One of the biggest frustrations on the planet is the cost of playing golf. Unfortunately, the cost of practicing can be just as bad. In fact, there are even some locations where practicing can cost more than a round of golf. This is why it is so important to get the most from your practice dollars. Understanding where to work on parts of your game is one of the biggest money saving tips around, and will keep more in your pocket for playing on the weekends.
Right now, most golfers make the mistake of hitting the range once or twice a week to work on their swing keys, timing or correcting an issue from their round the week before. Sure, it’s a helpful practice, but it’s not where they bled the majority of their strokes away last weekend. Shots taken from 100 yards in usually are the culprits in scores rising from 70 to 85. When you play through your last round in your head, how many wedges did you have to the green that missed the flag by more than 10 feet? How many missed the green and resulted in a poor chip. How many long approaches just missed the green resulting in a poor lag putt or pitch? Every one of these easy shots, whether a simple wedge to the green or a pitch over a bunker is what kills a score, not that one drive that missed a fairway or a slice that didn’t go away during the round. If you had an approach to the green, you should be able to get it close enough to save that par.
If you aren’t supposed to just go to the range mid week, what are you supposed to practice then? Let’s start with the busiest club in your bag, the putter. With 30-36 shots a round, the putter is the most active club in your bag during every round of golf. Sure, if you have a lights out putting round, that number could become as low as 27, but that still ranks it as #1 in your bag for 99.9% of any round you’ll ever play. While some tour pro’s pound balls at the range, the smarter players are on the putting green tweaking their stroke for the week. Getting on to a real green is the best way to practice, but since most of us don’t have one in our yard, a practice green can rank a close second. Learn about the pace of your swing, the distance the ball travels and how to read a break. If you get better and better at putting, you’ll start to see strokes fade from your card quickly. If you don’ have time to make it to the course to practice, you can easily bring your putter inside and practice that stroke for 15-20 minutes a day in the living room, office or anywhere you have a decent piece of carpet. Don’t work on anything longer than 6-8 feet. You just want to keep working on making your stroke consistent.
As you continue to practice putting throughout the week, make sure to work in some chipping or pitching time as well. Which one you work on the most will depend on what sort of area you have to practice in. If you are stuck inside, you can work on your tempo and club head position. If you can make it outside and have a little yard or park near you, you can work some full shots. Try for about 10 yards on a pitch and shorter on your chips. Remember, your chipping practice will only work well if you have a green to roll out on to, but the pitch and chip swings should be very similar, which means even just working on being more consistent by making 25-50 swings a day indoors will help your short game cut some strokes from your card.
The 100 yard wedge shot. It’s the tour pro’s bread and butter and most amateur’s weakest shot in their bag. If you could set your ball down at the 100 yard marker on every course and hit it to the green, how many of them would you hit? How many could you put inside 10 feet? How many could you get inside 5 feet? This is the scoring zone and this is where you need to hit the ball close to score your best. So much is made of 300 yard drives and 200 yard 5 irons that almost everyone forgets that those shots are needed once or twice a round. The rest of the time, that 300 yard drive leaves you with a strange approach shot in or brings major trouble into play when you shouldn’t need to worry about it. Working that 100 yard wedge (or 9 iron or whatever club you need to hit from there) will lower your score dramatically more than gaining 10, 20 or even 30 yards on your driver. Developing an accurate approach from that 100 yard mark is what will shave those pitches and chips off your card and leave you staring at a few more birdie putts. When you can start knocking them stiff from that 100 yard marker, you’re scores will start dropping like the putts you’re holing out.
The hardest part of practicing your 100 yard game is where to do it. I know as a younger kid, we took our wedges up to the local football field and set up a few yards behind the end zone and hit balls out on to the field. This really isn’t much of an option today since so many fields are locked or field turf, but any wide open space will work nicely. If you have a GPS or a targeting scope, you can set your distances that way and just hit balls back and forth. If you’re parks system doesn’t allow golfing, check and see if it is ok if you do it with a small hitting mat there. Often times, the parks department will let you do it if you aren’t damaging the soil. If you have no available option for spaces to hit a 100 yard shot, during that range session (or even your on-course round) make a note of the swing you use to hit that 100 yard shot and practice full swings just like it during the week. If you a paved area, grab a portable hitting mat to practice on. if you have a small yard or an indoor space, you may want to do this as well – since the grass you save will be your own.
Overall, you can’t say enough about nailing your shots from 100 yards in. If you set up your round for 100 yard approach shots and your putting is sharp, that 75 is just a few rounds away. The only way to get there is to practice those critical shots on a regular basis, but that practice doesn’t have to cost you a dime. Remember, if you take the average par 4 at 320 yards and can hit a 220 yard tee shot, a 100 yard wedge and 2 putt from anywhere on the green, you will shoot par. The same goes for a 170 yard par 3. If you miss the green with that long tee shot, a great chip solid short putt will save your par. Of course, I don’t want to leave out those 500 yard par 5’s. That same 220 yard drive, that 180 yard par 3 tee shot and a perfect 100 yard wedge has you putting for birdie instead of struggling for par. It works across the board. When you start to allocate time for your practice next week, and especially over the off season, make sure you practice the shots you use the most.
No comments:
Post a Comment