Cyclic Improvement - an observation?

[Shindig]

As part of my Fall improvement plan, I'm back to taking a more serious look at my statistics. And a trend I wasn't expecting has shown up.


To break 100 the first time, my game plan was essentially "get near green in regulation, chip on to where I can 2 putt." Eventually, it worked - to a 95 and then a 92. This is old news to those who know me.

After I first broke 100, I had several rounds that bounced around between the 90s and low triple digits. After a while, I got around to doing some real practicing on my chipping and putting and the scores tended to run into the low 90s much more consistently. I eventually noticed that I was missing short (within five feet) putts and was still scoring in the low 90s - so I figured that making those and maintaining the level of the rest of my game would lead to eventually breaking 90.

Sure enough, I did that back in April. I continued to practice my chipping and putting, and my scores stabilized to high 80s / low 90s on my "home" courses, and within a few strokes of my handicap on familiar courses that I didn't play regularly.

Most of my last half dozen or so "home" rounds have been in the high 80s, plus one 91. And yet, I'm back to missing those short putts again. So naturally, I'm going back to practicing those. But my scores have remained essentially the same! That is, the scores I first reached and maintained by solid short putting is now maintained with bad short putting. It was especially egregious last round, where I notched an 89 with 5 missed putts inside 5 feet.

So, I'm wondering - is it possible for something so fundamental as a short putt to go out of whack and still yield the same scores? Theoretically, fixing that again should get be into the mid-80s more often. Is improvement really this cyclic, where something fundamental can go out of whack but the rest of my game has somehow stepped up? I ask because it seems my last three big step improvements came from putting practice, although it's the same aspect of putting that has yielded each of those steps!

Naturally, I'll work on my short putting again regardless of whether it helps again, because missing those short ones really hurt.


Thanks for any insights into this you can help me with.

[hamletsdead]

I don't know if I would call it cyclic exactly. My take on it is that once you break 100 you know you can do it, and so you aren't terribly concerned about breaking 100 when you're out on the course; this additional confidence then leads to you shooting in the 90s regularly. Then, after practicing your short game (which many of us woefully overlook) and putting assiduously, the vaunted 90 barrier comes down, and -- once again -- once you've done it once you know you're capable of it, so you keep breaking it over and over, in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. The added confidence you gain from knowing you can do it basically makes your entire game better, and the better you keep playing the better you get. A bit of a chicken-and-egg paradox, I grant you, but nonetheless I think something along those lines holds true for most (if not all) of us. I don't really have a competent explanation for why you can still shoot in the mid-80s when your putting goes awry, but it's probably akin to when pros are having a bad ballstriking day -- they know they can still score because they have confidence in their up and down game, so they just live with being up and down all day. Perhaps unconsciously when your putting goes sideways on you your ballstriking gets better and you start hitting more greens in regulation.