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High School Golf Thread

T2GRN18 said:
Hahah hard to read and hard headed...yeah I've got one of them at home.
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Truth.

Frustrations and all though, I missed it. A lot.
 
Jman said:
Truth.

Frustrations and all though, I missed it. A lot.
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I wish I would have played in High School and for a coach with your amount of passion. I would not have been the best one on the team, but I would have been one of the hardest working one and busted my ass for you.
 
Thank goodness for the extra hour of daylight.

We had our most productive day of practice of the year yesterday. One of the other schools had a match, so they weren't taking up the entire range, so I was finally able to get one of the guys we expected to be our 3 or 4 on the range to help him with his big snap hook that he was struggling to keep in play. Worked on his grip and alignment and within 15 minutes, we turned that snap hook into a fade and occasional slice. I couldn't figure out what was making the ball go right so much so we did some video and it was clear. He would line up directly behind the ball at address, but on the downswing, he would always come back and hit the heel and spray it right. I had already made some drastic changes, so I didn't move him at all, just had him address the ball with the toe of the club and boom! Big, high and straight bombs. He was launching it higher and carrying it farther than our #2. I think I was more happy about it than he was. So when the #2 saw that, what did he do? "Hey coach, do you think you can come take a look at my swing?"

At the end of the day, both guys talked about how they felt like it was the best practice they've had all year and that they want to start coming to the range instead of running out to the course and playing. They have an away match today and I'm excited to hear the results.
 
Miller Time said:
Thank goodness for the extra hour of daylight.

We had our most productive day of practice of the year yesterday. One of the other schools had a match, so they weren't taking up the entire range, so I was finally able to get one of the guys we expected to be our 3 or 4 on the range to help him with his big snap hook that he was struggling to keep in play. Worked on his grip and alignment and within 15 minutes, we turned that snap hook into a fade and occasional slice. I couldn't figure out what was making the ball go right so much so we did some video and it was clear. He would line up directly behind the ball at address, but on the downswing, he would always come back and hit the heel and spray it right. I had already made some drastic changes, so I didn't move him at all, just had him address the ball with the toe of the club and boom! Big, high and straight bombs. He was launching it higher and carrying it farther than our #2. I think I was more happy about it than he was. So when the #2 saw that, what did he do? "Hey coach, do you think you can come take a look at my swing?"

At the end of the day, both guys talked about how they felt like it was the best practice they've had all year and that they want to start coming to the range instead of running out to the course and playing. They have an away match today and I'm excited to hear the results.
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Great work & great post MT! That is so cool! Hopefully this lights a fire in them & the rest of the team to work hard & keep getting better. To be honest, it's moments like this that got me into the teaching career to begin with. It's a good feeling, man!
 
Lost by 6 yesterday at our third road match, but seeing improvement from the 3 and 4 in our lineup. Need our 1 and 2 to get a little more consistent. We have a home match tomorrow, so we probably won't hit too many full shots today. Probably just some short game work, which sounds like was the issue yesterday.
 
I'm frustrated with our whole program or let's say, let down. We have 4 returning, not including any new ones. I have tried already to get them to come to the course, just to hit. One kid, has an excuse every time (lazy). I know him well and he does nothing after school. Wish his parents pushed or lead him a lil more. One gal that I am picking up today to take to course, just made the football cheerleader squad, which is during golf (may not even get to play).
They seem like they don't care but want to do good. Both does not go together. Either you do or don't.
Oh the joys of a rural school and smaller numbers. If kids were a lil more old school, it would be fine. PARTICIPATION MEDALS ARE NO LONGER LOL
I see us not having team this fall. Plus the board made it evident, through their actions, they can care less about it. Heck, the head coach, doesn't even get paid.
My 10 yr old daughter can beat the returning players, which is good for her, but the others it shows they don't try hard enough (unfortunately ). Just saddened over the whole situation.
 
My daughter is on her high school team and it is a pretty competative program. Around here the girls season is in the Fall and the boys just kicked off this week. Both the boy's and girls teams are pretty competative and not everyone that comes out makes the team at our school. At others schools, its a no cut sport.

For the girls team, almost all of them have their own instructors so I find the coaches don't really do much coaching as far as their swings go. They might talk strategy on how to play a hole but I don't usually see them coaching their swings. The girls themselves do things in the offseason, there is a group of them now that meet twice a week and workout with a personal trainer for strength and conditioning. The trainer is golf specific so the program is designed for golfers. As for their swings, I know all 16 of the girls on the team working year round on their swings and then in the summer they all play in the summer tournaments to get ready for the highschool season.

As for practice, the coaches split the girls up into rotations and some will work on putting, others on short game and others on the range. Then they rotate stations. The coaches in practice for the most part just tell them when its time to switch stations. On days where they do course work the coaches pretty much just watch. They position themselves where they can see a few holes and see what's happening but again, they don't really give much instruction.

The line up and position is determined by 9 hole qualifiers at the start of the week. So the girls really determine if they are in the line up or not. If they don't do the work, they won't score well enough to make the line up. That seems to be all the motivation they need. There are no favorites, your seniority is not factored in at all. The top three spots don't turn over much but position 4 and 5 do so each match the line up can change.
 
Our home course was playing really tough yesterday. It's really hard to get anything to hold on the greens right now. The two guys that came out on Monday and asked for help on the range shot the two best scores on the team yesterday. Just a couple of minor grip and alignment changes have made a huge difference in their game. Our #1 struggled, but luckily our other three scores were low enough to help us win the match. The kids are starting to see the difference spending time on the range can make. We're getting our 3 and 4 closer to breaking 50 and once that happens, we could compete to win our sectional.
 
Miller Time said:
Question for those more experienced with junior golf and school events, are there usually a good number of kids out there with push carts or are they not allowed? My kids were giving me a hard time about mine calling me an old man, but now that they see it's so much easier than carrying, they want one.
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I watch a lot of junior golf.

The majority of girl's all push.

Very few boy's push once they get into their teen years, but it is a growing trend. There are more and more college players pushing every year. I think the biggest thing is that boy's think it is masculine/cool to carry. To me, if it saves you 4 strokes (which I think it does at the end of the round due to fatigue) then I say push.
 
hcopenhagenh said:
I watch a lot of junior golf.

The majority of girl's all push.

Very few boy's push once they get into their teen years, but it is a growing trend. There are more and more college players pushing every year. I think the biggest thing is that boy's think it is masculine/cool to carry. To me, if it saves you 4 strokes (which I think it does at the end of the round due to fatigue) then I say push.
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While I agree it saves you something do to fatigue, it is nowhere close to 4 strokes. Maybe a quarter stroke for 18 and maybe a stroke if you play another 18 the same day.
 
ntanygd760 said:
While I agree it saves you something do to fatigue, it is nowhere close to 4 strokes. Maybe a quarter stroke for 18 and maybe a stroke if you play another 18 the same day.
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Unfortunately, I don't think a study can be done on how much it saves you. I think it is 4 strokes. When you consider calories burned, the fatigue on your back and core (especially when walking hills), and the mental fatigue if you aren't drinking enough while carrying then it will be close to 4 strokes. If you are a + handicapper it will be less than if you are a -20. Just the nature of the beast. You also have to consider male and female when determining. It may be a quarter a stroke for a division 1 athlete. For an amateur high school male or female it will be closer to 4 strokes.
 
hcopenhagenh said:
Unfortunately, I don't think a study can be done on how much it saves you. I think it is 4 strokes. When you consider calories burned, the fatigue on your back and core (especially when walking hills), and the mental fatigue if you aren't drinking enough while carrying then it will be close to 4 strokes. If you are a + handicapper it will be less than if you are a -20. Just the nature of the beast. You also have to consider male and female when determining. It may be a quarter a stroke for a division 1 athlete. For an amateur high school male or female it will be closer to 4 strokes.
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Fair enough, wasn't thinking in terms of a high school girl at all. The odd part though is how little difference there are in calorie's burnt when carrying vs pushing. It does however take the strain from the back and put it on your legs which are much better equipped to take the strain.
 
I posted on the twitterverse but I want to throw it up here as well, MASSIVE shout out to Bridgestone, Matte Grey, and Kentwool for taking care of HS programs when a ton of companies simply will not budge to.

Creating life long fans and supporters the right way.
 
Jman said:
I posted on the twitterverse but I want to throw it up here as well, MASSIVE shout out to Bridgestone, Matte Grey, and Kentwool for taking care of HS programs when a ton of companies simply will not budge to.

Creating life long fans and supporters the right way.
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Love to hear you had companies take care of you, especially after the frustration you were having.
 
MWard said:
Love to hear you had companies take care of you, especially after the frustration you were having.
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What I've found is most have phenomenal high school and college programs, you just have to ask (which has blown the mind of a lot of the other coaches I work with). Some are way better than others, but still.

Also though, thank goodness for a tremendous friend helping us out along the way to overcome one of our biggest hurdles. I'm in massive debt.
 
We had our last official regular season match yesterday at home, but lost to a much bigger school who put up some great scores on a very windy day when our home course is playing extremely hard and fast right now. Proud of our guys, though. We had 3 guys in the 40s and 1 55. One kid that I've been working really hard with finally broke 50 yesterday. He tripled and doubled the last two holes, so he could've really been under 45, but he was pumped up just to bring the scorecard back after his round. We finished the regular season 5-3, which is the best season we've had in a long time. The kids are on Spring Break next week, and we have a couple of weeks to prepare for our area match.
 
Miller Time said:
We had our last official regular season match yesterday at home, but lost to a much bigger school who put up some great scores on a very windy day when our home course is playing extremely hard and fast right now. Proud of our guys, though. We had 3 guys in the 40s and 1 55. One kid that I've been working really hard with finally broke 50 yesterday. He tripled and doubled the last two holes, so he could've really been under 45, but he was pumped up just to bring the scorecard back after his round. We finished the regular season 5-3, which is the best season we've had in a long time. The kids are on Spring Break next week, and we have a couple of weeks to prepare for our area match.
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Nice job with the team! What's next - sectional qualifying?
 
Grins said:
Nice job with the team! What's next - sectional qualifying?
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We have an area match next. The winning team of the area goes straight to state and the other teams go to sectionals. I'm headed up to the course we're playing for area next week and doing a little scouting.
 
Forgot to put this here!

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Makes me happy. Ton if strokes left out there, but its a start for sure.
 
Good job James! Definitely a start!
 
Jman said:
Forgot to put this here!

c78fe8e5e89b0f3e5995d9d207281c02.jpg


Makes me happy. Ton if strokes left out there, but its a start for sure.
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Always great to get any hardware. Good job!
 
We had our area/region match yesterday and the team that won automatically qualifies for state.

First of all, our school is pretty much in the middle of Georgia. The last two years our 'area' state qualifier is hosted in Towns County, which is 7 miles from the North Carolina state line. A smooth 3+ hour drive as far north as you can go. It's hosted at a resort course, which is a BRUTAL walk.

I posted in here about a month ago about one of our players struggling with a hook and I worked with him a few days and we had him hitting absolute bombs off the tee and he turned in a personal best 45 in our next match. Well, fast forward to now. We were really counting on him to be our 4th score in order to win this qualifier and we get out for our team practice round on Sunday and he can't stop hitting big slices to the point where he can barely keep the ball in play. We play 9 holes and it's not going well, so I take him to the range while the rest of the team finishes the back 9 and I just can't figure out how to get him to hit the driver straight. Irons aren't too bad, but man he can't keep the driver in play. He was frustrated, but continued to want to work all afternoon and I finally told him to let's just call it a day after almost 2 hours because I didn't want him to be too tired for the long walk tomorrow. We were both pretty discouraged because he had made such big strides, but I tried my best to have fun with it and we were able to get a smile out of him by the end of the day.

So the qualifier was yesterday and our head coach said he thought the winning score would be 380. I said if we can't get our #4 off the tee box, we will shoot 400. Well, our guys went out and competed their tails off on a tough mountain, resort course with some gusting winds and turned in a team total of 398. Our low guy shot a 91, which was 3rd lowest out of the 30 guys there. The winning score was shot by the home team with a score of 379. We were disappointed, but we qualified for sectionals, which will be held a good bit closer to us on a course which will be much easier to walk and is a layout our kids will do better on. One big positive was each coach came up to us and said how much we had improved since last year. I think last year's team shot 440+, so it shows our hard work has paid off so far.

They know what they need to work on and they went in expecting to win and got their butts handed to them, so we will see how they respond. We have to get our 3 and 4s scoring a little better in order to get where we need to go, so we now have a little more than 2 weeks to prepare. We were all exhausted last night, but I think everyone had a lot of fun.
 
Hey Jman, when your team goes to the course to practice, do you make them wear collared shirts, and otherwise dress halfway decent?

The school who practices at our course (same high school as I went to) came in today and most were dressed in dingy jeans and baggy t-shirts. Some even had tank tops on.

Jacqui told the coach to make sure they dress in collared shirts and nicer pants from here on out. Nice jeans are ok, but some of these kids looked like gang wannabe's today. They've played here before (twice a week for the last month or so) and never looked this bad.

The coach dresses nice. I couldn't believe he let his kids come like they were.
 
Got a chance to get out with our #1 and #2 yesterday for about 12 holes. They've been back and forth all year for the #1 spot and this is both of their first full year playing golf. The new #1 is a senior, who was an all-region basketball player and is going to possibly a D-II on a basketball scholarship. Crazy athletic, simple swing with a low ball flight, but doesn't stray too much. Straight every time. It was his first big tourney at our area match and he said he had never been so nervous at any game before. We played the hot hand at the 1 because he had been shooting low 40s for the past month. The #2 has all the game in the world and is only a junior, but man he can be a headcase on the course sometimes. He plays faster than any person I've every played with and really gets upset with anyone that can't keep up.

So we tee it up yesterday and none of us are really playing well. I'm 8 over thru 6, can't get off the tee and they're both 6 over. Well I finish par, birdie, par to tie them for a front 9 45. We decide to walk a few more holes and I start out birdie, birdie and get them rattled. A couple of holes later, they battle back and the #1, who was so nervous at our area match, had a 30 footer downhill putt to tie me on the next to the last hole and right after he hit the putt, he started walking and I thought, what is he doing? that looks pretty good, well he poured it in the center of the cup and he almost beat the ball to the hole like TW did at the PGA that time. He said he knew it was in the second he hit it. I LOVED that. I told him to be more confident out there. He said he had never played with people as consistent as the #1s he played with at the area match and it rattled him a little, but he knows what to expect now and is ready.

We had a blast and I think it was a very productive day. We really count on those two to carry us and they have the game to do it.
 
Miller Time said:
Got a chance to get out with our #1 and #2 yesterday for about 12 holes. They've been back and forth all year for the #1 spot and this is both of their first full year playing golf. The new #1 is a senior, who was an all-region basketball player and is going to possibly a D-II on a basketball scholarship. Crazy athletic, simple swing with a low ball flight, but doesn't stray too much. Straight every time. It was his first big tourney at our area match and he said he had never been so nervous at any game before. We played the hot hand at the 1 because he had been shooting low 40s for the past month. The #2 has all the game in the world and is only a junior, but man he can be a headcase on the course sometimes. He plays faster than any person I've every played with and really gets upset with anyone that can't keep up.

So we tee it up yesterday and none of us are really playing well. I'm 8 over thru 6, can't get off the tee and they're both 6 over. Well I finish par, birdie, par to tie them for a front 9 45. We decide to walk a few more holes and I start out birdie, birdie and get them rattled. A couple of holes later, they battle back and the #1, who was so nervous at our area match, had a 30 footer downhill putt to tie me on the next to the last hole and right after he hit the putt, he started walking and I thought, what is he doing? that looks pretty good, well he poured it in the center of the cup and he almost beat the ball to the hole like TW did at the PGA that time. He said he knew it was in the second he hit it. I LOVED that. I told him to be more confident out there. He said he had never played with people as consistent as the #1s he played with at the area match and it rattled him a little, but he knows what to expect now and is ready.

We had a blast and I think it was a very productive day. We really count on those two to carry us and they have the game to do it.
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Good luck in the next round! Hope your kids do well!
 
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