Joey's Golf Bag

This morning, I went to the Golden Bear Golf Center to practice, under heavy clouds threating rain. There was a soft breeze from the north.

I warmed up with the 7-iron, and then switched to rotation of pitching wedge, 8- and 6-irons. After hitting a few rotations through those clubs, and hitting the ball pretty well (main defect today was hitting pushes or fades), I moved on to the longer clubs. I got out the driver, 3-metal and hybrid and worked on tempo with those clubs. I started off a bit rough, but soon had those clubs performing well. Again, the main fault I had today was pushing the ball well right, though I struck the ball well.

I then got out the wedges and rotated through them working on correcting the pulls and fat strikes that I had yesterday. I had pretty good success getting the pulled shots back to straight, but still had some difficulty hitting the ball fat. That happens when my tempo gets quick, and I’ve had to work hard on slowing down my tempo.

My last drill was pin-hunting, and despite some bad shots, had one of my better days where 10 of 20 shots were rated 4 or 5 on a 5 point scale. I was pretty pleased when I finished up that drill. By now, I’d run out of balls, so I went to the putting green to practice.

The pin-hunting drill scale:

I spent the entire time on the green running the speed drill, this time with 3 balls. I started off with 3 balls spaced 3, 6 and 9 ft from the hole, then moving out 3 ft, etc. I had an extraordinary day with this drill, making more than 60% of the putts out to 30 ft. I was very pleased with my putting practice today. Now, if I can just get that skill to work on the course…