Post by Richie3Jack on Jan 18, 2010 13:41:47 GMT -5
The pros have it really good as well all know, especially when it comes to being able to prepare for a tournament. They get a few days to go out and practice the course, take pretty much as long as they want to and they wind up knowing more about the course in a week than people who have been members there for 20 years.
I found David Orr's 'How the Tour Charts Greens' to be useful. In my first year back to the game in 2009, I only played one meaningful tournament...our club championship. My course is almost always busy, so I didn't have a day where I could just chart the greens. But I would do it over time. Maybe a couple of greens in one round, then chart another green in another round. The Exelys Breakmaster is a fantastic tool for telling you slope direction if you know how to use it.
The big thing for me when preparing for tournaments is doing my best to get each tee shot to 'fit my eye.' If I consistently hit good drives or tee shots on a hole, I'll make note of where I aimed and what type of shot I hit. Sometimes it will be something like 'aim at chimney at the blue house and play for a fade.' Usually when I play a fade I'll just tee off to the right side of the tee and aim at the target and the ball fades appropriately for me. Vice Versa with a draw. If you play the hole enough, then it becomes automatic pretty quickly.
However, there's some tee shots...even very easy ones that for some reason I will just struggle with. Playing on my home course, I'll try to find a time when I can tinker around with spots where I want to aim and shots I want to hit until I can consistently hit the shot I want. It's extremely beneficial to do on your home course because once you get it down, you've pretty much got it for good. And if you can go from missing a fairway 50% of the time to missing it 20% of the time, that's a big help...especially when you play the course a few times a week. That all translates to a better handicap.
If I'm playing a serious tournament at an away course, I'll try to play at least one round by myself because you can best bet that if there's a hole I struggle with the tee shot, I'm not leaving until I get the hole to 'fit my eye.' On a couple of occasions I've had to let groups behind me go thru until I was satisfied with the hole fitting my eye. You should see the looks on their faces when they see 20 golf balls scattered all over the hole.
But as I always say, the pain of shooting a poor score in a tournament is a lot worse than the embarrassment of letting groups go by you in a practice round.
3JACK
I found David Orr's 'How the Tour Charts Greens' to be useful. In my first year back to the game in 2009, I only played one meaningful tournament...our club championship. My course is almost always busy, so I didn't have a day where I could just chart the greens. But I would do it over time. Maybe a couple of greens in one round, then chart another green in another round. The Exelys Breakmaster is a fantastic tool for telling you slope direction if you know how to use it.
The big thing for me when preparing for tournaments is doing my best to get each tee shot to 'fit my eye.' If I consistently hit good drives or tee shots on a hole, I'll make note of where I aimed and what type of shot I hit. Sometimes it will be something like 'aim at chimney at the blue house and play for a fade.' Usually when I play a fade I'll just tee off to the right side of the tee and aim at the target and the ball fades appropriately for me. Vice Versa with a draw. If you play the hole enough, then it becomes automatic pretty quickly.
However, there's some tee shots...even very easy ones that for some reason I will just struggle with. Playing on my home course, I'll try to find a time when I can tinker around with spots where I want to aim and shots I want to hit until I can consistently hit the shot I want. It's extremely beneficial to do on your home course because once you get it down, you've pretty much got it for good. And if you can go from missing a fairway 50% of the time to missing it 20% of the time, that's a big help...especially when you play the course a few times a week. That all translates to a better handicap.
If I'm playing a serious tournament at an away course, I'll try to play at least one round by myself because you can best bet that if there's a hole I struggle with the tee shot, I'm not leaving until I get the hole to 'fit my eye.' On a couple of occasions I've had to let groups behind me go thru until I was satisfied with the hole fitting my eye. You should see the looks on their faces when they see 20 golf balls scattered all over the hole.
But as I always say, the pain of shooting a poor score in a tournament is a lot worse than the embarrassment of letting groups go by you in a practice round.
3JACK
