A Fine Practice
This afternoon, after work, I practiced at the Golden Bear Golf Center on a fabulous, cool, sunny, breezy day.
I started off alternating 9-, 6- and 4-irons, striking the ball pretty well. I was using one of my new 6-irons, the one with the graphite shaft, and its lower swingweight seemed to have little effect on my ball striking. My dominate failure today was a push or a push fade, only had one hook (with the 4-iron). Next up, I got out the longer clubs, the new Toski driver, the Toski 3-wood, and the 3i HALO hybrid, along with the 4-iron, and alternated hitting balls with these clubs. Initially, I was slicing the driver, but I eventually got it straightened out, though it took a few balls. Ironically, I seemed to hit the 3-wood cleanly, but didn’t see where the ball went on several shots. 😕 I finally started hitting the hybrid pretty well today, tending to pull it a bit. The 4-iron was struck well for the most part, aside from the hook I previously mentioned.
Since I was striking the ball pretty well, I decided to run my pin-hunting drill midway through the bucket instead of waiting until the end. I managed 9 of 22 shots with scores of 4 or 5, and a bunch of 3’s. It was one of the better pin-hunting drills I’ve had in a while, really having only one bad shot in the bunch.
Next up, I hit a few short wedge shots at the close-in purple and white flags, striking the ball pretty cleanly. I tended to hook the pitching wedge, but hit the rest pretty well. I managed to hole one pitching wedge shot, perfectly played just past the white flag, and it rolled back right into the cup. 😀 I also practiced a lot of long chips toward the purple flag, and also hit a few flop shots with the 64° wedge. I also practiced opening the club face of the sand wedge and lob wedge to make the ball travel higher (not that hitting the ball higher was particularly good on a windy day like today, but when I’m striking the ball well, it’s fun to hit a few shots that require a bit of skill).
After I ran out of balls, I ran my usual speed drill on the putting green. I performed pretty well up to about 30 ft, but past that distance didn’t do particularly great at first, but soon recovered. I even managed to lag 3 of 4 from that distance to easy tap-in length.
All in all, I was very pleased with my practice today. Tempo was good and the number of poorly struck shots was low. Quite possibly the best practice since the early summer. The only thing I forgot to practice was bunker shots; I spaced it.