One Armed Golfer equals Course Record! 🏌️⛳

Apologies for the shameless clickbait headline! The correct headline should have been ‘Golfer playing with one arm is part of team of 4 playing in a Texas Scramble at Chislehurst Golf club and the team’s gross score equalled the current course record…. and it wasn’t even the best gross score of the day. '

But that’s just too many words!

If you don't already know, I'm a lifelong golfer but due to an injury I'm currently playing one-handed and yesterday I entered my first competition as a one hander. It was great fun and a reminder, if I needed it, of why I’m pushing myself to make the best of my situation. There was teamwork, camaraderie, banter, swearing, chip ins, birdies, tops, shanks and more. It is exactly the type of thing I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on.

10th tee at Chislehurst

Competition Time

The competition was part of an event at CGC to mark the end of the Mens and Ladies Captaincy year. Firstly I must congratulate Goose and Mary on a wonderful year! They have represented and driven forward the club with tremendous enthusiasm.

For a ‘Texas Scramble’, a team of 4 start by all taking a shot off the first tee. The team decides which shot is the best and pick up the other three. They then all take a shot from where the best shot finished. They again select the best shot and go through the same cycle until the ball is holed. To add to the challenge, you must select at least 4 tee shots from each player across the 18 holes, meaning that you can’t just take the best player’s drives each hole. This is particularly relevant when someone - comme moi - has a lot less length and/or accuracy compared to the other players. All in all, it’s a really fun format, not least because you can end up with some really low scores.

Pick a number, any number

There was a bit of debate around what my handicap should be - as we are waiting for the KGU to provide guidance - but it was decided that I should play off an index of 28, which I thought was fair. My current best gross score is 39 over par, but that score included some 9s and 10s which would be rounded down for handicap purposes. Check out this article for a reminder of what I can and can't do one-handed.

Working out my handicap 😆

Team work makes the dream work

The team of myself, Andy, Jon and Theo had a great time out on the course. There was a delay to the start due to mist/fog, but once the sun came out, we got going and we played well as a team. If one or two of us made a mess of things, the third or fourth player would stick one in close.

A foggy start

We had one bogey and 9 birdies (including 5 in the last 6 holes) to finish 8 under gross. This equalled the amazing course record, set 2 or 3 years ago by Liam Burns (obviously playing by himself not in a team), of 58. If we had somehow managed to hole our 20 foot chip at the last, we would even have beaten his mark! Obviously this wouldn't have counted as a course record as it was a team effort, and there were better gross scores from other teams on the day, but it was a perfect target to aim for and it was satisfying to match it.

All of the team had their moments, but it was agreed that Andy was our MVP (most valuable player), despite also being “limb-challenged” due to a dodgy knee. He went home hugging his new new clubs with a big smile on his face.

Factoring in our team handicap of 8 this meant we were 16 under par net, which was 2 shots behind the victorious team and was good enough for 4th place.

The prize!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Personally I started the day topping and thinning the ball, but once I remembered the guidance from my lesson with Paul, I hit a few beauties. I comfortably contributed my fair share to the team and we even got 2 of our birdies from my tee shots.

See below for a couple of examples of the good and the bad. I’ll leave the ugly to your imagination.

Ugly!

Better!

Here is one video from my new YouTube channel...

8th tee

I hope you've enjoyed reading this blog post. I certainly enjoyed myself on the course yesterday. Let me know if you like seeing videos of my swing? What do you think of it? You can comment at the bottom of the page.