Tomorrow morning we play at LPGA International, the world headquarters of the LPGA in Daytona Beach. I’ve never played there before, but someone from work has a round discount that a bunch of us are going to use.
I’ve heard only positive things about the course. We’ll be playing the Legends course, which is the more difficult of the two courses at LPGA (Champions is the other). From the blue tees, Legends is a 6,594 yard course with a 73.1/141 rating/slope. The group I play with hits from the white tees, though, and they want to do some closest-to-the-pin and long-drive contests, so for fairness I may have to play from the whites. Then again, they might not mind if I play from a slightly longer distance. (71.9/137 rating/slope from the whites)
Tonight after work I went to another local course for a 2.5 hour practice session. I took a small bucket of range balls to the pitching green and worked on using a shorter pitching stance. Up until recently my pitching stance has been a little less than shoulder-width apart. I decided to shorten up the stance after reading a few articles online, seeing some instruction for pitching on the Golf Channel, and just spending some time thinking about the body mechanics of the swing during the pitch.
After about an hour of pitching around 200 shots from varying distances and lies, I took the bucket of balls to the range. I hit about half the bucket with my 7-iron to work on my timing and new arm slot on the backswing. Then I went to the 5-iron, 4-iron, and 3-iron before finishing with the 3-wood and 9-iron.
Next up was the chipping green, where I practiced mostly short distance chips, which have been hurting me on the course lately. Well, chipping in general has. I basically wanted to practice controlling the distance of my chips. I learned a few things though, like how to strike the ball with a more open club face to get a lob and slower velocity, how to strike to get a long roll, and the importance of following through with the chip to help with the lie. Total chip shots was around 90.
To wrap things up I spent another 30 minutes on the putting green. I do two types of putting practice. One is a two-putt practice where I start from a certain distance and work on getting the balls to within 2 feet of the hole (sometimes they go in). Once I hit the 3 or 4 balls, I work on making each of them from wherever they ended up being. The basic idea is to practice two putts or less once I’m on the green, just like I would want to play during a round.
I also spent some time working on specific distances (3 ft, 6 ft, 12 ft) and putt-types (left-right, right-left, uphill, downhill). After a while I realized I was losing focus and concentration, so I started playing a competition of having to make a certain number of putts at each hole on the putting green before I could go to the next hole and eventually go home. Doing this sort of competition against myself is a way to practice under pressure and work on some of the mental game of golf. (the pressure of not being able to go home and eat dinner when I’m already hungry and tired).
Overall, it was a good practice, I think. Hopefully during my TOUR Academy experience I’ll learn more about how to practice so my practices can be more efficient and effective. And yes, I got signed up for the TouR Academy today for the 3-day school next month. I’m entirely self-taught at this point, so I’m really looking forward to some real instruction for my golf game!
For now, it’s time to rest up for a fun day at LPGA.