The paradox of "home course"

[phillyk]

I feel like having a course you grew up on, and now call your home course is almost a bad thing.  It's a course you know by heart.  You don't need to read the greens because you know what the ball will do.  You know distances for every type of shot.  You know everything you need to know to shoot a great round, but somehow you can't ever do it.  I play my home course during the summer almost every day, unless I'm going somewhere else to play.  The course is fairly short, 5800 yards from tips, and a course rating of 67.5, par 71.

I shoot better at other courses than I do at home.  I can't for the life of me shoot what my handicap says I should shoot.  I can go play a 7000 yard course, course rating 71 or 72 and shoot 73 or 74, but when I play at home, its the same score.  I hate it.  I should be doing better at home.  Home course becomes the harder course to play, which is absurd. I guess the idea is that you expect yourself to play well at home, and concentrate more at other courses, so you shoot poorly at home, and better away.  But, even when I try to concentrate on shooting well, I just can't do it.

Does anybody else have this experience?

[tristanhilton85]

Seems backwards to me... I would think that you would score better at your home course.

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by phillyk

I feel like having a course you grew up on, and now call your home course is almost a bad thing.  It's a course you know by heart.  You don't need to read the greens because you know what the ball will do.  You know distances for every type of shot.  You know everything you need to know to shoot a great round, but somehow you can't ever do it.  I play my home course during the summer almost every day, unless I'm going somewhere else to play.  The course is fairly short, 5800 yards from tips, and a course rating of 67.5, par 71.

I shoot better at other courses than I do at home.  I can't for the life of me shoot what my handicap says I should shoot.  I can go play a 7000 yard course, course rating 71 or 72 and shoot 73 or 74, but when I play at home, its the same score.  I hate it.  I should be doing better at home.  Home course becomes the harder course to play, which is absurd. I guess the idea is that you expect yourself to play well at home, and concentrate more at other courses, so you shoot poorly at home, and better away.  But, even when I try to concentrate on shooting well, I just can't do it.

Does anybody else have this experience?

My home course this year is 6400 yards from the tips. It's rated at 69 with a slope of 114. I've never broken 80 there. Not one single score from there has ever been used for calculating my index. It's gonna be a long summer.

[DocWu1948]

I am guessing that's a Chicago area course that is so short, phillyk?  If so,  what's the name?

Yes, it should be easier mentally to play a course one knows well, although it's likely that being familiar might mean less care? You might ignore the wind or forget that the rough is deeper than it was two weeks ago.

[Whiskey84]

One thing that you can do is change HOW you play your home course. Try laying up on the short par 5 instead of going for it. Try hitting driver past those traps you always lay up from. I got into a very set pattern on my "home course" for a couple years and decided to change it up. I'm now looking at every hole and thinking of all the different plays instead of just trying the same shot I always do.

[ControlJunkie]

Originally Posted by phillyk

Does anybody else have this experience?

As the norm, no, it's usually the other way around, but from time to time, I do find myself out of whack there for different reasons. If you're looking for recommendations on how to break that streak, see below.

Originally Posted by Whiskey84

One thing that you can do is change HOW you play your home course. Try laying up on the short par 5 instead of going for it. Try hitting driver past those traps you always lay up from. I got into a very set pattern on my "home course" for a couple years and decided to change it up. I'm now looking at every hole and thinking of all the different plays instead of just trying the same shot I always do.

Totally agree with everything here. To take it to another extreme, play from the red tees, and leave the driver and/or 3W at home. I think it can change one's outlook on the course and probably give more confidence. Whatever it takes to kinda get one in the right mindset about tackling the course. My home course plays extremely different from the red tees, to the blues, and of course the back tees are something totally different as well. Water comes in to play here, a different bunker comes into play there, you get the point. Some of the best rounds I've ever played were from the back tees there, and I think it's because it made me concentrate more, and really be more methodical about how I approached each shot. Doing that of course gave me more confidence the next time I played the next tees up.

[phillyk]

I actually play without my driver and 3-wood all the time there.  I mean I still shoot even par on average at home, so its not a bad score, it's just not as good as it could be when looking at course ratings.  I think my main problem there is inconsistency, because I will shoot very well on 15 or 16 of the holes being 1 or 2 under, but there'll be that one hole or two holes that I mess up, and its always the same holes.  No matter what way I play the hole, it'll be the same scores.

[bplewis24]

Try an experiment. Don't play your home course for a full week. You said you play there every day. So take 4-6 days off from playing there. Set a day for 7 days from now when you are going to play there again. Play other courses or just go to the range during the week to keep yourself busy and get your golf fix. Then go play your home course at that set day/time a week from now and see what you score. If you're willing to try this out, I'll wait until after you play there to divulge my hypothesis. If you're not willing, I'll elaborate now. Brandon

[phillyk]

Originally Posted by bplewis24

Try an experiment.

Don't play your home course for a full week. You said you play there every day. So take 4-6 days off from playing there. Set a day for 7 days from now when you are going to play there again. Play other courses or just go to the range during the week to keep yourself busy and get your golf fix. Then go play your home course at that set day/time a week from now and see what you score.

If you're willing to try this out, I'll wait until after you play there to divulge my hypothesis. If you're not willing, I'll elaborate now.

Brandon

You might as well go ahead, because I'm still in school til mid june. haha!  I start playing every day once I get back home.  I usually play my home course, because it's really cheap, but I'll play nicer courses maybe once a week.  I'll definitely try it out though once I get back to playing regularly.

[bplewis24]

Well I guess my hypothesis would be that it's partly a mental relaxation thing due to familiarity. You play your home course every day when you are back home, and it becomes less formal to you. In that sense, you require less mental preparation of yourself before you go play and approach each shot, and therefore your performance suffers. When you play other courses, it is a break from the norm and thus you are paying more attention to each shot and each hole, narrowing your focus. The experiment then forces you to just go to a driving range for a full week and then playing your home course with a designated tee time 7 days later or so. In doing so, you make the home course tee time a more formal thing because it is at a date set in the future, and perhaps also make it a break from your normal routine psychologically, forcing you to focus on it at a higher level. Just a thought :-) Brandon