What/How did you practice today?

[sirchunksalot 15,665]

I took the day off today because my wife needed to take her mom to the doctor early today and since I wake up early, I was going to drive. Well, her mom accidentally took her blood thinners and I found out after I got home the appointment got cancelled.

I went to the range and got to swing a club at a ball for the first time in over a week. 

I've been working on staying connected during the swing while in the house and wanted to see if it helped, especially on partial wedge shots. It worked out really good, except for the shank I hit on my first shot at 50 yards. 

Wedges were good, irons were good, I think I might have figured out something with the driver. I was getting a little steep with it on the backswing and toned it down a touch and was hitting solid drives.

I also took my 5 wood and that was a disaster. I couldn't even muster the ability to top it. I whiffed on several shots, hitting the mat behind the ball and just had it bounce over the ball. It was frustrating, to say the least. It's going to take some work to build back skill and confidence with it. 

The good new is, after this week I'm off for two weeks and will be able to get out and play. I just hope the weather cooperates and stays decent. 

[GolfSpy_BOS 15,254]

Used the Planemate today for the second time in the past few days after not doing much in the past few months.  Felt really good to swing a bit and the itch to play again is getting stronger and stronger with every flake of snow and new equipment release.  Going to need to go to the simulator soon! 

 

Is it Spring yet?

[cjeffs12 811]

So had a little time to get some swings in, and try and build from yesterday. I feel like things with my irons and wedges are really coming together. Also, finished up with 20 made putts from 6 feet(4 points around the hole) and the last one has to be made on the first attempt or I go back down to 15( new thing I added to make it interesting). 

[edingc 12,019]

Back out into a freezing garage for another quick practice session last night. I have been playing with different setups trying to find something that really let me bump into my front hip to start the downswing without so much of my front knee collapsing. 

I found that my front foot flare was getting a little obnoxious (25+ degrees), so I went back to basically 0 or maybe 5-10 degrees of lead foot flare. That helped me post up better on my front side and really improved my low point control. Putting the leg in less of external rotation to start also freed up my backswing more. 

Few clunkers in there (especially with the 4 utility - orange dots below), but my overall dispersion and distance continue to trend in the right direction:

[ejgaudette 3,746]

17 hours ago, GolfSpy_BOS said:

Used the Planemate today for the second time in the past few days after not doing much in the past few months.  Felt really good to swing a bit and the itch to play again is getting stronger and stronger with every flake of snow and new equipment release.  Going to need to go to the simulator soon! 

 

Is it Spring yet?

Right winter can end any time now

[cnosil 24,422]

1 minute ago, ejgaudette said:

Right winter can end any time now

Looks like  my area is going to get its fist real touch of winter.  Nearly 60 yesterday, sleet/freezing rain/snow today and the later tomorrow anywhere from 0” to 27” depending on which weather model you watch. .  General answer seems to be in the 6” range which will cripple my area for a few days. 

[ejgaudette 3,746]

8 minutes ago, cnosil said:

Looks like  my area is going to get its fist real touch of winter.  Nearly 60 yesterday, sleet/freezing rain/snow today and the later tomorrow anywhere from 0” to 27” depending on which weather model you watch. .  General answer seems to be in the 6” range which will cripple my area for a few days. 

Yeah I am sure we will see the images of many stranded cars with that much snow down south. Hope everyone stays safe.

[cnosil 24,422]

5 minutes ago, ejgaudette said:

Yeah I am sure we will see the images of many stranded cars with that much snow down south. Hope everyone stays safe.

Going to be a re broadcast of the people stuck on I95 for 20+ hours from a few weeks ago.   
I’ve been working from home and am caught up on most wanted testing so no reason to go out.  

[RichL85 585]

To put it quickly. It was not a good day to practice. Finished up all my meetings and reports early so I hit the range for a bit before heading home. Probably would have been better off skipping today. Just one of those days where one or two things are off just enough to ruin everything else. 

[BIG STU 9,685]

On 1/20/2022 at 9:40 AM, cnosil said:

Looks like  my area is going to get its fist real touch of winter.  Nearly 60 yesterday, sleet/freezing rain/snow today and the later tomorrow anywhere from 0” to 27” depending on which weather model you watch. .  General answer seems to be in the 6” range which will cripple my area for a few days. 

Yep we are getting the exact same thing in Coastal SC

[BIG STU 9,685]

On 1/20/2022 at 9:57 AM, cnosil said:

Going to be a re broadcast of the people stuck on I95 for 20+ hours from a few weeks ago.   
I’ve been working from home and am caught up on most wanted testing so no reason to go out.  

I think the I-95 incident may have been a wake up call for people to pre prepare if they have to drive. Down here they are stressing over and over if you do not have to be on the roads to stay home. We are prepared which is SOP for us. Did our regular grocery shopping on  Wednesday. Got food water etc and dry firewood for the wood stove in  case we lose power

[Syks7 941]

Ended up taking almost a whole week off after grinding away for a week.  The body feels better and so does the swing.  I had two sessions on Wednesday followed by a lesson on Thursday.  Long story short I'd managed to add the drop into the slot into the swing but was having trouble delivering the club to the ball after (landing the plane so to speak). 

In the first session I spent an hour on just chipping kind of grooving my contact and finally rediscovered a feel that I have when I'm chipping at my best.  Its basically feels like I'm using my right hand to shove the club face under the golf ball, even though in actuality its just me delivering the bounce to the ground right after contact with the ball.  Now that I remember that it's going to be great starting point for diagnosing when things are going wrong with my touch.

The second session was really more playing practice on a par 3 course.  Managed to get 12 holes done in an hour before dusk playing three balls.  The drop into the slot felt natural but I was varying between perfect contact and super thin with some head scratchers.   I didn't really know how to diagnose what was going on and I didn't want to screw things up by trying to fix it so I just continued practice/playing and figured I'd shelve any attempts at adjustment it until the lesson the next day.

The lesson was excellent, did a bit of putting drills for helping with my lags, then really dove into the swing again.  It turns out that I was basically doing everything right.  A small setup issue and my older swing path were fighting with the new.  As it was described to me you haven't quite figured out how to land the plane from this new angle.  So we worked on making ground contact after the ball (loose hands were key).  Then moved onto the head scratchers, which it turns out were good swings with bad face angles.  To fix that we worked on another 'feel' for me that the face of the club needs to feel like its pointing straight at the ground.    It was odd, because it no joke felt like I was closing the face so much that I was going to hit it over my front toe... which turned into a beautiful little baby draw right on target.  Go figure.  So the feel of it in the swing is basically the same feeling of rolling on a motorcycle throttle.  I finished off the lesson on what I think may be the purest six iron swing I've ever hit.  Pretty fun, and I'm actually generating about 3-4 mph more swing speed with these small adustments.  Right at or above 90mph for my 6 iron for the whole session.

[PMookie 17,027]

Weather was unexpectedly warm today, so I got to hit a bucket. Probably one of the best days of ball striking I’ve had in awhile, irons, Cobra hybrid, etc. Got the Honma driver out and absolutely striped it. Really good day, I didn’t want to leave!!!!!

[Syks7 941]

Another good session this morning focusing mostly on making sure I hit my 'feels'. 

30 minutes on wedges focusing on making sure I groove the feeling of using my right hand to snap the club under the ball on every stroke.  Also focusing on high trajectory chips into the short side of a tight flag.  Successful on the feel, slightly less so on the short side chips.  I did much better on these low percentage shots when I realized that a longer putt coming back is going to be much better for me than leaving it short and having a short chip into the same tight flag.  It's a silly thing that it dawned on me today while practicing that many of my doubles come from exactly the situation I was practicing -- trying to get close rather than putting it on the green and accepting a two putt.

30 minutes on Putting.  Nothing fancy.  Just using two alignment sticks for practice.  3 ft. 6 ft. 9ft.  Then one sleeve from 50-60 feet for lag practice.  I made some adjustment to my swing on longer strokes per my instructor and it made a big difference.  Longer back swing, shorter follow through, and smoother acceleration.  Color me shocked, but it works and is much better than what I'd been doing.  I then putted out the results to finish.  6 were tap ins, 8 were within 5 ft, and I holed 3 more from 5-10 ft for 17/21 for two putt.  Of the other 4 one lipped out and the rest just brushed the cup.  

The last 30 minutes were on a small bucket hitting exclusively 4 iron and again focusing specifically on three feels that seem to have become key to a successful swing.  I also focused on watching the ball through contact since I've always been guilty of losing track of the ball mid swing.    Set up my alignment sticks in parallel toward a flag then did a few drills before diving right into swinging trying to focus on one specific feel each swing.  In my last lesson my instructor diagnosed every mishit in relation to the feels I'm working on and it was exceptionally helpful to be able to diagnose what was going wrong when I mishit today then to focus on the feel that would fix it.  By the end I was feeling pretty grooved in though I'm still struggling a bit with heavy and thin.  Thin seems to be related to how hard I'm gripping the club at the bottom where I drag it through rather than letting it get to ground, and heavy seems to be when I lose eye contact with the ball.  

Going to do something I don't normally do and take the day before playing off and let this session set in muscle memory before playing on Wednesday.  I don't have high expectations since I'm mid swing adjustment but it feels like its going to be more comfortable than it was the previous two rounds.   

[Haro 530]

Too cold to play. Working on my putting. Notice that after about 7 paces the cup doesn’t look as round, more elliptical and smaller to me and makes me change the way I putt.   So for longer putts I make sure I walk-in side 10 feet make a practice stroke looking at the hole.   Then walk back to ball and just make same stroke for the long putt as for short except it’s longer backstroke 

[Haro 530]

Spending too much time at the driving range. Miss being at my old club course outdoor range  we could hit it off the turf and practice on different slopes /lies    I finding it’s not good for my swing to practice on level lie Mats all the time 

I find that for my iron swing it’s helpful

to feel the slope my calves and feet and practice side hill lies with ball below and above feet 

[edingc 12,019]

Was going stir crazy in the house so I toughed out 29 degrees in the garage to hit some balls this afternoon. I'm out of propane for my heater and UHAUL was so busy this morning I couldn't get a refill...

Struggled a bit with contact until I realized I had started to crowd the ball too much again. Fixed that up and focused on changes from my last lesson with a lot of success.

Hit a few "rhythm" wedges to end the session and really liked the tempo and swing on this one:

 

[Haro 530]

Driver swing was off at the range too and tried a different right hand grip where a fully supinated my right forearm. This gave a mucho strong right forearm grip   My right forearm is usually between pronated or fully supinated.  Trying the Bryson idea to try to get at maximum end range of motion for my right forearm 

Anyway. Seems to work really coupled with changed in grip type. Using the interlock delays my full pronation at the end to get the whip effect   It’s feels like I need to have a lot of pressure on my right baby finger against my left forefinger to coordinate the lag effect. 
 

The other thing I tried for the “end range of motion effect” is pronate my lead forearm fully in chipping and putting this puts the shaft against the forearm and my thumb is at the back of the handle rather than on top of the handle   Which feels strange but I’m finding that good distance control as long as I keep the putter/chip grounded and lock my wrist and forearms and move my upper arms only one hinge. 

[Haro 530]

There is a beat up chipping green at my local range and notice some golfers practicing chipping from the  green  and not taking any divots from the green.  Been practicing that nifty shot and at first hit it thin but after practicing it develop the hang of it. I take out lower loft wedge Pw or GW , lift and forward press a bit and hit it like a lofted putt. Okay to hit a bit thin but not fat   Not sure when I would actually use this shot other than if there was irregular shape green and putting meant I had to putt through fringe to the pin 

This practice help my putting Realized how important it is for me have a forward press which delofts the club face for chipping /putting. Rather than a “angled press”  which opens up the blade that better for flops/lobs 

[Syks7 941]

Got in a about an hour this morning.  Medium size bucket with just my 5 iron, alignment sticks, and launch monitor.   The goal was to do the same thing I've been doing with drills focused on specific feels initially then working up to full speed.  The sticking point so far in making these adjustments is unlearning my over the top outside in swing path.  It's been a whole decade of self taught honing to get this swing swing into something serviceable and getting away from is F****** hard.   

In spite of the troubles fighting ott I had a really good day today.  In perusing my instructors instagram and watching all the slow motion videos  pros club head paths and transitions I ran across kawamura28's instagram.  Long story short his smooth transition from backswing to slot was a motion that I immediately understood that I knew how to and could make.   I figured it would be worthwhile, given my struggles, to see if attempting this move put me in the position I'm trying to be in.  I have no idea whether it looks like what he's doing but imagining my club head taking the same path in concert with the drills I've been working on seemed to have good effect and and I was absolutely striping the 5 iron throughout the session.  I saw more than a few 1.40 & 1.41 smash factors off the launch monitor along with some eyebrow raised carry numbers.  I was also producing really nice baby draw ball flight right on target with the alignment sticks.  This isn't to say that I didn't miss, but today was one of those days where there was a more of that amazing well struck iron feeling than the opposite. of misses, but overall I think there was actually more of the 'god that felt good'  feeling than the the opposite.   My game feels like its in a totally different place than it was last year at this time when I was fumbling around and frustrated.  Excited to keep pushing forward  this year.