Practice Diary

[atrapasuenos]

On Thursday I went to McAllen and I bought a practice matt and some soft balls to practice at my house. I'm really glad because I hope I will get a bit more consistency!

Greetings :D

[mirv]

i kept a practice diary briefly, but found it wasn't helping me with anything. what i ended up doing was keeping a f-up diary for when i'm out on the course. allowing that i have time to do so (meaning nobody is standing on the box behind me), i'll write down a brief description of every shot i make, so that it ends up looking something like this...

hole 1 - par 4 - 345 yards

1 wood - strong draw almost put me in the water - 260 yards

PW - tried to avoid another strong draw and ended up with a high push - short 10 yards in front of right side of green

PW - chipped up but left ball several feet below pin positioned at back of green

Putter - read too much break and aimed too far right of the cup, rolled 2 feet past cup; sank next one for bogey.

after a few rounds of that, i realized that i really only had two serious errors in my game: i tend to draw my tee shots too much and i leave approach shots an average of 10 yards short of the green. thus, i knew exactly what i needed to be practicing. whenever my game gets in a slump, i bust out the f-up diary and document four or five rounds and look for whatever the prevailing bad shots are. usually i'll have it solved before too long.

[ks8829]

1/29/09
practiced distance control of 10, 20, 30 & 40 yards with my 52 and 60 wedges for about 30 minutes.

[Range King]

02/13/09

1 hour chipping and pitching up to 20 yds
1 hour full swing with driver and long irons.
played 9 holes.

02/14

2 hours pitching 20 - 50 yds.
Trying to utilize wedge bounce much more.

[ks8829]

practice my short game for about 30 minutes at distance of 20 and 30 yards and about 10 minutes in the sand trap.

[ks8829]

Practice pitching for 2 hours and found that the forward press is very helpful in making solid consistent contact with my pitch shots.

My 14 year old son asked me to playing golf with him tomorrow, Saturday. I guess I have too, oh shucks.

[McGolf-Doggie]

Spent multiple sessions and parts of sessions over the last couple of weeks addressing pitching (which was one of my two nemeses, the other being driver tee shots).

The results were dramatic and confidence building. Even though my irons were neglected in the process, the pitching helped shave a bunch of strokes.

Some possible side benefits in putting seemed/appeared to come along with working on pitching. (Maybe it was just luck, or an illusion, but wonder if anyone else ever noticed if perhaps working on pitching short distances also benefited their putting?).

[Ben]

I had a great

practice day today! Capped off by a great round of golf. Found something great in my long irons. I was a bit too upright on the backswing. But, when I make the correction, I was killing 4 irons on the range. Took it to the course with my buddy in the morning, had time for only five holes. Teed off with my 3 and 4 irons, except a 9 iron on the par 3. Three birdies and two pars. Great long putt on 1 for birdie and a solid 3 feet for birdie on 3. The last birdie was a monster flop chip in on 4. It was gorgeous. When my friend called "cash" as it was rolling to the hole, I knew it was in. Perfect line, perfect speed. I have to thank Tiger Woods for that shot. They showed some replays of his round on Saturday, where he chipped in three times (I think it was three). Anyway, saw something in there that really works, really well. I was chomping at the bits for my shift to end. Ran out the door and headed to hole 6 to continue. To make this already long story short. Added 3 more birdies, and no more bogeys. Bogey free, 6 under. That was great fun! Perfect day out today too. Hooray for golf!

My 14 year old son asked me to playing golf with him tomorrow, Saturday. I guess I have too, oh shucks.

That must be fun! You still scoring better than him?

We've got a father and son at my club, the son is 13, and beating his dad. His dad can play pretty good too. I'm far from kids, but I have an eight year old sister. She's more into pokemon and club penguin though.

[ks8829]

I had a great

We did play last Saturday morning or as 14 year olds, we were going to play at 9am, so I was so excited that I woke up at 5:00 am waiting for 9:00 am to come around, we ended up leaving the house closer to 10:15 because he was so tired he couldn't get up.

Its funny also during the round he told me on the 6th hole that he was tired and wanted to walk off on the 10th that come back to the club house, he even called my wife to make arrangements to be picked up. I was 1 under until I reach the 5th hole and as we made the approached to the 9th hole, he was up, since I made some untimely boogies, and on the 10th hole, going back to the club house he tells me that he will finish the round and play 18 holes. I am wondering if he wanted to walk off because I was beating him or because he was tired? I will see next time I play my son. In summary he hit all his shots, Driver, irons, pitch and chips shot, he even made one birdie on the 7th hole. He only needs to work on his distance control with his putting and chipping to cut 5 strokes off his game. Next time we will plan on chipping and putting an hour before we play 9 holes and let him see the difference in his game. I am not sure if he realize what a chip of 10, 20 yards is will his back swing? or a putt from 10, 20 feet?

[Boyder]

Seems this thread has not been resurrected in a while and i thought it might be cool to see what everyone is up to since we are getting closer to things really getting going pretty soon ...
I have been hard at work on my putting game, mostly because all the snow outside keeps me from doing about anything else.

[ks8829]

Working on putting, shots within 60 yards and around the green.

[Fatphil]

Seems this thread has not been resurrected in a while and i thought it might be cool to see what everyone is up to since we are getting closer to things really getting going pretty soon ...

txs boyder! never saw this thread...interesting read..especially the guy in SF...I want to get to a 5 this summer and reading his practice routine it's pretty clear that wedges from 50 in is a huge component to his low index.

My schedule is 35-45 min weekdays when I'm in town during lunch. For sure going to move from 95%/5% long to short to more 50%/50% or maybe even 3 days short and two days long. Let's see.

[ks8829]

I posted three videos that have helped my short game and perhaps it might helps yours also:

http://thesandtrap.com/forum/threads...-game-meltdown

[bananas]

Over the past month I switched from hitting a large bucket and machine gunning my balls to getting a small bucket and making each shot count. I will pick a target do my pre shot routine take a break then repeat. Then I follow this by 30 minutes chipping/pitching and 30 minutes putting. My scores have gone from 105-110 area to high 90s in just a month.

[Fatphil]

This is not as easy as it appears. The margin of error for a 40 yd pitch is way less than a full swing with a driver or midiron.

Excellent thread.

[Boyder]

Over the past month I switched from hitting a large bucket and machine gunning my balls to getting a small bucket and making each shot count. I will pick a target do my pre shot routine take a break then repeat. Then I follow this by 30 minutes chipping/pitching and 30 minutes putting. My scores have gone from 105-110 area to high 90s in just a month.

I really like the idea of practicing like this and will be trying this once the season gets started up here.

[ks8829]

I praticed chipping for 2 hours yesterday from 20 foot chips to 40 yard chips with my wedge. I only brought my 60 degree wedge so I had to improvise and keep the ball low in the back of my stance. I will bring my 56, 52 and 47,PW next time. occasionally, I would hit a 3/4 swing to mix it up.

[rogerw]

I praticed chipping for 2 hours yesterday from 20 foot chips to 40 yard chips with my wedge. I only brought my 60 degree wedge so I had to improvise and keep the ball low in the back of my stance.

I chipped for an hour or so the other day in a similar fashion with my 64 degree until it got so dark I couldn't see anymore. Wow, was I rusty from having not done this in a couple of months (winters are annoying). For me, doing this and putting practice has been the biggest contributor to improving my scores.