Winter Plan - Need Help to go from 85 average to 77-79ish

[xburbx]

So I know there is still plenty of golf to be played this year but I want to gear up and really commit to a winter plan.  I started this season shooting 94-96 and I now am a 13 handicap with a few rounds near 80.  I have come a long way in my game mostly because I practice a lot and play nearly every day.  The gap between where I am  and single digit handicap is a much bigger jump.  My journal thread is here if you need to know the story.

What I want to look at doing this winter is work with a pro on a weekly basis, hit lots of balls at an indoor range and work the short game.  I am also going to get new irons and get the clubs fitted. Looking at Mizuno mx 200 or mx 25. Maybe MP 52.  I play Nike slingshots now.  Possibly also a ........ belly putter. My question is the following

-----------------------------

Is there a ballpark plan someone with a low handicap could toss out there to me that would get me into that scoring range of 77-79? Stuff like how much short game practice, how many balls to hit per day etc.

I should be able to dedicate 2-3 hours 4 days a week during the winter to practice.  Is that enough?

[LoganCarr1]

Many years ago in Japan, a student came to a master of Kendo and said, "If I become your devoted student, how long will it take for me to master the sword?" The master replied, "Perhaps ten years." "Thats a long time," said the student. "If I try really hard, how long would it take me?" The master replied, "Oh maybe twenty years." The student was shocked. "First you said ten, now you say twenty years. What if I try as hard as I can?" "Well," Said the master, "in that case it will take you thirty years. someone as impatient for results as you will probably take a long time to learn anything."- Zen Golf pg. 178-179

No one knows how long it will take you.

[soloredd]

I'm in pretty much the same situation as you but all I can tell you is that for me, my plan is to work diligently on my wedges and putter this winter and hope it pays off. Like Logan said, there is no set rule for your question. It's individual. So, I'd recommend you find the areas of your game that need the most improvement and work hard on those.

For me, I need to get my putts down to about 30-32 per round (currently at 35) and this is partly due to needing to work on putting but also I need to get my short pitches/chips closer to 1-putt range. Stupid to be 50 yards out and still 2-putt or 10 feet off the fringe and 2-putt.

[xburbx]

I agree and am aware that everyone progresses at different rates.  I guess I am looking for a ballpark plan to do my best to get there.  For example

If a 30 handicap says I want to be a 15 by next year and plan on playing 1x per month and hitting a bucket of range balls per month, his chances are very low of hitting that 15.  If he said I will play 100x this year and hit 600 balls a week as well as 3 hours per week on the practice green, his chances are better.

I am just looking for a round about plan to try to make sure I am on the right practice plan.  I will also be working more around the green working my up and downs.  When I have hit my best rounds it's because I am getting up and down constantly.

[LoganCarr1]

The only "ballpark" I can give you is Play as often as you can, and when you dont feel like playing go practice.;-)

[ggolokin]

getting into the 70's is really all up to whether you can / what is the frequency of your up&downs..; so it's really up to your chipping and putting...

[saevel25]

Key number 1, do not hit off mats with your irons, only the driver. Mats will ruin your game, they hide mistakes

number 2, if your in a climate were it snows, work out, especially the core muscles

Doing swings in slow motion, you can put something in your way in the backswing so you know your on plane, like a box or something. But do the swing in slow motion, not moving off the center. Just train the swing.

Then when winter leaves, go an hit balls and try to feel out the tempo you like.

[tomvk77]

Well first off all you should now where you lose your shots on the course,

is that with error drives, is that on hitting greens or make up and down,

what i suggest you should do:

For the next 10 rounds keep stats off:

Fairway hit: if not miss left / right

GIR

number off putts per hole

and if you miss the green did you make up and down

if you keep this stats for 10 rounds it should give you a good idea

on what part off your game you should work on with your pro.

As for taking lessons every week i should not do that,take at least

2 weeks in between, swingchanges take time to feel right for you, so if your able

to play 3-4 times a week, you should be ready after 2 weeks to see improvement and

move on. What i strongly recoment to do is, work with a camera record all the aspects off

the game from driver to long irons and wedges as for bunker shots pitch shots chip shots and

putting.

[Dr. Strangeclub]

Saw off an old wood club and slap a grip on it so that you can swing it inside without hitting the ceiling.  Mine is an old 4 wood, now 28 inches long.  Adding a doughnut swing weight makes it swing like a normal club.  You can use this club to easily check your positions in a full length mirror, too.

I'd say swing it for five minutes EVERY day during the winter.  From a physiological aspect, daily practice is better than every other day by far, even if you don't do much.  Even a little bit refreshes what you did the previous day so you don't start forgetting it immediately -- and you do!  The great pianist Paderewski (whose quote has been stolen by dozens of world famous musicians over the years) said, "If I miss a day of practice, I notice it.  If I miss two days, the critics notice it.  If I miss three, the audience notices it." (Or something like that.)  Practice every day, at least a little bit, even if it's merely putting on the rug, and you'll progress faster.

[Ctp722]

I would work your glamour muscles as hard as you can, that way you can look strong and people will think you hit the ball far.

[1puttit]

I'm kind of in the same boat. 11.6 handicap now, started the season not being able to break 90.

Last winter I went to the dome once a week and practiced my putting a lot at home. This year I'm thinking about picking up an Optishot simulator for $400 so I can do more full swing work at home.

Take a look at the Red zone Challenge http://www.amazon.com/Golfs-Red-Zone-Challenge-Master/dp/1572437200/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid;=1314647010&sr;=8-5 it has weekly practice plans, drills, etc.. that might help you come up with a plan.

[mdl]

I'll second tomvk77's advice with some additions.  Keep these stats for 10-20 rounds:

1) Fairways.  If miss, did you miss L/R.  I go one step extra, and use 5 marks, LL, L, check, R, RR.  Check is hit fairway, L and R are for slight misses left or right, but with a decent 2nd shot.  LL and RR are for big pull/push or hook/slice that forced me to try a difficult recovery punch or left me nothing but a chip back out to the fairway.  Obviously you want to hit fairways, but this lets you know if you're mostly missing just a little on your tee shots or if your misses off the tee are big misses.  If you're hitting 7/14 fairways but only have 1 or 2 LLs or RRs, then you know your misses are still pretty solid shots.  If you're hitting 7/14 fairways but have 5-6 LLs or RRs, you know big misses off the tee are a problem and you need to spend more time at the range with the driver and 3w off the tee.

2) GIR

3) Putts per hole.  Keep track of total putts per hole, putts per GIR, and putts per non-GIR.

4) Up and down %.  Keeping track of standard up and down shot percentage, where you count it as an up and down attempt if you're sitting at GIR # of shots but off the green < 30-40 yards is a good idea.  But I like to keep slightly more detailed stats.  See (5) below

5) Approach shots.  When you have an open approach shot, keep track of:

i) Distance you were sitting from the flag

ii) Club you used

iii) Where you ended up.  For this, I use (L,R,√ / L,S,√), where the symbol before the slash is for left, right, or correct direction, and symbol after the slash is for long, short, or correct distance.

Of course most players are going to have worse results for (5) the longer the shot.  But this lets you know exactly what your misses are and what clubs you need to work on most.  Do you have distance control problems with some clubs?  Are your misses consistently left or right with some clubs?  Obviously working with an instructor to perfect your swing will help clear these things up, but it's good to know what your misses are.  I've found that with my long irons my misses tend to go right (mostly pushes or push-fades), so I've started aiming at the left or left center of the green with those clubs and I'm hitting more greens and my misses tend to give me shorter chips where I can get up and down a bit more.

I keep track of (5) for up and down shots too.  This lets you know what short game shots you struggle with.  Obviously pretty much everyone gets better the closer they are to the hole, but this info plus whether or not you succeeded in getting up and down lets you know what short game shots you need to work on.  If you get up and down only 1/4 of the time when you have an up and down attempt from <25 yards (ie, you just barely missed the green with the approach), then you know you need to work on those chips and your 8-10 foot putts.  If you have the patience for stat keeping you might even want to just record how far your 1st putt is after your short approaches or up and down attempts.  Maybe like me you average relatively close to the hole from just off the green and from <35 yards, but suddenly become much less consistent from 45-50 yards.  That's something to work on.

This last bit has helped me.  I'm not down into the averaging 77-79 per round (that's also my current goal), but my HC has been decreasing recently and part of it is that I've worked a lot on those <30 yard chips, and I've had 27 and 28 putt rounds recently where I made a lot of one putt pars and scored in the low 80s even though my driver was just okay and my full swing iron shots were sub-par for me those days.  And it's let me know that I'm much worse than I need to be from about 40-80 yards.

Also, if you've got a digital camera with good FPS on the video, get a tripod and take it to the range.  I've done this and it's been very eye opening.  I'd hit a plateau as far as consistency with my full swings, and even with a better short game I was never going to shoot lots of rounds in the mid 70s with so many drives and long irons leading to recovery shots and not enough shots with full wedges and scoring irons that led to good percentage birdie chances.  I've been working on a few things I found out about by recording myself and though the fixes aren't locked in enough to be as consistent as I'd like, I can already feel that I'm working towards a much more repeatable swing, and relying less on luckily great timing and general athleticism to have great rounds every now and then.

Last thing that's been helping me a lot.  Don't go to the range and pound balls for 2 hours and just wait for the timing to finally settle in so you can hit good shots for the last 30 minutes.  Know what you're working on.  Hit fewer balls per minute.  Remember golf is a finesse game.  The slow motion swing at home tip is a good one, but carry that over to the range.  If your full 9i goes 140 yards and you can hit most of them within 20 yards left or right of your target, can you smooth out your swing, take a slightly shorter back swing, and hit your 9i 130 yards but with most of them within 10 yards left or right of your target?  I've been working on that and it hasn't made my long irons much more consistent but I'm starting to have days where my SW, PW, and 9i are much more consistent and accurate than they used to be.

[uttexas]

I should be able to dedicate 2-3 hours 4 days a week during the winter to practice.  Is that enough?

I like you plan. Lessons, club fitting, and practice. 2-3 hours 4 days a week should be more than plenty. The big pitfall here is to make sure you get lessons with a good instructor. Make sure your instructor knows his/her stuff (there's a thread on this). A bad instructor can do a lot of harm to your golf game. Unfortunately, there are relatively few good golf instructors.

[Grumpter]

Quote:

getting into the 70's is really all up to whether you can / what is the frequency of your up&downs..; so it's really up to your chipping and putting...

Not neccesarily (though probably in a lot of peoples cases). Right now if I could stop hitting the ball O/B a few+ times a round I could be in the 70's a lot quicker than working on up & downs.

[ggolokin]

Originally Posted by Grumpter

Quote:

Not neccesarily (though probably in a lot of peoples cases). Right now if I could stop hitting the ball O/B a few+ times a round I could be in the 70's a lot quicker than working on up & downs.

no offense or anything... by going from what you said about working on up and downs and assuming your short game was good, wouldn't it be smarter for you to just hit a 3-6 iron of the tee, then another 3-6 iron... and you'd be off a lower handicap? (although im not sure about ur distances etc)

[RJ32S]

X-burb, just my 2 cents and only based on MY experiences and my development...  be careful with the time you put in during off months...  2-3 hours/ 4 days a week is a ton and you may start finding it unenjoyable and taxing.  I spent a few offseasons a few years ago worrying about my swing WAY too much.  I started the season playing as a 9 marker from the previous years 2.

Others have good input, but do what you are comfortable with.   I do disagree with objecting to using mats in winter.  Sometimes its the only realistic option and it does help develop the swing.

Again, in my opinion, the biggest thing to work on in the offseason is putting.  Do it when you can, however you can, on whatever you can.   For me, its the hardest part of the game to transition back into come season.

Quote:

So I know there is still plenty of golf to be played this year but I want to gear up and really commit to a winter plan.  I started this season shooting 94-96 and I now am a 13 handicap with a few rounds near 80.  I have come a long way in my game mostly because I practice a lot and play nearly every day.  The gap between where I am  and single digit handicap is a much bigger jump.  My journal thread is here if you need to know the story.

What I want to look at doing this winter is work with a pro on a weekly basis, hit lots of balls at an indoor range and work the short game.  I am also going to get new irons and get the clubs fitted. Looking at Mizuno mx 200 or mx 25. Maybe MP 52.  I play Nike slingshots now.  Possibly also a ........ belly putter. My question is the following

-----------------------------

Is there a ballpark plan someone with a low handicap could toss out there to me that would get me into that scoring range of 77-79? Stuff like how much short game practice, how many balls to hit per day etc.

I should be able to dedicate 2-3 hours 4 days a week during the winter to practice.  Is that enough?

[rustyredcab]

My winter plan: Video and Tour Striker and my Grave Golf grip training club. Hope for once a week.

[Grumpter]

Quote:

no offense or anything... by going from what you said about working on up and downs and assuming your short game was good, wouldn't it be smarter for you to just hit a 3-6 iron of the tee, then another 3-6 iron... and you'd be off a lower handicap? (although im not sure about ur distances etc)

No offense taken and I hear what you are saying. I probably should think more about this strategy on certain holes but lately I have been so concentrated on straightening out my tee shots I tend to play the normal driver or 3 wood. If I want to score, which I do, I could definately utilize this strategy on appropriate holes. However, I am not sure my love of the game would survive leaving the driver and 3 wood out of my bag all together.

Also the problem is not limited to just my woods - had a round last week where the 2nd hole I overshot a green O/B with an 8 iron, 3rd hole pulled a 6 iron off the tee O/B, 4th hole snap hooked a Driver O/B. 4 holes in and already 6 penalty strokes. This past weekend shot an 81 (+11) with 5 penalty strokes - Driver O/B off tee (snap hook), 3 Wood O/B off tee (slight fade when expecting a draw) and 9 iron into a lateral hazard on a par 3 (trying to avoid O/B left hit a slight fade right).

I'm not real worried about my handicap at this point as I am not able to play 4+ rounds a week like I used to. It's also hard for me to play 2 days in a row with the back tightness I have. I try to work it out so I play Saturday in the morning and Sunday in the afternoon but even that is not enough time for my back to recover. I just need to get back to the point where 2 penalty strokes in a round is a bad day not a good one.