This is great! Keep us updated with your progress
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Results oriented practice with a focus on process! The perfect plan.
I’m still hoping on simulators at my club… and the ability to fully swing a club!
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@Adamyounggolf has good stuff for home drills. Most of it is about controlling low point. I think fitness, mirror work and impact bag work is the best stuff you can do at home without a simulator
I personally do not like hitting into a net without feedback (aka simulator). I feel like stretching, core strength, orange whip or impact bag is a better use of my time. I am also spoiled and do not really have an off season in Texas so range is an option 50 weeks per year.
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Looks like a great plan.
There’s a lot of stuff that you can do in winter that wouldn’t necessarily be a great idea in the middle of the season - such as any movement changes you wish to make and ingrain.
Other than that, it’s a great time to build skill via variability/differential practice drills.
I focus all of my players’ practices around quantifying and improving the 3 major skills
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Ground contact
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Face Contact
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Face direction
I’m fortunate that, with a GCquad, I can get accurate data on all of these parameters. We can look at averages and standard deviations (and ranges) of face contact and direction. I set games that push their skill boundaries - such as hitting different parts of the face in 10mm increments, or even as low as 3mm increments (for good players). Or presenting the face in certain directions with certain windows (such as presenting it 4 degrees open with 1 degree either side being acceptable).
With the above types of games, players develop incredible awareness, feel and control.
We then move more towards contextual practice as the new season approaches (targets, outcome games, pressure/partners etc).
To be honest, just swinging a club 5 mins a day in the back garden is a huge help over winter’s compared to starting completely from scratch next season.
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I found that different hitting drills with the net helped me. I will stand feet together or on my left leg and hit balls with the L to L swing just working towards center contact. I tend to overswing so I work on tempo and shortening my backswing as well. It definitely made a difference in my last winter golf trip. I didn’t score all that well, but I really hit the ball great for a guy that didn’t play golf for over 3 months before the trip. I plan on adding a launch monitor for this winter; maybe a Mevo+.
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I’m cheering you on! Glad you’re taking fitness seriously also, keep that back healthy! I really like that “play 9 holes on the range” idea, good focus idea! I always have time for the range, at least when it’s open.
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This thread is really interesting. I wonder if there should be a "personal journal / program " section or something similar where people can write their own journey towards improvement and see how others are doing it. I have my own goals and hypothesis to improve my own game. The cool thing about golf is that there are so many facets to it, and many ways to make yourself a better player.
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I’ll probably revive my monthly goal thread I started on another forum in January… it was a lot of fun and a good place for encouragement and self tracking…
Weirdly, I feel guilty moving it here this year, even if I’ve abandoned the other forum for the most part.
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I will have to reshuffle priorities, played yesterday and my sciatica is on fire today. Hobbling around.
Ball striking quest may be on hold for 4-6 weeks. Going to go to PT and get an assessment done by a trainer. Hoping to spend a month on mobility and core strength and get back to feeling 90% plus physically.
Not playing or practicing at full speed until I get improvement in how the back and hips feel.
Putting and mirror work, stretching and core strength : (
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Get healthy! Sucks not being able to swing full…
ugh sorry to hear that, get better!
Thanks. It’s time to get this fixed. Can’t build a skyscraper on a marsh!
Hate that for you! Get better quick and become a lights out putter!
It’s interesting how back pain can radiate into the hip! I first thought I had sciatica but turned out to be a cartilage tear. Not pleasant!
Epidural did wonders, though.
Sciatic pain sucks; hope it clears up quickly for you. I do some stretching pretty much every day now as preventative maintenance lol. I will be dusting off the Yoga dvd’s for the winter months.
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Update #1
Project is well under way. I have been averaging approximately 1.5 practice sessions per week and probably about 9 holes per week. I will edit this post shortly with a few graphs on performance.
Take aways:
While I have played some solid golf, I am still fighting a two way miss. After thinking on my game and taking a lesson, priority number 1 is to drill in a draw bias. While this thread was originally going to be about a variety of skill games and how they correlated to GIR stats, I have pivoted and am spending most of my time doing gate drills or movement drills with impediments (basically using alignment sticks, head covers, tees etc to give feedback on path).
Gate drill has been a huge eye opener. It really exposed how badly my brain wants to manipulate the club and how much work I have in front of me to get my brain comfortable swinging right and controlling the face. It also makes you realize that as soon as you get steep in transition you are dead in terms of hitting a draw (there’s really no place to go but to swing left).
I feel really good about where this is headed. The focus this month is going to continue to be on developing a consistent draw pattern. I will likely start to mix in some skill games, but I feel really good about what I am doing.
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Here are the stats from the last month or so… fyi the outlier of 17 NGIR is a shamble event. Ive included as it shows the importance of keeping the ball in play off of the tee. Being able to replace my two bad tee shots on the day had a huge scoring impact even with a pretty average ball striking day with the irons.
FYI you need to double click to expand image.
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How goes the ball striking quest? Any drills you’ve found good success with?
Our simulators should be in about the time I can start taking half swings again (middle of february), so my current plan is to start grinding on my version of the clock system… my overall goal is to build three shortened swings that feel comfortable and are repeatable across the bag, and then dial in distances… With just my four wedges, that would be 12 additional stock shots… It will be interesting to see how the numbers translate to my irons as well.
Will post an update. I am sort of at a “do not pass go” spot. I am fully committed to playing one shape and controlling trajectory better.
Basically my face isn’t very stable right now. I am doing a ton of mirror work, impact bag and half swings.
I am in the boring block practice phase
Main takeaways / what has helped me:
- always lay an alignment stick in front of the golf ball pointed at the target
- lay a second alignment stick between the golf ball and my feet to align body to
- two or three slow motion swings between each golf ball; lots of slow motion work with my eyes closed. I am hitting maybe one or one and a half golf balls per minute during a range sessions
- range sessions have a strict do not pass go check list
- solid contact
- start line (no starting it across the line)
- consistent curve
the most frustrating thing is days where I cannot get one of these variables to lock in. Usually I will just hit some balls with my feet together at that point and then mess around hitting big hooks and big cuts just to get some feel going. Then I quit and go putt and try again another day.
- slow motion and mirror work every night. I really like the two drills below and they make up the majority of my “dry drills”
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some q1 stats from 89 holes of golf:
| TIGER 5, SCORING, TEE TO GREEN | ||
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Q1 Actual | |
| Par 5 Scoring | 5.0 | 6.4 |
| D Bogey | 1.0 | 3.2 |
| 3 Putts | 1.0 | 2.8 |
| Double Chip | 0.5 | 0.8 |
| FW | 11.0 | 8.9 |
| D Error | 2.0 | 4.4 |
| GIR | 10.0 | 5.9 |
| NGIR | 6.0 | 6.1 |
| Par 3 GIR % | 75.0% | 33.3% |
| Par 3 NGIR% | 25.0% | 61.1% |
| NGIR+% | 100.0% | 94.4% |
| Up and Down | 50.0% | 35.0% |
| Sand Save | 50.0% | 44.4% |
| Putts | 30.0 | 32.8 |
| Scoring Average | 78.0 | 83.7 |
| Stableford | 29.0 | 23.1 |
| Birdie | 1.0 | 0.4 |
| Par | 10.0 | 7.5 |
| Bogey | 6.0 | 6.9 |
| Double Bogey | 1.0 | 3.2 |
Takeaways:
- Scheduling consistent practice time has been my number 1 challenge
- I am in a bit of a frustrating cycle where I will go 2-3 weeks with 75% practice, 25% play ratio and start to make real progress on how I am striking the golf ball… if this flips and I start playing more than I practice, I typically lose my gains and revert to the old pattern…need to stay very disciplined with maintaining at least 50% practice time until these changes become more ingrained
- Tracking approach shots has revealed that I do not hit it in the center of the face as often as I thought @Adamyounggolf
- 3 putts and “driver errors” (penalty, woods, fairway bunker) are the low hanging fruit, but I am mostly focused on tee to green. I want to see GIR, Near GIR and “successful drives” increase. I am going to get on a trackman in the next two weeks and do combine / dispersion report. I am also going to militantly apply the logic in this article https://www.adamyounggolf.com/golf-distance-control-strategy/
- committing to at least 1 hour of practice and 9 holes most weeks… reality has punched me in the face and I have to adjust my idealistic original plan
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