Day 32: Chipping & Sand Play

I spent the late afternoon practicing my chipping and sand play. These are the 2 facets that are continually hurting my score. As I have stated previously, I have to make my weakest points my strongest points.

I have found that good chipping relies on having good tempo. I am focusing on this and I am good on the practice green. I just need to transfer this ability to chip well on the practice green onto the course where it matters.

I spent about 30 to 45 minutes chipping my 14 balls to all different distances varying from 5 feet (the toughest) to 40 feet (the easiest) using my SW. I had good tempo and I was happy about where the ball was finishing. I feel like I had good command on this club. Now I need to do this on the course.

The bunker was a different story. It seemed liked the more I practiced, the worse I got. So much so, that I screwed up my swing. Based on my lesson from last week in the bunker, I was taking an outside-to-in swing path and not making consistent contact. After about a half hour of struggles, I started chipping again and could not hit a single, solid chip. What happened? Not sure, but maybe I was just tired and felt like it was a good time to call it quits. It always stinks when you finish on a low note. I think it is important to always finish on a high note to keep you in a good mindset to make you look forward to picking it back up again.

I came home and hit up youtube for some good bunker play videos. Here is one from Gary Balliet that I liked:

Note the self: Never finish practice on a low note. Always finish practice on a great shot.