Joey's Golf Bag

This morning, at the crack of dawn, I hit a few balls at The Practice Tee in Plano. The weather was cold, but sunny, with a slight breeze from the south. I started off hitting short pitching wedges to warm up. At first, I hit the balls fat, but soon got that worked out and moved on to hitting alternating pitching wedges, 8- and 6-irons. Again, I had a bad case of the fats, so I got out the iPod and switched on Tour Tempo at 27/9. This time it didn’t help; I was badly rushing my downswing, causing me to hit fat.

I put away the iPod and got out the 7-wood. My first shot was a fade, not particularly well-struck, but it caused me to realize my old nemesis fault, too much lateral movement on the backswing, returning to traumatize me again. When I managed to eliminate these two faults, rushing the downswing, and keeping lateral movement to a minimum, I struck the ball well. Encouraged, I got out the driver. My first shot was a snap hook; rushing the downswing AGAIN. I then hit a couple of good, straight drives, then a monster slice. My next swing was rushed, hitting a crappy drop-kick. I then switched back to the 7-wood and hit a good shot. I also hit one or two with the 3i hybrid, but it wasn’t well struck, same faults.

Finally, running out of time, I hit a few 8-iron shots, about half of which were well-struck, the rest with the same ol’ faults. Last few balls I used to hit some sand wedge shots, which were mostly well-struck but with an annoying fat shot thrown in.

Not my best day of practice, but at least I figured out my faults and didn’t get frustrated.