Leaving a bad taste

When you three-putt the last green it always leaves a bad taste in the mouth, especially when the round consisted of half a dozen such wasted shots, for a variety of reasons.

But I'm not panicking; I'll stick to my new grips and routines and try to stay patient. A colleague said allowing myself two short putt misses per round was a good idea, but suggested that one per round might be enough. I think that's probably correct. We'll see.

One thing I am doing is getting a new grip on my putter. I'm going for a fairly fat grip, which some people say helps with feeling where the clubface is, and this does make some sense to me. The grip on my putter was actually wearing out, so the new grip was necessary anyway.

Otherwise, I'm hitting the odd bad iron shot, but trying to let the club do the work, successfully most of the time. I am hitting the ball further than usual at times with the irons, necessitating some readjustment to my club selection. When it's windy or wet, this has caused some problems.

Last round, my putting was very ordinary. I had 36 putts, and although I made a couple of tricky 5 footers, I missed my current quota of short ones and holed nothing else. As I said, I probably threw away at least half a dozen shots in various ways. That's golf.