Backyard Driving Range
For the month of June I am officially not a member of CECC. My annual membership ended on May 31 and I am putting together a proposal for renewal that will be voted on later this month. There is a good chance that I will be back out there starting in July, but for the time being I have been bouncing around town playing and practicing at all the other courses around.
I have also made a backyard driving range that I have found to be both convenient and a wonderful way to eliminate outcome from practice and get more process oriented. When you are on a range it is so tempting to obsess over the ball flight which can be a good thing as you can learn a ton about your swing based on the ball flight, but when you want to work on one or two very specific aspects sometimes too much external stimulus can be a negative.
Here is a video of the setup I have going on right now:
Utilizing the awesome resource that is TrackMan I can pinpoint one part of the swing at a time to focus on and practice. For this session, I was trying to figure out what it felt like to not shut the face at impact. Since making some swing changes with Bruce Furman I have had a tendency to do everything correct except to still flip my wrists at impact, which is something I used to have to do to square up the face. Now that I am keeping the club on plane I no longer need that correction in my swing and need to establish a new feel. By hitting into a net I can focus solely on that feel.
It’s not exactly a world class range, but when in need the backyard can make a great practice spot.
For the next three weeks I will have to find a new routine. I’ve gotten pretty spoiled in the past two years by having access to a wonderful practice facility and now will have to alter my day-to-day activities. To be honest, I am not sure where I will be practicing, but I do know that I will be varying my location which is a good thing as far as learning is concerned. Over the past few days I have practiced/played on 5 different courses and learned something new from each of them.
The courses around town are quite pretty too. Here are a couple shots from Heron Lakes:
So much good golf in the Pacific Northwest. I’ll be working my hardest to get a solid letter to CECC’s Board for their late June meeting, but in the meantime let me know if anyone is around Portland and wants to practice or tee it up at one of the courses around town.