I had a last minute 8AM meeting cancellation, and was scheduled to be back home for a call at 11AM, so I took advantage of the free morning and went to the range for its 9AM open. Despite it only being 7 degrees, the sun was shining, so I quickly warmed up and was hitting balls in a tee shirt, something that would have been unheard of just a few weeks ago. From a scoring perspective, today was my best day yet, hitting each of my clubs on-target over half the time, for a combined 40 of 70 shots on-target. Unfortunately, when I wasn’t on-target, I had a high percentage of shanks at 20%, with 23% being hit well, but going off target left or right. These shanks are a major priority as they either result in penalty strokes, extreme frustration or both, and often lead to my all-too-common blowup holes that kill any chances of breaking 90. While I’m happy with the improvement in the on-target shots, shoring up the bad misses will have the greatest impact on my score.
SW (+6): after going 50% the previous day, I improved my on-target average to 70%, hitting 7 of 10 on target, but when I missed, I missed badly, shanking two (+4), and hitting one off the toe (+2) for an identical score from the previous day of +6 on 10 shots.
7-iron (+17): my 7-iron was once again my weakest club, hitting just 10 of 20 shots on target, missing one to the right and two to the left (+3), while shanking two and blading five shots (+14), marking a one-shot improvement over the previous day. I continue to struggle with blading my 7-iron far too often, and is something I will continue to work on in future range sessions.
6-iron (+11): my 6-iron was my best club today, hitting twelve on target, missing four to the left and one to the right (+5), while blading two and shanking one (+6). This marked a nice improvement in shots on target from the previous days session, though my tendency to miss to the left continued. This is something that I’ll monitor as it could simply be an alignment problem.
5-iron (+12): though it was surpassed by my 6-iron, my 5-iron was again consistent, hitting 11 on target, three to the left and three to the right (+6), shanking three (+6). I was encouraged to eliminate the blades from the previous day and keep the shanks relatively low. I often use my 5-iron off the tee, so an ability to hit it consistently well will have a major impact on my results.
Chipping: I chipped 40 balls with my SW from three areas around the green, one again getting good trajectory on most of my shots, but again struggling with my distance control, rolling most of my chips across the green. I also noticed a tendency to push the majority of my chips right, at one point even intentionally missing to the left just to see what it looks like. Chipping will continue to be a major priority in my range sessions.
A slight improvement over the previous day, I felt +46 was a fair representation of my game. Thought I had a nice uptick in the number of balls on target, moving from 36 yesterday to 40 of 70 on target today, hitting 14 shanks, or 20% of my shots, is far too many. This will be a continued focus in future practice sessions.
Breaking Ninety 