Time for an honest check-in from the whole team — about four months into this. I’ll give you the headline up front, because it’s the honest one: the number has barely moved. My index is 17.6, down from 18.4 when I started. That’s it. And I’m going to tell you exactly why, because the reason matters more than the number.
The short version: the work is working. The number isn’t moving yet. And the gap between those two things is the whole story of this post.
The scoreboard
The encouraging part: over my last ten rounds, the trend is actually improving — scoring average ticking up, the arrows green. Driving is my clearest gain since June. Approach is still my biggest leak but trending better lately. Short game held as my relative strength. Putting regressed on paper — and we’ll get to that, because we finally know why.
But total strokes-gained is roughly flat, and the index has barely budged. Hold that thought.
The two mysteries we finally cracked
Here’s what I’m genuinely proud of this stretch: the two things I could never see about my own game, I can now see clearly.
The driver. The Architect and the Quant pinned it down with real data: my miss is a clubface problem — where the face points explains almost exactly where the ball goes, across every session we measured. It was probably a weak grip all along, and the fix is simple and at the source: strengthen the grip so the face squares on its own, then swing free. No more guessing on the tee.
The putter. This one had been a black box the whole project, because my simulator can’t measure putting — so I finally took the diagnostic to a real green. Forty-two putts later, the Touch had the answer: it’s not my stroke. My misses pour one direction — low — which means I’m under-reading break and my distance control is loose. That’s the best news possible, because reads and pace fix fast. The new rule writes itself: miss high, never low.
The Surgeon’s corner — the short game — quietly stayed my strength; the wedge distances are the most dialed-in part of my bag. And the Doc’s report is simple: the body base is built in the right order, and mobility is the keystone — every time I let it slide, my swing goes out of touch; every time I do it first, the swing smooths out.
The honest reckoning
So if the ball-striking is better and both mysteries are solved, why hasn’t the number moved? The Professor and the Quant agree on the answer, and it isn’t a swing or a feel: I haven’t posted enough real rounds. The handicap only moves on rounds that count, and simulator work — however useful — doesn’t count.
And I’ll be straight about the last month, since the blog went quiet too: I was on vacation, then working abroad, then getting both kids launched into a new school year. That’s not an excuse — it’s just the honest reason the rounds, the practice, and the updates thinned out. Life crowded out golf for a stretch. It happens.
But the arithmetic doesn’t care about my reasons. From here, if I want this number to move, there’s exactly one thing that matters most.
The commitment
One posted round a week. That’s the whole game now. I’ve spent this year building the engine — the swing, the wedges, the body, the two diagnoses, the mental discipline. It’s all ready. What it’s waiting on is me actually driving it: getting on a real course, holing everything out, and putting a score on the card. Week in, week out.
So that’s where I am four months in. Not where I hoped the number would be — but honestly further along than the number shows. The process is working where I’m running it. Now I have to run it where it counts.
Next: one round a week, miss high on the greens, and let’s finally make this thing move.
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