Driver practice

I was advised to keep a practice log and I like the idea. I can then return to a written record and see how things changed or what I was working on in the past. It will also hopefully help to try and focus me in my practice sessions. So here is the first of them.

So today I went to the driving range at lunch time. I had a practice plan for the driver, however as I set to hit my first half wedge to warm up my wife rang wanting a lift in 40 mins time.

Having paid for the balls a slow deliberate practice session was turned into a quick blast. I'm not yet disciplined enough to leave the balls in the bucket for someone else, if I have them I will whack them :D

So I concentrated on tempo and straightness.

A nice tip I got on Golf Magic's forum was to swing alternating driver with an iron, and to use the same swing with the driver as I do with the iron. This did indeed seam to work very well at slowing me down.

A nice 6 iron followed by the same speed driver swing, interestingly I found I could not only hit it straighter more often, but also I could feel the swing more and it was quite easy to even slow it down further.

What this did to my flight was to lower it a lot, giving a bit less carry but lots more run. Interestingly I only hooked twice out of 30 odd drives.

In fact slow the driver swing really down and you start getting less back spin, the ball literally dips out of the sky at 180-200 yards ish and just rolls. That would be a bit extreme, but a good controlled tempo swing goes just as far as a thrash, and much much more likely to go in the right direction.

I got one out the back of the range with a smooth swing today, and I felt the club momentum release in the impact, it felt like effortless power, don't remember having that with driver before.

Anyhow the future driver development plan involves range work at least once a week.

I want to work on alignment always, so I plan to bring canes to the range and figure out my ideal ball position and how far away from the ball I should be standing for best results.

I will always hit to an imaginary fairway between two flags and keep FW hit stats. The goal is to raise my percentage of FW's hit. Always must step off the mat before every shot for fresh alignment every time.

Once I get confident in hitting fairways, then I will start to try and develop a fade and a reliable draw shot.

After that, it's work on a low and a high shot.

Each session will alternate Driver/3 wood with 6 or 7 iron for tempo.

The ultimate goal is to send the ball 250 yards down the fairway consistently and without major deviations, staying on the short stuff is always the goal but the more important goal is staying out of real trouble. I want to all but eliminate 3 off the tee.

Easy to say it! :p