"5 Minutes Daily" Practice Challenge September 2017

[onthehunt526]

9/5/17:

Some sand wedge swings without a ball. The foci were, slowing down the takeaway, and keeping my right elbow closer to my body. Seems to me, that if I can get this feeling ingrained, it may solve my wedge issues. 

[Lihu]

Didn't think I'd do anything today, but ended up practicing my lead arm straight swing. Kind of loosening the muscles so they would be "naturally" straight through the swing.

I'm playing a round today, and hoping that the stuff from my last range session carries over to that round.

[Shindig]

September 4 In my office, using a coat hanger to simulate holding a club.  Not perfect, but it'll do in a pinch.  Back to A4, hands high, down to A5 and check the angle, then through to A6 and hands over the pocket.  Also makes for good stretching after a meeting.

[Lihu]

20 hours ago, Lihu said:

Didn't think I'd do anything today, but ended up practicing my lead arm straight swing. Kind of loosening the muscles so they would be "naturally" straight through the swing.

I'm playing a round today, and hoping that the stuff from my last range session carries over to that round.

I did more straight arm stretchy type swings really slowly and am planning on doing a lot more throughout the day. This will hopefully loosen up all the swinging muscles so I don't hurt myself swinging fast again.

 

Didn't end up playing that round yesterday. I'll probably need to wait until late Friday afternoon, I'm really busy at work and at home.

That and I wasted the entire yesterday evening taking a DLP projector apart, with what must have been 80 screws and a dozen or more connectors. There was literally a pile of parts on my table. The only thing I didn't do was take out the power supply board. By the time I put it back together, I mostly relied on the proximity of the cables and the type of connector to "figure" out what connects to what. In any case, I cleaned DLP and the optical surfaces, but I couldn't see any of the microscopic specs inside the device. So, I cleaned all the surfaces with isopropyl and put it back together again. Luckily, I found some on line instructions for my specific projector. Stuck pixels. Turns out the chip needs to be replaced because they got overheated and no longer work. I found a few sources and they want $150 for a new chip and board. The good news is that I can put it back together again and still have it function!

The bad news is I'm probably going to purchase a new projector with higher resolution anyway.

[onthehunt526]

9/6/17:

Continued work on my wedges today... Will probably try to play either today or tomorrow. Slow easy takeaway keep the right elbow close to my body...

[WUTiger]

Sept. 6

Got word today that I qualified for the end-of-season MAGA Championship Tournament on Oct. 7 and 8.

Spent 15 minutes today looking at the tournament course, Aberdeen GC in Eureka, MO, on GolfBlue. (I have never played the course).

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Sept. 5 - I forgot to post, but had gone to a golf shop to try out a new grip for my putter. The old grip has started to tear under the knuckles.

[Shindig]

September 6 -- slow swings, indoors, on mat, no ball.  Focus on hands high at A4, bring club down at good angle.  Hands high is going to be my swing-thought during tomorrow's round.

[coachjimsc]

9-6 Putted and chipped last night for about an hour. 

I imagined on every chip or long putt that my partner was going to hit the next shot.

[onthehunt526]

9/7/17:

Putting work with my new claw grip. Focusing on read, bead and speed.

[WUTiger]

Sept. 7

Partial repeat of Sept. 4 with emphasis on irons and hybrid. Spent about 45 minutes on range:

1. Contact drills, half swing w/ 7i
2. Full 5i shots (12)
3. A few SW and PW shots
4. A half-dozen 4H shots
5. Full 7i shots (12)

On full shots, emphasized taking a deep breath before address, and then feeling good balance (weight on heels for me) and proper position of hands in front of ball to enhance compression. My best shots felt like a 3/4 swing (I must be owerswinging on occasion once I get warmed up.)

Hit a few hinge-and-hold LW shots from around the practice green. Need to make sure I pull down firmly with left hand before holding off followthrough.

[Shindig]

Sept 7 -- played 18 today.  I have a few things to work on based on this in preparation for my next round.  Silly things I got wrong that I should be getting right, like basic bread-and-butter chips.  More details after I analyze the GG data.

[WUTiger]

Sept. 8

Did back and hip stretches before getting ready for work.

After lunch, worked on swing to top motion using my office window as a mirror. I seem to be coiling well without "crossing the line" at the top.

[onthehunt526]

9/8/17:

Worked with speciality wedges a bit this morning. I'm still struggling with full swing motion with them, so I went to the small success feeling. Trying to find where the problem is being created. Well I'm good till about 8:00 for sure (can get to 8:30 occasionally), I guess I have to work to figure out where between 8 and 9 o'clock the problem starts... So I can get to maybe 10:30 and not past that with a wedge... (Or any iron really).

[onthehunt526]

9/9/17:

Continued work on wedges this morning. Yesterday I was having trouble getting past 8:00 without catching the dead part of the face. Slowly with about a 50% effort backswing I was able to hit some nice shots at the 9:00 position, I feel I can accelerate better taking the club back a smidge slower. I'm going to continue to work on it.

[WUTiger]

Sept. 9

Did some online paperwork, went through the Equifax credit check protocol, and then mowed the yard. Had time to give special trim to my target wedge green.

Light was failing, so I did drills with the SKLZ Gold Flex trainer: baseball swing to key weight shift, and to top - stop - then followthrough to check balance. 

[onthehunt526]

9/10/17:

Continued work on wedges this morning. Yesterday I was having trouble getting past 9:00 without catching the dead part of the face. Slowly with about a 65% effort backswing I was able to hit some nice shots at the 10:00 position, I feel I can accelerate better taking the club back a smidge slower. I'm going to continue to work on it.

Also worked on putting for a while. Mostly trying to get my distance for a given length backswing down.

[Lihu]

Had a short round early yesterday morning at Santa Anita, but had to stop on my 6th hole get breakfast for my family. Which was just as well as I was yanking everything to the right.

Went to the driving range and started hitting balls when one of my range buddy's came up to me and noted that I was lifting my head through the swing. First of all, it was the first time in 6 months that I saw them, so there were a few brief "where the heck have you been type of chitcchat" then there were tons of tips that they needed to give me. Since they were pretty decent golfers and coaches, I decided to take their advice right away. Good thing too. After their advice I was hitting push draws again.

Issues that they helped me fix: Lifting head through swing; not initiating swing through hips soon enough; stance too wide; ball setup too far back in my stance which affected everything longer than my 8i. After the fixes, even my 4i flight was a push draw instead of a hook.

The only club I can't hit now is my driver. It was going about as far as my hybrid or less. I'll probably go back next Sunday morning to get that fixed too.

In the meantime, I'll practice the swing in front of a mirror every day this week.

[WUTiger]

Sept. 10

Practiced putts for about 20 minutes. Lags: try to duplicate distance on three straight putts. Short putts: Focus on proper grip, left hand lead. // Overall - don't accelerate at impact... smooth back and through.