You’re about to get a look into my history as a golfer as I detail my account from when I first started playing the game sophomore year up to the point I became a scratch golfer in my 20’s.
Starting Off
Up until sophomore year of high school I was a baseball player. I might have played one or two rounds of golf during my years growing up so I was completely new to the game when I made the switch.
Getting rid of a baseball swing wasn’t easy. Let’s just say I couldn’t make solid contact with a golf ball consistently and had a few thrown clubs out of frustration for chunking and topping the ball over and over.
I started out averaging scores in the triple digits for 18 holes and I think my very first round sophomore year was a 56 for 9 holes so as you can see I was averaging above 110 strokes for 18 right off the start.
I remember playing a round of golf once when I was 12 with my grandma and shooting 124 so I had made a little improvement naturally from growing up and being able to hit the ball further now but had a long way to go.
I spent the entire fall of my sophomore year working on my golf game and by next spring when our high school team’s season began I could shoot 45 on average. I had dropped from triple digits down to 90 in just a few months during that fall but then winter hit so I was relieved to still be a bogey golfer come spring.
Lesson: Going from triple digits to 90 isn’t that hard so if this is your situation now then I can’t wait to show you what you need to do.
Fast forward a few months to summer and I joined my first Jr. Tour, traveling around to different tournaments in cities nearby playing competitive golf against other high school players in my 16-18 age division.
Long story short, I somehow finished that tour in 2nd place for points, had a tourney win under my belt, and a few runner ups. Oh, and my average had dropped to low 80’s but I still couldn’t break 80 yet consistently.
A few weeks after the tour ended I tore a wrist ligament from playing too much golf and hitting too many range balls without proper rest on my muscles (I think a chunk’d shot actually did it at the range one day) and it sidelined me the remainder of summer and fall.
So I come back in the Spring ready to see where my scores stood after casting and rehabbing my wrist all winter. It took a month to get back in the groove of shooting lower 80’s which wasn’t bad.
Summer after junior year I joined a Jr. Tour again and this is when I learned how to practice properly and finally cracked 80 consistently.
I added some more tourney wins to my resume and competed in a big statewide tourney where I went 42-35 for a 77 and just missed the cut for day 2. You’ll see an ugly triple bogey on my back 9 that kept me from shooting my first 32 but I was content with a 35!
At this point I had only been playing golf two years now with a big chunk of that time being sidelined by injury and by winter weather.
I was a 5 handicap and had tournament wins under my belt which still seemed crazy to me. I never imagined to be good enough to win tournaments against others who had been playing the game much longer than me.
Senior year of high school golf season I was in averaging in the upper 30’s for 9 holes and our team was pretty solid finishing 18-3 and headed to regionals, one step shy of the state championships.
I came away with a sluggish 79 at regionals that should have been a lot lower but being the high school state tournament they made sure the courses were playing tough and greens rolling fast.
It always seemed like I played my best golf in the summer when I was on my own to focus and had gotten away from the winter rust that plagues mid-west golfers.
So of course summer after senior year is when I played my best golf of all time. I entered just 3 summer events and won 2 of them with scores of 71 and 73.
Scores at my home course followed suit as I was mid to lower 70’s often and I decided to play in some weekly club games with the other course members to finish out my summer with some fun and actually get to use my handicap for once.
The craziest thing of all to me was that I was nearly a scratch golfer just two and a half years into my golf career. If you asked me when I first started where I would be in that time frame I probably would have said trying to break 80 still.
Concluding Thoughts
If you look back at a quick recap of how my timeline went, I spent the first year learning golf and cut down a lot of strokes fairly quickly.
My second year was a lot of wasted practice time trying to learn how to practice properly in order to take that next step forward and break into the 70’s consistently.
Finally by year 3, my senior year of high school, I had discovered what worked and what didn’t work and got myself down to near scratch.
By going through all of these challenges, I decided to create Golfpracticeguides.com my freshman year of college in 2013 at Ohio State to teach others what worked for me and help them improve their golf games much easier than my journey.
I also created FoyGolfAcademy.com which is home to all my practice plans, indoor golf drills, fitness programs, and other content you’ll find really helpful to improving at golf.
At Foy Golf Academy, I designed a golf practice system being used by thousands of students who have bought memberships. You can learn more about how to use this system to lower your golf scores here.
I love both playing and teaching golf and love hearing other amazing improvement stories so it didn’t feel right to just give the sport up once I came to business school at Ohio State and passed on going to PGA School.
I hope you stick around my website and read more of my blog articles as I share my best golf tips with you.
You’ll want to follow us on Instagram along with 20,000+ others who follow us: @NickFoyGolf and join in on the fun over on our Facebook page as well.
Overall, I’m excited to see your improvement results. If you want to shoot me an email ever feel free to or leave a comment on the Facebook page.
Best Regards,
Nick