Two Practices: A Mixed Bag
I had planned to play today at Indian Creek, but my golf buddy was not able to play (he wanted to see Texas crush Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl).
Yesterday, I went to practice, and it may have been good that I didn’t play today, as the practice was pretty bad. I started off with the 7-iron, trying to get the draw to work, to no avail. No matter what I did, the ball faded or sliced. I even sliced the driver badly, which I almost never do, and most of my 3-metals were fades as well. Finally, half way through the bucket, I tracked down the cause: my club face was much too open at the top, and I wasn’t able to get the face closed when I hit the ball. I practiced a lot of backswings to get the club face correct at the top and finally managed to get the ball going straight, although I never did achieve a reliable draw.
Putting practice, on the other hand, was the best I’ve done in many weeks. I started off with some short putts around the hole, moved on to the 20 ft distance drill, and then went into my usual routine simulating 18-holes of golf. 3 times 6/12/18 ft, 2 times 9/18/27 ft, 1 time 3 balls from 35 ft. I ended the session 5 under par, my best showing in a long time.
Today, I went to the range to find that half the range was closed due to sand being spread on the grass. I got a bucket of balls and set about trying to get the draw to work again. I started with the 6-iron and most balls were fading. I went through a number of different drills to try to get the ball to fade and the best I was able to do was get soft fades or straight shots. My driving was better today, many straight balls, but also a few fades or slices. The 3-metal was better than the driver today, mostly soft fades or straight shots. I finished the session with some short iron shots, mostly slight pushes, but better than usual.
I started the putting drills with short putts, hitting them all. I then moved on to putts with a lot of break from right to left. After many drills from 6/12/18 ft, I finally started reading the breaks well. I then ran my full 18-hole simulation, as above, but after reaching 5 under par after 12 holes, proceeded to give all those shots back. My putting was very poor on the 35 ft drill, three putted them all. Yeech.