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The THP Range/Practice Thread

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Playdough said:
Spent about 2 and half working on putting. Worked on a couple of different things. I'm 100% to committed the left hand low putting at this point. Worked on alignment, getting the ball started on the correct line using a lazer through the center of hole and worked on keeping my left elbow from pulling in. Took a towel and trapped it between my elbow and my side to keep my elbow from pulling in and pulling the clubhead off line. Made some great strides today.
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Good stuff Play. I have been pondering the left hand low grip but need to get some work in with it before I got to it full time. Good luck.
 
Had a really good range session with my wedges and short irons today. I was seeing nice high ball flights and was attacking targets like they were 30 yards wide, working the ball either way and dialing in distances.

Then I pulled my 4i, 5i and 6i and realized what I need to practice next. I am just too inconsistent with them.

My old man met me there so I spent some time hitting his Cobra Amps with graphite shafts and his RBZ woods, was fun to compare things.

Also hit some 588 wedges and compared them to my CG14's. Wow.
 
I was so amazed after watching the Jack Nicklaus special the other day on GC how he putted. I had been struggling with it, so today is completely changed my putting. My approach is angling my feet 45* angle from the ball so my left eye (dominant) clearly sees the hole, straighten my left arm, bend my right a little, and I guess the best way to put it, I push the ball to the hole. I made great putts. I made some from 5-10 feet easily, I 2 putted a couple from 20+, and made one from 30! Love you GC and Mr. Nicklaus!

Using HTC EVO LTE
 
Tempo, tempo, tempo & a little tempo work.
My fade is starting to act up again & my chipping & putting needed some work. After 100 or so balls on the range, I was feeling pretty good. I dropped a few by the chipping green & went to work. I've been either hitting beautiful, high shots that go nowhere or low burners that leave approaching the green from the other direction.
I have to keep telling myself that's a process & I do this for fun.
 
I've been struggling with a hook the past few months and have been trying to work it out by changing my swing plane. It would work some but the hook would appear for times. I knew there were some issues these last few weekends when testing out the Xtreme and the XHot and the simulation would also show a overhook on many of the shots. So at the range on Friday I decided to do something so simple but yet so drastic. I've always had a stronger grip which I know contributes to the hook when my timing is off. So I moved my right hand to more on top of the club and into a weaker or neutral grip. Bingo!! It felt weird at first but no more hooks! Drives were back on track and I even felt like I could work the ball more with the irons in this position. Really excited to continue to work on this new grip and get some things worked out before the THP DFW Invite but I think I'm on the right track. Something so simple that goes back to the basics of golf but yet so impactful.
 
TheCrest4 said:
Good stuff Play. I have been pondering the left hand low grip but need to get some work in with it before I got to it full time. Good luck.
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Thanks Crest. I switched to it at after seeing several have good success with it at ToC. I've always messed around putting left handed just for fun, and decided to try it out. I messed around with my grip for a bit and have settled with a ten finger grip with both thumbs on top of the grip pointing right down the shaft. I noticed yesterady though, while I making several putts, most of them seemed to slipping in the left side of the hole and not tracking down the laser line to the center of the hole. Thats when I noticed that my left elbow was tucking in to my side and pulling the club head off the intended path. Tucking that towel inbetween my elbow and my side was a great drill, and will now be a regular part of my practice.
 
Nate said:
I've been struggling with a hook the past few months and have been trying to work it out by changing my swing plane. It would work some but the hook would appear for times. I knew there were some issues these last few weekends when testing out the Xtreme and the XHot and the simulation would also show a overhook on many of the shots. So at the range on Friday I decided to do something so simple but yet so drastic. I've always had a stronger grip which I know contributes to the hook when my timing is off. So I moved my right hand to more on top of the club and into a weaker or neutral grip. Bingo!! It felt weird at first but no more hooks! Drives were back on track and I even felt like I could work the ball more with the irons in this position. Really excited to continue to work on this new grip and get some things worked out before the THP DFW Invite but I think I'm on the right track. Something so simple that goes back to the basics of golf but yet so impactful.
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Thats great Nate. Wonderful isn't it, when you have struggled with something and then make one small change and it just all clicks and falls into place?
 
Playdough said:
Thats great Nate. Wonderful isn't it, when you have struggled with something and then make one small change and it just all clicks and falls into place?
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Big time!! Back to the basics!
 
Cold out there but spent some time on the range. Been too long since I swing a club had to knock the rust off.
 
Had a great time at the range yesterday. The weather around here has been really bad in the last 2 weeks so range is the only thing i can do. I went with a friend who is only starting out in the game. He's pretty good with irons and hybrids already, it's cool to watch his game progress. We started off hitting a few wedge shots to warm up before moving onto woods. I'm trying to teach him to stay down when he swings. He has the tendency to fall back on his heels and lift his head. After giving him a few tips i let him alone to work on it while i worked on my driver.

I must say i normally go to the range on my own but having someone there is a lot of fun. We stopped every few shots for a chat about things. Seemed like stopping actually helped because i am likely to keep hitting till the bucket is gone when on my own. Felt like every 8-10 shots we were stopping.

I'm hitting the ball solid right now and feel i have more control of the ball then ever before. I watched a video recently from Luke Donald where he said it's better to be able to shape shots rather then hitting straight shots. I now feel i can shape shots.

We finished up having a great little chipping competition. There are 3 rings ranging from 50-75 yards away so we chipped into them. We went shot for shot, i won 3-1 but it was a lot of fun to wind each other up.

Looking forward to getting back out on the course though!!!
 
I was going to take a break yesterday, but that didn't end up happening.

In all, I got two indoor sessions and one outdoors over the weekend. Nice day outside Saturday with temps in the high 20's :D Not much wind and the sun was out though, so it could have been worse.

Lesson on Wednesday and I'm hoping all this work pays off with a little bit of positive feedback from the teacher. Biggest swing thought right now is a smooth, wide takeaway. Trying to feel like I'm just swinging the club back rather than guiding it back with a bunch of tension.
 
Nate said:
Big time!! Back to the basics!
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That's awesome, mine is the swing plane according to a guy at golftec. So hard for me. Glad you clicked and keep up the positive steps!

LtEvO TaPpEd
 
Has anyone worked with alignment sticks? For $15 it seems like a cheap way to work on some drills. Has anyone had success with the sticks and certain drills?
 
Migs said:
Has anyone worked with alignment sticks? For $15 it seems like a cheap way to work on some drills. Has anyone had success with the sticks and certain drills?
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I haven't used them for much more than alignment purposes. I just got driveway markers at Lowes for about $2 a piece.
 
Migs said:
Has anyone worked with alignment sticks? For $15 it seems like a cheap way to work on some drills. Has anyone had success with the sticks and certain drills?
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Hawk said:
I haven't used them for much more than alignment purposes. I just got driveway markers at Lowes for about $2 a piece.
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Hawk is spot on. There are plenty of drills on youtube on drills for them
 
dhjkelly said:
Hawk is spot on. There are plenty of drills on youtube on drills for them
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I've considered using them for swing plane stuff, though my instructor gets mad when I go messing with things like that lol.
 
Hawk said:
I've considered using them for swing plane stuff, though my instructor gets mad when I go messing with things like that lol.
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Pfft instructors what do they know!!!!

Best drill i have used them for is making sure my ball position was correct by making a cross with them on the ground, like this

golf-alignment-aid.jpg
 
I like that one and might just have to use it. I feel like my eyes deceive me sometimes when I'm addressing the ball.
 
Had a decent session today over my lunch break. I split a bucket with my buddy, and we got to have fun in spite of a little rain.

My wedges and short irons are coming along well. I think that this is where the majority of my confidence is right now.

Driver contact is improving, and I had one really great shot with the big stick today. There were a couple just okay and a couple that need improvement.

Mid irons and hybrids still need a lot of work to gain ground. I had one really nice 5i to remember.

My back got tired fairly quickly today, which led to compensations and some loss of form. But not as bad as it would have been before. No major self destruct with a struggle to recover from a string of bad shots, just an occasional "what happened there?"

I need to get the new swing into memory so I can focus on swinging faster not harder.
 
Keep up the good work, Shark. The line about not having string of confidence-crushing shots is a good one. It's not an easy or quick transformation, but those kinds of things can show you how far you've come already.


I have a lesson tonight. Did one last practice session last night and I feel like I'm preparing for an exam or something. This is maybe the hardest I've ever worked on specific drills and practice between lessons and I feel like I have something to prove, so fingers are crossed that I get some good feedback. The video will tell the story.

Biggest swing thought last night was keeping a smooth, fluid motion. It's incredibly cliche'd, but it's hard to explain how much better everything works when I'm able to reduce rigidity and move smoothly. My lower body gets a lot more involved and I feel like I expend about half the effort for equal results.

Hoping to get some drills for the driver to take home for me to work on.
 
Rolled about hour and half worth of putts last night. Just working on starting the ball on-line and keeping the face square through impact and keeping my left elbow from tucking. Was a good session.
 
I spent about an hour or so focusing on tempo. I am getting a good grasp on my tempo and my ball striking seems to have improved a good bit as well because of that.
 
Playdough said:
Rolled about hour and half worth of putts last night. Just working on starting the ball on-line and keeping the face square through impact and keeping my left elbow from tucking. Was a good session.
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Still working on the putting. I like it!

heqqr said:
I spent about an hour or so focusing on tempo. I am getting a good grasp on my tempo and my ball striking seems to have improved a good bit as well because of that.
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I've wanted to try out the Tour Tempo training aid since it was reviewed here.
 
Lesson went real good tonight. Yay. I was worried all the work was going to be for nothing, but it paid off on video and with the results. The best I've seen myself hit the ball since I started lessons over a year ago. Still work to do and mostly just need to keep focused on the things I've been working on. Got a couple exercises/stretches to increase my flexibility and get a little better separation. Ended with some driver work that left me feeling good.
 
My teacher kept trying to nail me down to a scoring goal last night. I'm still not sure why I was a little hesistant to go there. I kept saying that I wanted to just keep hitting the ball hard and get the swing as good as I could, but he wanted nothing of that lol. I think he wants us to get an end goal together so we can focus on it. Maybe he thinks the swing part is coming along enough that it's time to move on to bigger goals. I have no clue, but he didn't like wishy washy answers and made sure I knew it.

Either way, the goal is single digits by year end and a sub 80 round by the end of April. I got close to both last year and I think it's doable. It's going to take a continuation of my commitment, which I hope isn't too hard with our new addition to the family coming. Being able to practice at home has really changed the way I do things, so maybe that won't be an issue. It's going to depend on weather and some other things as well, mainly the ability to mentally accept a bad swing and not let doubt creep into my mind. I feel like my putting and short game are decent enough that the swing work will carry me over the top. Figured if I wrote it down I'd have a little more motivation to keep going for it, so there it is. LOL at the fact that I've even hesitant to hit the submit button. Nice condfidence Hawk!
 
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