Your Handicap?

I like the How did i do graph that shows any trends etc. Mines below.

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Pretty much an identical graph to mine, get a big cut, plateau for a while or up the odd .1 then another cut. Started at 24 this season and down to 19.6 at the moment. Not long to get down to my target of 18. That said, playing comps every weekend has become a bit of a chore. Started to realise that I am having more fun when I play a few bounce games rather than treat every weekend as another grind to lower my handicap. Decided to have a week off the medals this week and play a friendly game on Saturday rather than the medal on Sunday.
 
If you regularly shoot your h'cap and sometimes just below, then your h'cap is probably a little too high.
I am very consistent (not wishing to sound clever) but sadly my course doesn't allow me to express myself at all. (that sounds like bull!"£$%)
I've played lots over the summer away from home and have cobbled together some great scores. I've also played 4/5/6 shots under in the pairs games BECAUSE I can play in a totally different way when my partner is odds-on to make bogey nett par.
At some point I need to go out there and give it my best shot, throw caution to the wind and pray I don't rack up a double or triple missing a 12 yard fairway by 2 yards.
 
There's also the fact the extremely dry summer we have had, although allowing us to play loads of golf, has made a lot of courses play much tougher! As soon as we got that bit of rain our courses became easily 5 shots a round easier due to the greens being far more receptive.

I know it's potentially the most tedious thing to practice but if you have a short game practice area then maintaing a steady-ish handicap shouldn't be too much of a problem. Best investment I've made this season was my putting mirror and my god does keeping an eye on putting alignment etc help.

Bottom line is unless the wheels are coming off long game wise then short game practice plus course managemnt should see you reach your season "level" and maintain it plus or minus 1 each way (cat 1 excluded) quite easily.

I aim to play golf that you could describe as boring to watch - ie minimise your risks to maximise your rewards. Round the harder of our 2 tracks that means that a totally acceptable round puts you +6 to +10 gross but can easily lead to you shooting lower if you chip/pitch/putt well.
 
OK, everyone would know that ffsk :D
ps - wowl would be more accurate, it's not even an abbreviation etc ;)
 
Had two years of handicap rising from 11 to 13, but out of the blue hit some form and come down to 9.8 in last two comps. You are only ever one good round away from coming out of a slump :D
 
I agree with the post about mental pressure too. I've stood on the 16th several times with competition winning scores to collapse faster than a Pakistani cricket team on a bung (allegedly). My golfing handicap covered the scores but I was off 28 mentally for the way I took the holes on.

I think at the end of the day over time the handicap system will put you at the right level if you regularly play competitively. It's the guys off a high handicap that sandbag by turning up, winning and sodding off again that are the menace. OK they get cut but it never really catches up to where their golf really is.

There isn't really a viable alternative that will be instigated any time soon and so we're left to accept the handicap system and its discrepancies
 
! As soon as we got that bit of rain our courses became easily 5 shots a round easier due to the greens being far more receptive
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Not sure I quite agree with that. Greens may be softer but so are fairways which means going at greens with longer clubs. Also if you come up short you stop short so you have to be able to hit it more accurately. Personally I prefer the course soft but it's no coincidence SSS is higher when the courses soften up.

On the other hand I 100% agree that improving your short game will lower your h'cap
 
! As soon as we got that bit of rain our courses became easily 5 shots a round easier due to the greens being far more receptive
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Not sure I quite agree with that. Greens may be softer but so are fairways which means going at greens with longer clubs. Also if you come up short you stop short so you have to be able to hit it more accurately. Personally I prefer the course soft but it's no coincidence SSS is higher when the courses soften up.

On the other hand I 100% agree that improving your short game will lower your h'cap
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On the harder of our 2 tracks you have 5 par 3s. On the other 13 holes you can only hit a tee shot to a certain point on all bar 3 holes unless you wanted to be blocked out or land up in the clag. On all but 2 holes over the entire course you have serious trouble no more than 5 yards off the back of every green. THIS makes ours play much easier when it's slightly softer as you can attack greens as opposed to trying to run the ball up as it was throughout the summer this year.

Take other courses around here where through the green isn't really penal and you can batter them to death throughout the dry and hard spells. Take Rookwood near Horsham as an example and only the longest par 5 actually played as 1 if you can drive the ball 250 yards on a regular basis.
 
Our course played easier during the hot spell as you could get massive amounts of run. The greens were kept watered so would accept a well struck shot. Going in with a 9 iron is so much easier than going in with a 5 iron.
Now the grass has recovered and is getting lush again, the run has stopped and scores are generally going up.
 
This year I've played 19 medals and have only had 4 0.1's added to my handicap having been in the buffer zone for most of the time but during July & August I had 7 cuts in a row 0.3, 0.6, 0.3, 0.6, 0.6, 1.5 and 0.2 taking me from 15.5 to 11.4.

The cut of 1.5 came in one of our club's major cup finals when I shot my lowest ever scratch score of 74 on our par 67 course.
 
It isn't just about technique and ability either. There is also a ceiling for the mental side. I might play better than a 10 handicap, but if I can't pull it off in comps, because mentally I haven't got it, then it doesn't matter how good the rest of it is. You can be 4 over standing on the 16th tee, but if you can't bring it home, under pressure, you are never going to make a proper low handicap.
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Murph is bang on here. I've bounced between 6 & 8 for quite a few years now, probably ten or more, and started the year on 8.

I had a lesson, and plugged away, last month or so it's really clicked, and I'm Cat 1 now for the first time.

That however isn't the breakthrough, only last week when knocking it round in a better ball did I realise that mentally the drop to 5 has changed how I think. Even off 6 I mentally accepted a bogey when missing the green and leaving a tough recovery as if I was still in my early days playing off 12 as if it was no real damage, now I am desperately trying to find a way to make par, and doing so. It's not that I'm putting pressure on myself, rather that I'm not 'settling' for dropped shots, and the results are paying off hugely in my handicap.
 
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