probably right. Getting to 15 is the easy part