Winter practice begins....

In association with my declared, 2016, The Year of the Fish announcement and although I clearly stated in my, Put up or shut up blog post that I didn't like practicing, I actually went out and did some on Monday afternoon, and even more bizarrely, I really enjoyed it! although I wasn't overly impressed with the critique I received by some on the Golf Monthly forum when I posted up a video of me chipping, banter they say, hmm, I beg to differ!

Anyway, irrelevant of how my style looks to the curtain twitchers and purists, it is very effective and as the saying goes, "if it ain't broke....." and anyway, how many handicap club golfers have textbook swings, not many me thinks!

So, I spent just under an hour on the putting green, I have to be honest and say that this was the hardest of the practice exercises I did that afternoon to hold my concentration, I need to research a little more and find some various, but interesting and different drills to help me keep focussed I think!

I'm generally satisfied with my putting, although I did notice that I was far more confident and successful with much longer putts with various breaks in them than those straight forward  3-4 footers that are a must sink, the overthinking that can go into those are frightening and it's here where I need to improve and put the work and practice in, I think I will try a 4ft clock method that I've seen Peter Finch do in a video.

I then moved to the chipping area with a 2 pin green, although again this is an area in my game that I am very comfortable and confident with, I can't afford to take the foot off the pedal with what I believe is a critical part of my game, that's because I don't hit as many greens in regulation (GIR) as I'd like, so I really rely on my chipping to get me close enough to single putt saving pars, well that's the idea anyway.

However, I've just taken delivery of some new wedges, I stayed with Mizuno and upgraded from my MP-T4's to the new Blue S5's.

 

 I started chipping initially from 25 yards with my sand wedge which is 56/10 (56 degrees with 10 degree of bounce), I'm very comfortable with this wedge but in the current soft conditions I found that when they landed slightly short due to not having much green to work with and a forward pin position, my ball would check and stop too quickly, so, I then started to chip with my 52/09 with much better results, so mission accomplished.  I then moved to the longer chipping practice area we have at Coventry Golf Club and increased my chipping distances slowly out to 50 yards and again, I came away very happy.

With my course closed today I'm going to take advantage of hopefully a very quiet practice area and work on my short game irons, mainly my 7, 8 & 9, these are critical I think for me to not only find the green from anywhere inside 140 yards, but hopefully also find the area of the green to help me secure more single putts, if I can improve this side of my short game over the winter to match my current chipping and putting stats, I'll be in very good shape for my 2016 quest of The year of the Fish.