Swing Practice

As it always does, the round at Sawgrass highlighted weak areas of my game, so I spent the weekend and will continue to spend time in the coming weeks working on those areas. I also played a couple rounds, but I didn't really keep score and focused more on doing the things I was working on in practice.

My practice consisted of a lot of swings, particularly in the area of shaping shots. The only way to play a course like Sawgrass effectively is to be able to shape shots left-right or right-left. Instead of practicing hitting the ball straight, I would work in sets of three shots - draw, straight, fade. And repeat the process. At the start, most of my swings were with the PW or 7-iron, but I worked through all the clubs. Toward the end of the session I started switching clubs every 3 swings, mostly between the longer and shorter clubs to simulate the switching we experience while playing a round. Occasionally I would mix in high or low shots with the draw/fade, but I'll look at shot height as the next step.

Overall the practice was okay. My backswing felt weird at times, although I may have just been overthinking it. I was able to execute the shots I wanted to execute most of the time, but I had streaks of frustration with thin or fat shots. It'll take time.

I also worked on hitting the "stinger" shot with my 4-iron (no lower iron) and a few times with my 5-wood. I read online that the way to hit it is to move the ball back in the stance, put more of your weight on your front side at address, take a low backswing, and keep your hands low in the follow through of the downswing. Since I've never seen one in person I have no idea what a stinger is supposed to look like, but I love the contact and ball flight I get with that setup and swing. It's almost too easy to hit well. Occasionally I'd push the ball right, but the fix there is to make sure I don't let my hips get too far ahead of my chest in the downswing. I'll have to try it out on the course and see what kind of distance I get out of it. It might become a great tee shot on tight fairways.

I also worked on some short game, and I realized I was letting my grip get too strong when chipping. By weakening my grip to be more neutral chipping has become much more controlled and simple. I like simple fixes like that.

It was a hard weekend of practice, and I'm pretty sore at this point from all the swings. I think between playing a couple rounds and the practice I was on the golf course for about 18 hours. The plan for this week is to get 3 or so days of practice and play in the Wednesday group.