Shot at Downer's Grove today at the Northern Illinois Zone shoot. It was a really nice day but fairly windy. I only shot the handicap event. I lost two targets on the first post and ended the first 25 with a 19. Obviously a disappointment. I went on to shoot 21 and 21 in the next 50. Now its a train wreck. So I figured I would experiment and held high above the house (like I used to) and look down for the target. Ran the final 25.
So I have been holding low on the house for ATA targets since the beginning of August. That is pretty much exactly when my handicap (and singles) average began to fall apart. See the chart above, the vertical axis is my average over the last 100 caps, the horizontal line is the number of handicap rounds.
I shot a lot of great handicap scores holding high, I shot my 98 at Darien holding high. I shot a mess of 95s holding high. Experiment over, I am going back to what worked in the past. I stopped at St. Charles on the way home and shot some good handicap practice scores, it just feels better and the targets broke harder.
I've shot at 18,525 targets this calendar year, I should not be breaking short-yardage handicap scores below 90.