Make the Most of your Practice Time

Playing one type of shot poorly last week at Torrey Pines really annoyed me. A pro at the Humewood Golf Course in South Africa says the bump & run is probably the most important chip you will ever learn to play. Looking at my scorecard, even comparing to my pre-round plan, the score by itself doesn’t look like much of a problem.

Next, we can look at shot characterization from the 80BREAKR™ golf app to look for problem shots. Missing ANY short putts is an issue, but I wanted to understand more about the problems I had with the bump & run on the 7th hole at Torrey Pines. You can see it listed under bad shots. It was not the only short chip or pitch shot in the “Bad” column, so I wanted to work on this part of my game.

In the details section of the scorecard shown below, I can clearly see the problem. Those three bad shots from the chart on Game Status really cost me about 6 shots. It’s plain to see on the detailed stats page from the 80BREAKR™ scorecard.

A good pitch or chip should result in one good short putt. A bad chip requiring another chip, or leading to three putts is a problem that will prevent me from reaching my goal to break 80.

Briefly, on the 7th hole at Torrey Pines South, I was on the fringe in two. My bump & run shot ran past the hole 1 foot into deep rough. Before I knew what happened, I was tapping a 6 as my score on my ipod touch for that hole.

I have not found it to be very effective for my game to hit a bucket of pitch or chip shots from the same spot to the same target on a practice green. When on the course, you don’t get two tries for the bump & run on the 7th hole, let alone 50 tries. I also want to practice reading the break, judging the distance, assessing the lie, and focusing on the one and only chance I’ll have. Anne Marie Goslak says the same thing here

She also adds something important for practicing pitch and chip shots. How effective will the practice be if you’re practicing with a 2 piece range ball for pitch shots, then pitch with a 4 piece prov1 on the course? One has almost no spin for a lot of roll, the other is soft with a lot of spin so it stops quickly.

One technique I use is never hitting to the same hole twice. I’ll assess the lie, examine the break, go through pre-shot routine, execute one shot (one and only one) to the target like this yesterday:

Another technique I like, is hitting one ball from three locations to the same hole like this:

I take three balls, the same ones I will use on the course, not range balls, the feel will be the same. I find the time in-between shots helps me feel more like I’m on the course, unlike if you stand in one place and quickly hit a dozen balls on the practice areas.

I use these techniques, and then use the 80BREAKR™ golf app to measure how I did for my practices like this:

Patrick Cohn suggests it is more about mental approach or sports psychology. I believe there is truth to that. There’s not much pressure to hit your bump & run close in a practice area, nobody is watching, and you can simply hit 20 more and ignore that one shot.

My approach is to measure the quality of your shots on the course using the 80BREAKR™ app golf improvement feature, practice as close as possible the entire shot routine on the range, and measure again on the range with the 80BREAKR™ game improvement feature. Measuring how you’re doing and saving those results over time can help you focus your practice time, especially if your time is limited.