My Golfing Adventure

Having just started golfing last summer, I am already addicted. I think it is because of how competitive I am. I really wanted to get decent at golf to the point where I can play respectable with anyone. Not necessarily beat them, but not make a fool of myself. Just when I think I have it figured out, I shank one and just when I am ready to give up, I hit a beautiful shot. What I decided to do to keep track of my progress, is to try to start keeping my golf handicap. Although officially you must record 12 rounds I am going to do it longhand until then. The course I typically play is Airport National because of the cheap rates and relative ease in play. I have golfed at least 6 or 7 times this year for a total of at least 10 eighteen hole rounds. For 21 dollars I can golf unlimited holes at Airport, including a cart. I typically take advantage of it golfing at least 27 and occasionally 36 in a day. The course rating is pretty low, as is the slope rating. This makes it more important for a good score for my handicap. I am keeping track of my scores online at keepmygolfscore.com. I will start with the first 18 holes of my round today to start my golf handicap. The handicap is found by finding "adjusted differentials" for each round. The adjusted differential is found by (total score-course rating)/(slope rating)*113. The 10 lowest differentials are then added together, multiplied by .96 and divided by ten to find your handicap. The ten lowest differentials doesn't quite make sense to me for the fact that a bad round doesn't seem to hurt your handicap. Well, today I shot a 94 at Airport National, 48 on the front nine and 46 on the back nine. Par for the course is 63. This is my best 18 ever, even with a quintuple bogey 9 on the first hole. What I was pleased about was that I was very consistent the rest of the round, I socred all 4's-6's the rest of the round. I can't hit my driver so I was using a 6-iron to tee off the rest of the round. It makes for tough saves when you can't get that much distance on your tee shot, but I found that my irons are more consistent and so thats what I went with. So, for the moment you have all been waiting for.... My score (94)-course rating(58.5)/slope rating(80)*113=an adjusted differential of 50.14375. I will just multiply this by .96 to get my handicap of 48. That is incredibly high but, for an easy course you really have to score well. I will approach lowering my handicap 10 at a time. First, the goal is to get below 40. This is not terribly accurate right nwo because it is just one round, but as I log more rounds I should have a better idea of how I am doing.