How to practice

[In the fray]

I'm a long time golfer who is just starting to really try and improve.I shoot about 100 or more, though I hope to be down into the low 90s once I am playing more full rounds when the weather is nicer.

I noticed some great threads on what percent of time to put into full swing vs short game and putting.  I have a couple of basic questions:

1. How do you keep track of fairways, GIR, putts, etc?  Is there an app that does this or do you have a certain way of marking it on your score card?  I assume GIR is greens in regulation?
2. I want to have good practice. What specifically should I be practicing? I swing and chip and putt, but I'm really not sure what good practice is or how to do it.

Thanks.

[Ernest Jones]

There are a ton of good apps for this but they are totally unnecessary and probably (depending on the player) contribute to slow play, I would hate to play with someone who needs to pull out their iPhone and fiddle with it after every shot.

What I (and many others) do is use a score card and use the empty columns where the other players would go. Mark one as FIR, one as GIR and one for putts.

Put a check mark or an X depending on the result of the shot. Hit the fairway? checkmark, miss the fairway? put and X.

Another cool way to do this is put a checkmark if you hit your fairway or green and if you miss put an arrow showing where you missed.

For example if I missed the fairway in the left rough I would put ← and if I missed the green to the right I would put this: →, if I'm short ↓ and if I overshot the green ↑.

This will help you see trends that are hurting your scores. If you miss a ton of GIR because your always short then you either need to reevaluate how far you actually hit your clubs or start using a longer club than you think you need.

[saevel25]

To me, GIR's, FIR's, there kinda so-so, i mean its good to say, oh it ended up as a GIR, but i had a GIR were i skulded a long iron and it stayed 10 feet off the ground and rolled up on the green. Should i count that, it was a piss poor shot.

Best way is to say, does it meet the following criteria, and it depends on how good you are. For me, i tend to try to rank shots like this

Driver & Long game

1) What is my shot i want to play, the visualization

2) Did the shot take that shot shape, meaning did hit play a fade when i wanted it to fade, did it draw, did the ball travel with my expectations. If not what was the miss.

Short game

1) did the ball land in the spot i want, with the trajectory i want, and did it react on the green the way i wanted.

Its these type of emperical questions i think are more valuable. because they will give you answers to how your ball flight is and overall how the round went. I've hit shots i was disgusted with and the ball ended up decent in the fairway, I rather not rank that as a FIR, with a great driver were i had to shape the shot around a slightly bending dog leg to set up for good angle into the green.

But overall, GIR's will lower your score much more than short game. Its just hierarchy. Each shot before hand is more important that the next preceeding shot. They say drive for show, but your whole hole can be demolished with a bad drive, hit it OB, your down stroke and distance. Hit it in the woods, you might have to waste a shot getting out. Miss a green, your not putting for birdie. Everything preceeding the putt is to set up the overall potential of the score on your round.

Since your HDCP is a 36, i will probably say, work on your long game most of the time, you can salvage some holes with a very good short game, but that's playing with fire. Rarely does a player get away with that.

[jbishop15]

I'd check out the 65/25/10 thread on here, as well as some 5SK videos.