Pete's Programme (Single Digit to Tour Player)

[Nosevi]

Loving all the stats, and it just highlights the difference in your meticulous approach to dans! 

Thanks, glad you appreciate them. Of course knowing exactly where I am, exactly where I need to get to and having a plan to get between the two by no means guarantees I won't fall well short but it stops it being inevitable purely through a lack of those things.

[Shorty]

 

Edit: Kind of kicking the arse out of making the point but in which of these shots do you think the ball 'knows' if it's sitting on turf or a mat?

If you are too steep on a mat the consequences will not be as dire as on turf. This is why we have so many people here who think that their game deserts them between the range and the course. The problem is that the mats are too forgiving and mask what is really going on around impact.  You could hit a hundred wedges in a row off a mat and they  would feel OK.  Then go and hit one from 80 yards off a soft, sandy lie and see if you can hit 80% of them properly. If fairways were rock hard with a centimetre of grass there'd be pulls and pushes but good contact most of the time.

[iacas]

If you are too steep on a mat the consequences will not be as dire as on turf.

That's not particularly relevant if you hit the ball solidly.

This is why we have so many people here who think that their game deserts them between the range and the course.

We are not talking about average golfers here, @Shorty.

The problem is that the mats are too forgiving and mask what is really going on around impact.

Good players know when they hit the ball improperly off a mat.

[ZappyAd]

On 29 October 2015 at 22:18:18, Nosevi said:

 

 

I do like that spreadsheet - makes me smile every time I see a picture of it.  Very impressive that Randall has spent (I assume) so much time putting together something so cool !

[Nosevi]

51 minutes ago, ZappyAd said:

I do like that spreadsheet - makes me smile every time I see a picture of it.  Very impressive that Randall has spent (I assume) so much time putting together something so cool !

Yep, it was Randy who put it together :-)

[Nosevi]

Was asked about GameGolf and although I've generally just used it for my own stats gathering thought I may as well post a round or two up now and then. Was out yesterday, and it went 'ok' I guess.

- http://gamegolf.com/round/657589
 

Course is obviously a CR of 73 off the back tees (which in theory you're only supposed to play from in competitions but I prefer to practice from and know the head pro doesn't mind me doing) but it's a bit of a slog right now due mainly to the way the course is kept during the winter. Greens are still ok (which begs the question - why can't I hole a ****** birdie putt to save my life?!?!?) but they grow the fairways up a bit at this time of year. A combo of colder temps and soft fairways with longish grass totally kills your distance and makes each shot in feel almost like you're playing from the semi. As an example if you look on the round you'll see I was in the middle of the fairway on 4. This was my 'lie' which is pretty standard for the 'fairway' at the moment.

I guess they do it so the fairways are in good nick in the spring which they always are, in fact they're some of the best in my area, and maybe heavy frosts and tightly mown fairways don't mix. While it's still good to get out and about it does make the course play considerably longer, I'm maybe losing 30 yards a drive between colder temps and nigh on zero roll on landing.

Options are to either stick with the back tees to make life more difficult over the winter and stretch myself a bit, expecting a jump forward in the spring. This is good to stretch myself but will kill my stats a bit both distance and scoring wise in the meantime. Or option 2 is to tee it forward to the normal men's tees over the winter so the course plays more similarly to how it will distance wise from the back tees in the spring. Many courses in the UK actually go to 'winter tees' at this time of year which are set forward of the standard men's tees for just this reason.

Any thoughts? And that's any thoughts about using a tee further forward in the winter rather than about just learning to putt  

[RandallT]

Hi Pete,

My thought is that the statistics will be less valuable as you head into the period where course conditions deviate far enough from competition conditions, so you might just shut down official tracking of specific numbers on the course. The importance will be simply keeping your practice deliberate and valuable, but there may be fewer ways to benchmark how effective that practice is.

It's an interesting challenge, however. How do you maximize practice usefulness over the winter, even if you are not sure getting in rounds to verify that your scores are trending down.

If you're familiar with the concept, it's a bit like navigating on "dead reckoning" when you lose any tried and true methods to get your exactly location (like GPS signal). You hope your calculations for course, current, and speed are correct and that you are heading where you intend, but until you get that navigational reference points back, you just hafta hope you end up where you think you are going!

[Nosevi]

2 hours ago, RandallT said:

Hi Pete,

My thought is that the statistics will be less valuable as you head into the period where course conditions deviate far enough from competition conditions, so you might just shut down official tracking of specific numbers on the course. The importance will be simply keeping your practice deliberate and valuable, but there may be fewer ways to benchmark how effective that practice is.

It's an interesting challenge, however. How do you maximize practice usefulness over the winter, even if you are not sure getting in rounds to verify that your scores are trending down.

If you're familiar with the concept, it's a bit like navigating on "dead reckoning" when you lose any tried and true methods to get your exactly location (like GPS signal). You hope your calculations for course, current, and speed are correct and that you are heading where you intend, but until you get that navigational reference points back, you just hafta hope you end up where you think you are going!

Thanks Randy. I think course wise we're about at that point - the fairways are being left a bit longer now, the greens will be spiked shortly then we'll go onto winter greens (short mown patches of fairway near the greens). I think continuing to get out and about is important but the stats themselves will become pretty meaningless in terms of tracking performance.

In terms of keeping moving forwards there's enough work I can do in the swing studio to fill up any spare hours when I'm not out getting cold and wet on the course and it's pretty easy to track performance there. It'll just be a case of bringing that to the course in the spring to see where we are then. 

[Nosevi]

One of the guys I often practice with is doing 'ok' at Stage 2 European Tour Q School, 3rd after round 1. Actually beat him last short game comp we had...... Guess that just goes to show the importance of having a great long game  

Edited November 6, 2015 by Nosevi

[Shorty]

15 hours ago, Nosevi said:

One of the guys I often practice with is doing 'ok' at Stage 2 European Tour Q School, 3rd after round 1. Actually beat him last short game comp we had...... Guess that just goes to show the importance of having a great long game  

Meanwhile, Dan is at a conference pretending he is on a superior trajectory, and presumably impressing and wowing his audience who will just remember this awesome golfer guy who's gone from never playing to being a pro!!

And people wonder why I can't stand the phony jerk.

[Nosevi]

11 hours ago, Shorty said:

Meanwhile, Dan is at a conference pretending he is on a superior trajectory, and presumably impressing and wowing his audience who will just remember this awesome golfer guy who's gone from never playing to being a pro!!

And people wonder why I can't stand the phony jerk.

I do think he's barking up the wrong tree utterly with all the media nonsense, fair to say we agree totally on that point. It isn't going to help him one jot if he really is trying to get to any form of tour.

Meanwhile, chatted to Brian via WhatsApp earlier - still on track to get through stage 2. Just hope he can keep rolling in the putts.....

Have practiced along side the guy down in 6th (Ashley Chesters) once when he was up at the academy for England squad training so rooting for him too :)

Edited November 7, 2015 by Nosevi

[davfagan1118]

Pete,

This has been a great thread (read the whole thing over the past few days).  Good luck on your quest.  You've given me some great ideas to track my own progress.  One of the hardest parts for me practicing is having measurable numbers to see if I'm actually getting better.  So many variables when playing golf that it's tough to see your progress (especially over the short term).  Your use of the Foresight GC2 to measure and track distance and dispersion is quite enlightening.  Has motivated me to look into getting one myself.  Been using one during lessons with my coach, but we don't really spend any time hitting series of shots and looking at changes over time with it.

[DrvFrShow]

@Shorty  I came here to read about Pete's program, not read about Dan's.

Pete, up in Washington, I think our conditions are similar to yours this time of year. Lots of rain, and when it's clear we're getting frost. So they're letting the rough grow out, and our fairways are quite shaggy like the lie you showed in your picture. My last round, while my carry distances were nearly identical, I was getting minimal roll out on my drives. On holes where I would normally be hitting a 9 iron into the green I was hitting a 7 iron, and that 5 iron shot to reach that par 5 in two, made it an actual par 5 instead of an eagle opportunity.

Hit it into the rough, and you're lucky if you find the ball. lol. Putting is another matter altogether with the greens being slow from the winter "fur." Grass being dormant and all.

I guess the call is yours, though. Keep playing from the back tees and use your long iron game, Or tee it forward and play your regular game. Which would make you feel more confident come spring? I'd keep a separate set of statistics for winter conditions regarding your club distances, but not your club accuracy. You should realize by hitting longer irons into greens your GIR percentage will drop a bit, and I wouldn't beat myself up over this. Perhaps your scrambling percentage will change since you'll be doing more of this, too. So starting on Nov 15 for example it might be a good idea to start a "winter" set of stats.

Thoughts?

[Nosevi]

10 hours ago, davfagan1118 said:

Pete,

This has been a great thread (read the whole thing over the past few days).  Good luck on your quest.  You've given me some great ideas to track my own progress.  One of the hardest parts for me practicing is having measurable numbers to see if I'm actually getting better.  So many variables when playing golf that it's tough to see your progress (especially over the short term).  Your use of the Foresight GC2 to measure and track distance and dispersion is quite enlightening.  Has motivated me to look into getting one myself.  Been using one during lessons with my coach, but we don't really spend any time hitting series of shots and looking at changes over time with it.

Thanks, we'll see how it all goes. Even if the goal intself is a tad ambitious (slight understatement) if I stumble on something that works for me it may work for someone else, you never know  

Regarding tracking stats, the way I look at it golf is a collection of skill sets - some are very similar, some quite different, it's one of the reasons I love the game - and I'm trying to work on each individually then bring them together on the course. The thing is many traditional ways of tracking stats combine the skill sets which can make progress very difficult to track or see. An example might be your up and down percentage from the fringe. When you track up and down percentage you're actually looking at 2 skill sets (albeit related) - how close do you chip it then do you hole the resultant putt. You can work for hours on your chipping and find your up and down percentage doesn't get all that much higher. You might conclude your chipping practice isn't working. But it could actually be that it was working, you were chipping it closer, but you simply weren't holing the putts. Taking the same example one stage further you might find that you're not making enough up and downs and so focus all your efforts on chipping when in actual fact it's the putting that's at fault.

Another example may be you're not getting enough GIR so work on your iron play when it's the fact you are a long way back so need to work on driving distance or are regularly in the rough so need to work on driving accuracy. In both cases though you're 'blaming' your iron play when it's your drive that needs the attention.

That's why I like the strokes gained approach as it breaks down each facet of the game and looks at it independently. On a really good day I have been strokes gained (as opposed to lost) on approach play and strokes gained on short game, I have yet to be strokes gained on putting. This shows me where I really need to start focusing. 

As well as that, when I'm practising around the green I don't collect stats for 'up and down', I look at average leave distance after a chip, a pitch out of the rough, a greenside bunker shot etc. I'm looking at the performance of the chip or pitch in isolation of the putt to follow. By doing that I can see how good at chipping I'm getting and so can prioritise my practice properly. I need to get really good at chipping and really good at putting and the result of those two will be my up and down percentage made will go up. Equally with long game I can see my iron play slowly improving but may well not see imediate drops in score. But as long as I keep knocking it fractionally closer on my approach play, chip it a little closer when I miss the green, and hole a few putts when I knock it close, the progress I can see in my iron play will begin to translate to lower scores.

I'm using 'Lowest Score Wins' and stats taken directly from the PGA Tour as (sometimes distant) targets or 'ceilings' and working towards them. How close I'll get is anyone's guess but without the targets you have nothing to aim at.

9 hours ago, DrvFrShow said:

@Shorty  I came here to read about Pete's program, not read about Dan's.

Pete, up in Washington, I think our conditions are similar to yours this time of year. Lots of rain, and when it's clear we're getting frost. So they're letting the rough grow out, and our fairways are quite shaggy like the lie you showed in your picture. My last round, while my carry distances were nearly identical, I was getting minimal roll out on my drives. On holes where I would normally be hitting a 9 iron into the green I was hitting a 7 iron, and that 5 iron shot to reach that par 5 in two, made it an actual par 5 instead of an eagle opportunity.

Hit it into the rough, and you're lucky if you find the ball. lol. Putting is another matter altogether with the greens being slow from the winter "fur." Grass being dormant and all.

I guess the call is yours, though. Keep playing from the back tees and use your long iron game, Or tee it forward and play your regular game. Which would make you feel more confident come spring? I'd keep a separate set of statistics for winter conditions regarding your club distances, but not your club accuracy. You should realize by hitting longer irons into greens your GIR percentage will drop a bit, and I wouldn't beat myself up over this. Perhaps your scrambling percentage will change since you'll be doing more of this, too. So starting on Nov 15 for example it might be a good idea to start a "winter" set of stats.

Thoughts?

Hi there. Sounds very similar conditions - 2 clubs extra across the board into greens is about what I'm seeing. 

I like the idea of drawing a line under 'summer stats' and suspending them until spring but still looking at how progress goes over the winter in order to still track progress and focus training. While I don't think it's useful to use them as an overall measure of progress (it feels like I'm going backwards when I'm not) I need to keep an eye on actual performance and not just go out and aimlessly play golf. Gamegolf actually allows you to collect the data on a round by round basis but not include it in the overall stats so I may make use of this feature.

In the meantime I'm reticent to tee it forward as one element I try to keep in my training is to continually try to stretch myself. I play with better players for this very reason. Yesterday afternoon I went out and played a few holes for the same reason. I was with a mate who thought I was mad because according to our weather man winds were hitting about 43mph and were very blustery. You really had to try and control the ball as even a little deviation into it (and almost all the holes we played were into or across wind) was massively exaggerated and with a bit of drizzle thrown in for good measure it was a good test. The last hole we played was a short par 3 but was straight into the wind and very exposed from a high tee. I hit a really pure 4 iron straight over the pin that spun back towards it (but missed the birdie putt!). Normally hitting that green is pretty much a given but 'pureing' a long iron straight into the gale was masively satisfying.

Anyway, the weather and changes to the course are allowing me to play what is in effect a longer and more difficult course than it's usual CR 73 so rather 'hide' from that I may as well use it. I think I'll continue to play from as far back as I can in order to stretch myself as much as possible with the hope that this will help in the long run even if in the short run it feels like my progress is slowing. We'll see if this approach is the right one in the spring.

[ZappyAd]

I think keep on playing from the same tees and just treat the rounds as getting more practice from hitting out of the rough and with a longer approach.  However good you get you are always going to end up short or in the rough at some point so might as well learn to love it!  And those type of conditions are exactly the ones you can't simulate on the mat at home.

As for stats do you record course conditions when you play in the summer and reflect that in your reports? I'm thinking about if it is a windy day or if it is raining (a rare event in summer I know).  Just strikes me that the more analysis one does the more important it might be to capture a wider range of data.  Unless you are playing very similar conditions each time maybe there is some bias in your numbers coming from 'windy' rounds that you are assigning to something else.  Similar to your up and down example maybe an effect is coming from a chunk of rounds where it was windy rather than an overall issue with club x.

[Nosevi]

3 hours ago, ZappyAd said:

I think keep on playing from the same tees and just treat the rounds as getting more practice from hitting out of the rough and with a longer approach.  However good you get you are always going to end up short or in the rough at some point so might as well learn to love it!  And those type of conditions are exactly the ones you can't simulate on the mat at home.

As for stats do you record course conditions when you play in the summer and reflect that in your reports? I'm thinking about if it is a windy day or if it is raining (a rare event in summer I know).  Just strikes me that the more analysis one does the more important it might be to capture a wider range of data.  Unless you are playing very similar conditions each time maybe there is some bias in your numbers coming from 'windy' rounds that you are assigning to something else.  Similar to your up and down example maybe an effect is coming from a chunk of rounds where it was windy rather than an overall issue with club x.

Hi there. Slightly smiling by the rainy day in the summer being a rare event comment - ever visited the UK?  Joking of course. I do get what you mean generally though. Sometimes Gamegolf shows the weather when you post a round, but sometimes it doesn't. If it's particularly significant like playing in the winds over 40mph yesterday I'll mention it when I write it up (keep a log of everything I've done since week 1 for my own records) but I think it'd be hard to track performance in all different situations separately. I think it'd be best to keep an eye on things like that and as DrvFrShow has suggested, draw a line under overall progress tracking but still keep an eye on how my 'winter golf' goes.

Tee wise, yep I think I'll stick with playing the course as long as I can (actually usually at the back of the tips rather than where the tee is marked up that day), get used to that and have a pleasant surprise in the spring when I find it gets easier and I'm firing into greens with much shorter clubs. I don't think stretching yourself ever hurts. In fact I'd go further than that, I'd say remaining within your comfort zone and so not stretching yourself will stiffle your development. I guess the trick is to constantly stretch yourself just enough to help draw you on but not so much so that you simply can't cope.

[Nosevi]

Brian's still do pretty well :)

[Nosevi]

I know in a sense this is going a little off topic, talking about how Brian is doing, but in many respects it's not. Out of the good players I practice with it's probably with Brian more than the others. We've practiced on the putting/chipping green together loads of times, out on the course, pitching practice, in the swing studio working on long game..... He actually joked I know his swing better than his coach I have so much data and high speed video of it.

Anyway, what does it look like when a player like that gets everything firing together? Remembering this is a course of over 7,000 yards, this is one hell of a front 9 today:

Does kind of validate something I said to@RandallT early on in my programme when I had recently taken up with Brian and was in effect using him as a living benchmark, wonder if he remembers me saying it?  I told Randy that Brian is the 'real deal' and although I'd seen some good young players (bearing in mind I get coached where our national squads train) he just had something extra. It's part of the reason I wanted to practice with a guy like that. Can tell you though, first time I tee'd it up for a round and when asked how we were scoring I said matchplay, both of us playing off scratch obviously, I felt a tad nervous that I was going to make a total pratt of myself scoring wise.

It goes back to what I said about stretching yourself; playing with players at your level and off tees you feel comfortable with isn't going to help you to progress. You need to be constantly trying to find ways to make life difficult, take yourself outside your comfort zone and try to perform at a level above wherever you currently are in order to progress. 

Clearly this is all in my opinion, but it holds true in most walks of life so can't see why it wouldn't when trying to improve your golf