b101

I have to say, when I first saw the thread, I rolled my eyes at the tagline 'Can Tiger win...?'. Hard to deny how consistently excellent he has been recently and it's so good for the game to have him back. On a side note, I'm also really happy to see Adam Scott back up there.

I know what you mean, but I think you are better with it. The only thing I can really think of is that, amateurs so often miss short due to expecting the 8 iron to fly the 156 yards it does on the perfect strike rather than the 145 it flies on average - perhaps you were judging one club more and therefore benefited from that? Oh, and even with having front, middle and back, I still always aim middle 🙂

Lots of good in here, but I will partly disagree with the comment that "Practice should very rarely if ever be a time when you are making full effort swings." I try to split between mechanical parts of the session, which takes 3/4 of it, where I'm working on my main piece, then have the last 1/4 where I'm just trying to hit target. Ultimately, I don't want to turn up to my next round only having an exaggerated move in my mind that I've only practised at 40% for the last 10 range sessions.

Agree with others. There are very few golfers I dislike more than Bryson, but this just isn't a thing.

Literally everything @lastings said. I'm a teacher so have months where I get lots of practice in and months where I get basically nothing. When the full swing is in a good place, I score well. Also, that doesn't mean every ball goes where I want it to go, it means that I know what my miss is and can hit a consistent shot pattern (i.e. high left to right). If I'm not on the green in two, I want to be close by so the worst I'm making is bogey.

Ditto. Have been for a while now at pretty much every course bar Augusta. Well this sounds rubbish.

After about two years since we moved house and I didn't play for about 3 months, I've finally managed to get my high draw back consistently with my irons. It's taken a lot of work on a lot of different pieces and it's so nice to finally see the ball moving right to left and I'm looking forward to eliminating one side of the course again. Lots of work to do still, but today was the real 'eureka' day where everything has finally come back together. The good news is that whilst I was sort of saving a draw with my hands before, there's not so much of that now and it's actually coming through proper depth on the backswing. Just a really nice feeling of achievement and this is why I love this damn game.

My chipping is rubbish and still find I keep coming back to this as my best fix - I find my hands do get overactive through the shot though if I'm trying to fly it more than, say, five yards. For the very short carries though, this is just perfect and so much better than the 'old school' technique. Great information @mvmac and never gets old!

To be honest, it'll mainly be that, because you're playing in a match (and therefore it matters to you), you will be focusing on getting ball to target and therefore go back to all your old habits. Next time you practise, take a camera and video yourself hitting your first ball with the feeling you think you're using. I do this every time and I'm always amazed at how far away from achieving what I want to achieve I really am. It's a great way to start a range session as it immediately moves you away from the comfort zone of your 'standard' swing.

The final thing I'd say just before you do that is to mainly look at the length of the first putt. For example, if you miss an eight footer, the problem may more likely be the chip or first putt that led to that.

I always feel it's useful to remind us how even the very best in the world don't one putt all that often and that amateurs like us expect too much from our putting. Looking at your most recent round, I would argue that the three putt on 3 is balanced out by the 2 putt on 4, but you'd hope to 2 putt either 4 or 6. The only really poor putt is your first on 17 from what it looks like. I'd say your distance control from beyond 30 feet needs work, but definitely not that dead zone that Erik mentions in LSW (15-30 feet). Would totally agree that it's long putts rather than short for you.

As you say, you'll probably be able to guess pretty well. If you are unsure, this thread may help - definitely a favourite of mine: https://thesandtrap.com/forums/topic/51757-pga-tour-putts-gainedmake-percentage-stats/

Pretty much agree with all of these. I could see Pieters dropping out for Levy, but otherwise straightforward.

Ideally it's worth wiping them down after every shot, but given that I'm not hitting every wedge shot out of the centre and the difference is so minimal anyway, it doesn't bother me that much.

I'll often do that at the end of a range session to try to make that transition between range swing and course swing easier. I'll take the first nine holes at my course and try to simulate that, picking different fairways, targets etc so that I keep changing my alignments. If I feel I missed a green, I'll still play a pitch or chip and just try to land it on a specific ball that someone has duffed. The real aim though is hitting gaming shots with the range pieces that I've been working on. Oh, and I'll still use a camera to check whether it's close to what I'm aiming for. It won't be as good as the range swings, but will be closer than it was.