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The THP Range/Practice Thread

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Not sure if this counts but was working on my chipping technique on the putting green at dicks. My bro said I was bending my wrists a ton and this was leading to the scooping I typically do. Working on keeping wrists straight and making a nice crisp motion through the ball. Man, what a huge difference, straight shots and controllable distance. Felt great, looking forward to trying it out more on the course
 
mikedean441 said:
Not sure if this counts but was working on my chipping technique on the putting green at dicks. My bro said I was bending my wrists a ton and this was leading to the scooping I typically do. Working on keeping wrists straight and making a nice crisp motion through the ball. Man, what a huge difference, straight shots and controllable distance. Felt great, looking forward to trying it out more on the course
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My man was chipping them good. Just trying to get chutting out of the game!

Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2
 
Hey man. Practice is practice. Just take it to the course with you!

mikedean441 said:
Not sure if this counts but was working on my chipping technique on the putting green at dicks. My bro said I was bending my wrists a ton and this was leading to the scooping I typically do. Working on keeping wrists straight and making a nice crisp motion through the ball. Man, what a huge difference, straight shots and controllable distance. Felt great, looking forward to trying it out more on the course
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One thing I guess I have going for myself is determination lol. I had a pretty mediocre session earlier in the day yesterday and I just hate that. Started off good, but I just lost focus and started flailing around like an idiot. So, a couple hours later I spent about 30 minutes punishing myself by doing the drills I hate most, but seem to work the best. Then I went back and hit balls for another 30 minutes with much better results.
 
Robman7 said:
My man was chipping them good. Just trying to get chutting out of the game!

Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2
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Who's now let's not get carried away

dhill37 said:
Hey man. Practice is practice. Just take it to the course with you!
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Yeah been super busy lately so I will take what I can get
 
I have problems keeping my head back on the downswing. My head can be all over the place. I am really trying to keep it from moving to far forward in the downswing. I practiced this for about 30 minutes before my round yesterday. It seemed to work out for me pretty well.
 
Mostly going to talk about my round today, even though it's not really practice. Nowhere else to lay it out though, so here's where it will go. As always, read at your own risk. This is mostly a way for me to talk to myself about things since it helps me figure out what I'm doing right and what to work on going forward.

I've felt pretty hot and cold in my latest practice sessions, so I was a bit concerned going out to play today. Felt like the momentum I'd built up had sort of just petered out to be honest. Told myself I was going to go back to what I knew worked and just let it go today and not let my head get in the way.

One goal I have this year is to warm up on the range before every round. I actually do feel like I need a little time to get going these days. Well, of course this place has no range, so that was out of the question. Not surprisingly, I was a little bit loose with my first few shots, though I managed to still find the fairway. Just missed center and was left a bit longer out than I wanted. Regardless, I stopped the two bogeys I got right off the bat and strung together three pars. Good sign for me. Slow starts have a way of sticking with me and just snowballing into bogeymania. On that same note, I am trying to limit big misses/big numbers and not let them carry on to the rest of my round. Had the perfect example of that today and felt good afterwards.

Hit a big hooked tee ball that left me with a shot, but a ball well below my feet. I thought I'd try the hero shot rather than just getting back out to the fairway. My reward for that moment of stupidness was a slightly closer shot on the same line :at-wits-end: The next shot I yanked another ball left of the green. Long story short, I ended up with a double and cursed myself for a variety of reasons. I turned around and parred the next hole and played the next few decently, rather than going down the crappy golf spiral. I still feel like I made a handful of mistakes in both club selection and course management that cost me strokes though. I really have to concentrate on that. It's very easy to let myself do dumb things.

The other thing that stood out today was that I played differently off the tee, which is another 2013 goal of min. I've been cursed with being short off the tee for long enough that it feels very odd to take something other than driver off the tee, so having a few more yards in my bag has opened up some options. I spent the last month building a bag that I thought would give me four solid options off the tee, depending on the situation. I put that plan into action today and the results really worked out well. Had some longer approaches than I might have if I'd hit a perfect driver, but the fact is that I hit 4/5 fairways where I didn't take the driver.

One last thing I'd like to work on is alignment and aim. I still struggle when I'm not square to the target (in a straight line basically). Sometimes it's fine, but other times I really get out of sorts. Going to try an intermediate target for that in the short term and work on it at the range in the long term.

In the end, I was 1 over my personal best for the first round of the year. It was an easy course, so I would have been disappointed to be much higher, but still a decent first round of 2013.
 
In between my rounds today I spent 30 minutes with my 54* and hit nothing but greenside chip shots. Working on the pointers my bro gave me Friday. Felt pretty good, while not every shot was perfect my misses were not nearly as bad as when I try to get cute with a lob wedge greenside. Still a ways to go, but progress nonetheless.
 
Progress is good!
 
Hawk said:
Progress is good!
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Yeah I may have to accept I am jot a spin player and balls aren't gonna bite for me on those shots, watching balls roll on buy the pins too far was frustrating
 
I've been working on staying connected in the takeaway & follow thru with a towel across my chest & tucked under the arm pits. I changed it up today using two gloves instead, and that seemed to work better. Hit a large bucket with this drill and only 3/4 swings with an 8 iron. I've gone from hitting high, left to right fades with loss of distance to mid-flight draws and back to my normal yardages. I really like my instructor haha.
 
mikedean441 said:
In between my rounds today I spent 30 minutes with my 54* and hit nothing but greenside chip shots. Working on the pointers my bro gave me Friday. Felt pretty good, while not every shot was perfect my misses were not nearly as bad as when I try to get cute with a lob wedge greenside. Still a ways to go, but progress nonetheless.
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Noooooooooooooo..... we want chutting!!!
 
I took some of my old putting mat out to the front yard and worked on my short chips and pitches. I've struggled with decelerating the past few weeks that has led to flub shots, so I am working to get that out of the system. We shall see if that carries over tomorrow.
 
I hit half wedge shots left handed only. Helps me feel where my left hand should be at impact.
 
I am working on pulling the but of the club down to the ball then throwing my right hand through the ball and strait out in front of me.
 
Tadashi70 said:
I'm glad you started hitting the ball well. I want to say that shutting the club face is a band aide and will soon produce so less than favorable shots.

If you play a powerfade then you have some over the top in your swing. This with a closed club face could produce a pull hook or huge fade.
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I completly agree with you. But for now I need to keep it play :) I really am only closing it slightly and to be honest it may even be square as I think I was slightly open before.
 
The last two days were not the best conditions for golf, Saturday was 30* with like a 20* windchill and yesterday was like 34* with a windchill around 30* or so.

But I really wanted to see how I'd perform in adverse conditions, I had more layers of clothes on than I normally do and went to a two glove setup that I never took off.

I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to perform as well as I did even though the weather wasn't great. I also found myself distracted from the weather while trying to focus on the shot at hand. All things considered it was great practice, and now that the snow is finally gone I bet our range will be open full time now!
 
Assuming the weather doesn't prevent it (it is lightly snowing here at the moment) my range session this week is going to be another short game session again using my 64* wedge to practice the short-sided green shots/up and over trouble, then SW and PW for some more distance control work. I just wish we had more options than just the matted range as I want to try and work on some bump and run type shots but the range isn't set up to be able to do that

I will probably throw the 3W in the car as well just to let the shoulders swing nice and loose and see if I am still hitting the nice straight shots I have been hitting recently
 
I had a really great range session last night. It was just me on the "grass" tees. (If you saw what these guys have the gall to call grass you'd die laughing)

I think I'm really starting to make some progress in my full swing. The bend in my shots is dramatically reduced. My misses are now pushes or pulls. I've also gotten myself into a swing feeling that feels really good and repeatable.

The thing I was happiest about though was the fact that I hit every single shot with a purpose. I had a plan for every shot and evaluated the results after. The session went so well, I wanted to hit another 100 balls, but the range closed on me. :(

My challenge now is take this assembled knowledge to the course. That's always my biggest challenge. It always seems that after yet another round of posting a normal score, I realize the technique thing which I forgot to do which would have made a 5-stroke difference.
 
Even with blisters from the Texas Invitational I am in the back yard today working on drills that Seth showed me to cure my outside in swing tendencies.
Very easy drills that make sense and sure helped allot on Saturdays round.
Think I need a hitting net back here so I can practice them more and feel the impact.
 
been away from the forums for a while, still playing, though not too often.

I've been pushing and cutting/slicing everything lately, but I've been somewhat dealing with it. I was cheating on my swing and still couldn't draw the ball. I picked up on something small yesterday while warming up. I turned my left hand a bit further towards the back side, and wow what a difference. Much better ball flight, much better contact, and a better consistency. Even hit the best par 3 iron shot I've ever hit, that led to a birdie.

Can't wait to get back to the range and finish working with it.
 
A bit busy last night, but found about 20 minutes to hit some balls. Nothing exciting. Just trying not to forget how to swing until I can find a little more time.
 
Somehow found 45 minutes to practice tonight yay. Hit the ball really solid all around. A little more right-left action than I'd like in a perfect world, but I had no problem sorting that out last time on the course. Just need to feel like I'm finishing a little more out towards the target line and it straightened out. Decent practice felt good.
 
took the 8 iron and my 51 degree Scor to the range last night and worked on tempo and distance control. Out of 80 balls, I probably only struck 8-10 poorly. I seemed to be striking well if I slow down, but need to keep working on shoulder turn, and follow through to keep trajectory straight. I worked on 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 swing with both clubs to get muscle memory working. I took my rangefinder to spot the balls I hit (dont trust the distance markers on the range) and made notes.

It's coming back, slow but sure. Oh....and that "keep your head down/eye on the ball" myth? It's true, it works. :act-up: If I witness the club head actually striking the ball, when I look up, the ball is right where it's supposed to be. Amazing!!!
 
Got my 9i, PW, SW and 64* wedge in the car so should be at the range this evening after work for some more time
Plan for today is to work on hitting different shots to the greens under 125yds using each of the clubs with different length swings / trajectory etc to give me more options when out on the course if I can't hit a standard 1/2, 3/4, full swing or I need to get the ball up and down quickly

I know I have mentioned it before, but I wish the range had an area where I could practice bump n run shots as that is something that I don't play a lot of and it used to be a strong part of my greenside game but has slipped lately
 
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