Week 46/7/8/9 and 50 :-)

Stack Putting and a return to practice

Feels

After a long break, the blog is back!

I have played 2 rounds and returned to practice and boy, I’ve missed it!

I feel energised and ready to plan and attack the off-season.

The plan is in the works and I will post it, once finalised!

Part one of the plan has started and that involves The Stack Putting app and Ross McLoed’s putting group. The Stack is only a trial period for now but I really like it so far (more on that later).

My other consideration are face to face lessons, on course lessons and a practice consultation with Peter Arnott over at Practice Thinkers. He offers a free consultation with a view to working with him in the future. I’ll link the page below incase anyone is serious about improving their practice habits and play.

Practice Thinkers Practice Consultation

Ive spent some time reflecting on many decisions made, the direction of my season and my overall application. I have collated my thoughts ready for a week 52, 1 year anniversary edition. Keep an eye out for it.

Practice

Ive had 3 practice in the last 5 weeks. Practice had gotten a little stale prior to my break but I enjoyed each of the sessions. One of my reflections of the last 50 weeks had been that many of my sessions were too comfortable. Too easy. Too little experimentation and not enough challenge.

Session One

I continued work on my trail foot with a drill from Ryan. I place a bottle on the outside of my heel and try not to knock it down in transition and the follow through. Lots of instructors say it regularly but over exaggerating the move is the only way to move the needle. I have been too safe and too worried about hitting a functional shot in too many sessions. During this drill, I spent time exaggerating without a the ball(still with the bottle in place) and then hitting a ball 1 out of every 5 swings or so. I saw a big change with ball flight. Much lower and a few hooks and pull hooks. It said a lot about the path of the club. I finished with no bottle but with the same swing thought for some shorter clubs to random targets.

Session Two

I blended the ‘Bottle’ element of the first session with an Andrew Rice drill. After observing the ball flight from the previous session, I matched it with my knowledge of face to path and thought spending some time checking my path would be time well spent.

The drill set up is basically an alignment stick hovering 12 inches above the ball. if my path is a little over the top, I would hit the stick on the way down. It is a physical constraint, designed to encourage a more neutral or in to out path. I enjoyed the challenge of this one and could immediately feel that my body was moving a little different. I didn’t take any video of the swing but my feeling was that I was ‘backing away’ or ‘making more space’ for the club to come through in order to miss the stick.

The only issue I had was that when I removed the stick set up , that ‘feeling’; wasnt as evident. This is always the way with physical constraints but as it was the first time I had tried it, I was pleased with the general success.

Session Three

The final session in this 5 week block is one I have regularly revisited. Many instructors use something similar but Adam Young posted this (below) and it captures the overall session. I was pretty short on time so I spent 20 balls keeping track of successful heel’s and toe’s. Then 24 more balls trying to hit the toe. My success rate was 8 successful heels and 3 successful toes. A side benefit was that most of the unsuccessful toe shots were flushed :-)

Play

I have played 2 rounds, one at my home club and one at Sharpley GC, in Houghton-Le-Spring.

Durham City

My round at Durham was another solid one with a couple of costly errors. I posted an 80 with 10 GIR. Another double bogey on the long Par 4 4th hole, with an awful heely driver ending up in the river. Pretty sure my club of choice on their is moving to my 3 hybrid. Generally pretty solid approach play but another 5 shots short of the green.

What will help me in the coming weeks is the Arccos app. I am moving away from my shot scope GPS watch to using the Arccos app on an Apple Watch. I can activate the ‘caddie’ feature and this will give me an indication of the club choice based on my specific average. I will have to gauge the wind and lie as usual but it’ll be in interesting to see if it has an impact.

Sharpley GC

My playing partner and I were booked in for an open competition at Seahouses GC but it was rained off. This meant at 6:20 we were on the A1 heading North with no golf planned. We stopped for some impromptu breakfast and booked in to play one of the few courses open. (We are keen.)

Sharpley was an OK experience overall but isn’t in the same league as my home course in Durham but it’s better to play than not at all!

I shot a very shabby 86 with lots of high right, wafty iron shots and drives. (Hence the practice sessions that followed).

Next up is the start of the Winter League at Durham. Its a pairs competition but I’ll be posting weekly updates of the game and any highlights. In our first match we are playing a scratch handicapper and his 6hc playing partner. I will be hyper observant at his behaviours and will probably badger his ear with some questions, if I feel the situation allows me to!

Reflective Questions

Do you play it safe during practice?

Do you ever play with better players and observe behaviours?

What are your plans for the off season?