An oddity -- best scores are coming on the hardest holes...

[JessN16]

I typically play in the high 90s-low 100s no matter what the course. But for pretty much my whole golfing life -- and especially in recent years -- I notice I record my best scores on the hardest holes on the course.

I shot 100 even today on a course I've now played twice and consider very challenging (lots of holes go uphill to small greens isolated by rough-cut grass rather than fairway grass around them).

Here are my scores on the six hardest holes on the course:

HDCP 1 (393-yard par 4, uphill): 7
HDCP 2 (420-yard par 4): 5
HDCP 3 (365-yard par 4): 5
HDCP 4 (350-yard par 4, uphill): 4 (with GIR)
HDCP 5 (352-yard par 4): 6
HDCP 6 (377-yard par 4, uphill): 3 (with GIR; driver:3H:16-footer for birdie)

For those six holes, total par of 24, I shot 30, or 6 over. The two big numbers came because of a OOB tee shot on HDCP 5 hole and two flubbed shots around the green on the hardest hole.

Now, for comparison, here are my scores on the six easiest holes:

HDCP 18 (480-yard par 5): 8
HDCP 17 (300-yard par 4): 4 (with GIR)
HDCP 16 (146-yard par 3): 4
HDCP 15 (305-yard par 4): 5
HDCP 14 (365-yard par 4): 7
HDCP 13 (143-yard par 3): 5

For those six holes, total par of 23, I shot 33, or 10 over. It gets worse for the six in the middle, because on this par-71 course, I was 29 over for the day, meaning I was 13 over on the six middle holes.

I can pull any of my last 10 scorecards and the story is the same on virtually all of them. The holes typically marked as the hardest on the course, I score on. The ones that aren't, I don't.

Weird.

Jess

[Shindig]

This makes perfect sense, if you're at all like me. What holes do you do your best thinking on? Which holes do you make a strategy for an easy bogey and stick to it?

The hardest hole at one of my home courses is a 450 yard par-4. I frequently get no worse than 5 on that hole. I hit my drive into a safe part of the fairway, advance the ball with a mid-iron, and hit a short iron or wedge into the green. With those clubs, I can frequently get it close enough that I can have a tap-in bogey after a putt. Sometimes I even make the putt.

The next hole is one of the easiest - a short par-4 with a wide fairway and no trouble. I find myself with 6 and 7 on that hole all too often. Why?
- Tee Shot: fairway is wide, so I neglect to pick a specific target. I just hit it somewhere.
- Approach shot: green is big with little trouble, so if I was in the fairway, I go for the pin and find myself short-sided.
- Putting green: I neglect to read it, since it feels mostly flat. This is stupid because I know the green isn't flat.

When I arrive on that tee with the idea in my head that the hole requires my attention, I do much better - 4s and 5s.

So, my answer is: you're probably not concentrating on your easy holes, since you view them as easy. An 8 on a par-5? What sort of trouble is there on that hole? Once you can break 100, you shouldn't be getting worse than 7 on a par-5 unless it's horrendously long.

Maybe post some more details on the "easy" holes and we'll see about coming up with a strategy for them?

[PiKapp23]

Also remember that the low handicap holes do not necessarily always equate to the hardest holes. Those are the holes that a non-scratch golfer are most likely to need a stroke on when playing a scratch golfer.

But I often have the same thing. I score better on difficult holes than easy holes sometimes.

[JessN16]

This makes perfect sense, if you're at all like me. What holes do you do your best thinking on? Which holes do you make a strategy for an easy bogey and stick to it?

There's truth in that about going with an "easy-bogey" strategy sometimes. Over a certain difficulty, I concede bogey to the hole and just try to find a way to get it. And that's a winning strategy most of the time.

The problem with this particular course was that it is an old, private course. I play so many different places now I don't really have a "home" course. Like a lot of places this old and private, there's not a big difference between the blue yardages and the whites, which were what we were playing from. A typical hole here has the following yardage breakdown: 400-390-310-300, from blue to white to seniors to ladies. I don't know if that's common elsewhere but you get that a lot in Alabama at older courses. What that means is that the longer holes aren't distance-adjusted properly for mid- to high-handicappers. So there were a lot of cases here where I was playing for bailout on purpose. They have a 220-yard par-3, for instance, nestled against a lake and over sand. I can hit a 3-wood 220 only 1 time out of 10, and with my driver, the lake is in play. So both times I've played it, I've hit short on purpose, chipped up, and two-putted for bogey. As for the "easier" holes, here's what they were like: HDCP 18 (480-yard par 5): 8 There's a big ravine marked as a yellow-stake hazard that crosses the fairway 250 yards off the front of the tee, so that's a layup situation for me. I tried to lay up, ballooned the tee shot up and to the left, and ended up in trees. Took two shots to punch out, then hit a miracle 3-wood shot on my fourth shot to within 20 yards of the green. Fifth shot was a chip shot; hit it too hard, it went past the hole, caught a slope, ran across and off the green. Six on, two-putt for 8. HDCP 17 (300-yard par 4): 4 (with GIR) Really the easiest hole on the course, IMO. I've never played here and not been GIR. HDCP 16 (146-yard par 3): 4 Bad layout here; this is a BLIND PAR-3 HOLE. You tell off uphill, and the green is going back downhill in front of you. You can see the top of the flagstick and that's it; can't see the landing spot. Tee shot came up short of the green in a divot. Tried to pitch out of the divot, chunked it. Chipped to within 3 feet and tapped in for bogey. HDCP 15 (305-yard par 4): 5 Driver 250, had 55 yards left and tried to go for the flag, which was cut hard to the left of the green. Hit a pitching wedge that the wind caught and pushed just left of the green, hit the side of the green, kicked into a bunker. Good sand shot out, lipped out an 8-footer coming back for par, tap in for 5. HDCP 14 (365-yard par 4): 7 I question a lot of the yardages on this course, starting with this one. Absolutely killed a drive that felt like 220-250 (by comparison, the 250 I hit on the hole I just talked about above, felt like I didn't even catch it), but I found myself sitting at 163 away once I landed and checked it with my rangefinder. Stupidly misclubbed on my second shot; should have hit a 4H but decided to go with an 11-wood instead. I hit it about 130 yards into a breeze...literally don't know what I was thinking. Third shot was a knockdown chip that I ran through the green and just off the back -- and into a bunker that's about 3 feet off the back fringe. Mediocre fourth shot out of the sand, and then 3-putted from 40 feet. HDCP 13 (143-yard par 3): 5 Pin was cut tight behind a bunker, so I decided to try just for green center. This was into the wind, so I didn't want to try to over-kill a 7-iron, so I instead hit an 11-wood that I ballooned, had about 20 yards left in. Still looking at the bunker between me and the pin, so I tried to hit a chip/pitch to green center and caught too much of the ball. Three-putted from almost 70 feet out. Jess