No Round This Weekend, Just Practice

I didn't have any rounds scheduled for this weekend, so I decided to do some much needed practice. I began by chipping abour four hundred balls from various positions around the chipping green. The dispersion of my shots was not bad and I mis-hit very few balls. The grass around the chipping green was fairly long, which meant that the ball was nicely propped up most of the time. I pressed some balls down into the grass to get the feel of shooting from a different lie. The chipping green was one of those shaggy affairs, so the benefits of this practice were limited. Still, it was good to spend some time on the short game.

Following the chipping practice, I headed over to the driving range, working my way from sand wedge to driver. I was focused primarily on taking the club away a few degrees to the inside, shortening and flattening my backswing, and swinging in rhythm. As I concentrated on flattening the backswing, I realized just how steep my backswing had become recently. I knew this was the case with longer clubs such as fairway woods and driver, but it became clear that I was doing it with all clubs, including the short wedges. Even as I flattened my swing plane, all of my shots were being pulled left of my target line, as a result of an outside-in swing path. In recent weeks, I was compensating for that by fading or cutting the ball at the same time. The ball would end up more or less where I wanted it to, but the flight path was not ideal. I continued to work on the swing plane and eventually began hitting some better balls. I got a lot of great work in with the irons, but spent less time on the fairway woods and driver than I had hoped.

To wrap up, I sent some time on the putting green, practicing short, medium and long range putts from different positions. My distance control was good. I lagged the more lengthy putts very near the hole, even if they didn't drop with great frequency. I tried to concentrate on a nice, aggressive follow through. Sometimes, I take a big backswing and then decelerate the putter, so I was training myself not to do that.

Hopefully, this work pays off at my next round later this week.