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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One last thing… Par 3 GIR is an interesting stat. My home course has 5 par 3’s. 4 of the holes consistently play over 170, two of them closer to 190. The short par 3 plays about 120-140 but the green is 10 yards wide with a clear fat side (I am frequently off the green, fat side, with an easy up and down look).
I definitely want to increase my GIR% but I am trying to be realistic and actually have to look at my approach data to see what is actually going on there.
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Yeah, I think GIR can be a useful stat that starts to hide some information if you rely on it too much…
Golf data is somewhat of a weird beast… if I had data that showed I was the best bunker player in the world, it wouldn’t mean I should aim for bunkers, it would just mean I take less of a penalty if I hit into one (and thus they shouldn’t be avoided with my dispersion)
It’s awesome that you are tracking all these numbers, though, and I hope it helps you improve your game… I’m starting to think about what numbers I can and want to track as I get back into playing… I have the S62 which has some decent data collection… I could probably just track putts and distances and roll out a decent data program… Definitely something to think about!
As for the play vs practice balance… let me know if you figure it out! I never feel like I have it right, and if I start playing a ton, I have a harder time focusing myself mentally over every shot… those quick “oh, the first tee is open” rounds are fun but not particularly helpful in developing myself as a golfer. Though, that’s OK too!
I think if you track fairways the way @jon suggests, green in regulation and near green in regulation you have a damn good indication of your tee to green game… these are far and away the 3 stats I home in on after each round
I am doing some really detailed tracking of approach shots as I have realized I need to shrink my front to back distance dispersion (this is basically a strike issue… I need to improve the strike)
Common thing though… I am making a swing change and the strike is temporarily suffering… I am confident this is the correct path though
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The eternal struggle! Good luck with the swing change…
I finally get on a simulator tomorrow… curious to see my actual numbers.
Golf stats are tough to understand. I saw a question on twitter this weekend about a Tour player saying how can he have negative SG ARG and 100% scrambling stats. He is a great putter that’s how.
GIR doesn’t have quite the depth as that but it is awesome that you are able to understand how certain stats apply to your game. Tracking stats is one thing but understanding them and how to apply to your game is a whole different ball game. Well done.
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I could eliminate a number of these, but I find it interesting and actually enjoy wading through the numbers
If someone wanted the minimalist version, I would say track greens, near greens and putts
Edit: my simplified version:
You can see clearly here that:
- driving mistakes are hurting my ability to get nGIR’s
- 3 putts are costing me when I do hit GIR’s
- Playing the par 5’s at an average of 5.5 instead of 6.4 would save me nearly 4 shots per round
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This is great. Simple yet effective.
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