I was able to get out for the first time after the session with my new instructor. Overall it went quite well. I had about a 4 hole stretch where I was back to some bad habits but after those few disasters I was able to get the swing back to what we are working on. I was quite pleased, not with the score of the round, but with the recognition of what I was doing wrong and the ability to resolve the problem in a shorter period of time than previous. After all this time working on takeaway, swing plane, wrist position, blah, blah, blah, the simplest concept escaped me and apparently is not on the front burner of most instructors which is squaring the club face at impact. I had another range session this afternoon and it went very well. My ball flight is getting much better and not ballooning as much, although I believe I will need to get some irons with different shafts as my kick point is sending the ball into the air a bit too quick but that is all a mute point until I can get consistent with my ball striking which is improving with every session. I really feel a sense of confidence knowing now what a "true" strike of the golf ball feels like. I have broken my instruction and learning into phases to best suit my improvement process:
1. Become a consistent ball striker with all clubs
2. become 80% putting success from within 10 feet
3. become 80% putting to within 3ft from over 20ft out
4. become 80% with all chip shots to within 5 ft
5. Learn the feel of Half and three quarter shots consistently
6. Learn to control ball flight(high, low, draw, fade)
The time lines on each of these has not set date. This removes pressure to accomplish these by time and allows me to focus on accomplishing these by success instead which will produce better results for me. I'm gaining a much better understanding of the process it is going to take for me to accomplish what I've set out to do. Now I just need to stay the course(pun intended!:)) and see this through to complete success!
So, assuming you can keep track of specific stats for #2. #3 & #4, how exactly are you measuring the success of #1? What does "becoming a consistent ball striker with all clubs" mean to you? Fairways hit? GIR? GIR from off the fairway?
ReplyDeleteJust curious. I measure my success and improvement in many statistical areas outside of scoring, but I wasn't sure how to measure ball striking with "all clubs".
Good questions Kevin! For me personally stats can be a bit crushing on my mental game so I'm trying to focus more on the feel of results rather than numbers, but that's just for me. I'll be measuring the ball striking success via my feeling about my round\practice session after it's over. If I start measuring GIR's, Putts, fairways hit, there tends to be a lot of grey area with those numbers that can skew them. For example, you can't count a fairway hit if your in the short rough but the ball is still for the most part, well struck, has great ball flight, just happened to kick a little to the right or left or kicked hard forward. the second shot is still very playable. GIR's can be a similar result. You hit a great shot but happen to catch a breeze in the after the swing or you hit the green but the ball spins a little too hard and rolls off the green onto the fringe. And total putts? well we've all had the 30 putts round and still shot 85. but that's because we missed the approach shots and got up and down a lot. all those stats are very good to keep but don't necessarily provide the best feedback for simple ball striking results. I could hit the ball great and shoot 82 because I happen to catch a few bad hops or putt poorly, all the more reason why I created a single separate category for ball striking. Once I feel comfortable knowing I can strike the ball well and consistent then it's on to another lesson.
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