Nice and cool
This morning, I went to the Golden Bear Golf Center to practice. The weather was cool, sunny and breezy.
I started out warming up with the sand wedge, trying to make clean contact and good tempo. I was pretty pleased with that club, so I got out the 9- and 7-irons to go with it. I worked pretty well with those clubs, having little trouble with fat shots that I had Wednesday. I concentrated today on making sure to accelerate through the ball and that swing thought seemed to help.
Next up, I got out the three longest clubs and started alternating them. I hit the 3i Halo pretty well today, though tending to push. The 2i Halo was a bit of a problem, as I hit several stinky shots with it and even a slice or two. The driver was very poor today, never really had good ball striking with the club, except when I hit pushes, which were really pushed far right.
I also ran the pin-hunting drill, making only 8 of 20 shots very good or better. My ball striking during the drill was pretty good, but I tended to push a lot of shots, and when I pushed them, they weren’t slight pushes, but very hard pushes well right.
My next drill was to run speed drills on the putting green. I spent about 30 minutes on this drill and I seem to be improving. I hit a lot of putts in the 6-18 ft range, and rarely missed from inside 9 ft.
Next up was a series of bunker shots. At first, I was taking too much sand and left the balls in the bunker. I got that sorted out, even holing one from the bunker. I then started hitting the shots a bit thin and sent a few just over the green.
I then hit 50 or so short lob wedge shots at varying distances, working on touch and distance, again working on accelerating through the ball. I had pretty good results with this drill, tending to have pretty good direction control but not that great on distance. My last drill was chipping with the pitching wedge, which I did pretty well, but still needs work.
All in all, a pretty good practice day. My main issues were with the longer clubs and hitting pushes with the medium and short irons. My short game continues to improve.