Played the Fall Member/Member at my club last weekend. Usually a three day event, 63 holes, but due to heavy rains and resultant course conditions, Friday was cancelled and we played 27 both Saturday and Sunday. My partner had a 10 index, I'm an 18. We weren't in championship flight, but ended up in a flight with total index of about 26-28 strokes total for the two man teams. I was "tied" for the worst handicap with one other player in our flight, so we'd get 4 strokes a side in the matches off my partner's ball, who had the lowest index in our flight. Most opponents were getting 2-3 strokes off his ball.
I'd been on a decent trent of late, and had dropped my index from 21ish in May to 18.1 for the tournament. Just better consistency, better "misses" on approaches. And instead of occasional risky club selections (I'll hit the 3+ fairway wood out of that lie in the rough!!), I actually committed to playing smarter, with a strategy to seek to bogey every hole. Ex) I knocked down a few drives on par 4s. Instead of taking out the longest club possible and hitting it as far as I could--with result often another knockdown or sprayed shot into more trouble-- I'd hit a 3 or 4 hybrid, increase greatly my chance of a good hit, and have 80 100-yds in for third shot from the fairway, which has been a more consistent shot for me of late.
It worked. My partner played well, shooting between 40-43 on all the nines, but I had some good rounds, with a 42 and couple of 43s to go with some 46s. We zagged well, so our net scores were consistently 39-42. With a $270 total investment per player into hat pool and skins, we won 5 out of 6 matches, tied the other, and had the best score on three of the 6 nines, which was $100. We ended up winning the flight, and took home about $950 each for our efforts. By far the most consistent I've played in these type of tournaments, which I don't play all that often.
