Category: Practice

  • Lessons Learned at the Driving Range

    After shooting a 99 from the whites at the River Marsh Golf Club a couple of days ago, writing two posts about the adventure, then starting work on what is to be my first video of a Maryland golf course, I continued to question my choice of hitting a 4-wood off the turf to the 170-yard 17th hole, requiring a carry of 150 to 160 yards to get over Shoal Creek and the marsh just on the other side.  And it really isn’t just about my 4-wood carry distance but the carry distance of almost every club in my bag.  My Voice Caddie T11 golf watch tells me how far I hit a shot but it only tells me the total distance and those are the numbers that I carry with me on a small card so I can make sure that I select the right club when I’m in doubt.  So, to satisfy my curiosity I grabbed my trusty 4-wood and set off to the Severna Park Golf Center and their Top Tracer launch monitors to see what the statistics were for carry and total distance.  And I thought, while I’m there, I’ll also bring along my Hack Motion swing aid and work on my correct hand position through the swing and, of course, my swing tempo. 

    Now you’re probably thinking that working on three things at the same time is probably a recipe for disaster.  It’s a lesson I’ve learned before and probably one I’ll have to relearn in the future.  You should go to the range and if you’re not just there to pound some balls then you should focus on just one thing to help you improve.  It only took about 40 balls to almost completely destroy any confidence I had in my swing.  I was scattering balls everywhere.  It took the second half to get it back after I quit worrying about the three things I had come to the range to work on and just started hitting balls.  Sometimes even one swing thought is one too many.  For now, consider it relearned. 

    The second thing I took away from the second half of the driving range visit?  Hitting the 4-wood off the turf at the River Marsh 17th was the right call to get the ball to the front of the green over dry land but it had only a 12.5% chance (based on the Top Tracer carry stats) of making it to dry land on the 17th.  That’s seven out of every eight shots lost to the hazard.  And yes, my ball was short and never found.  According to the stats, If I had teed the ball up, the likelihood of getting to dry land rises to 75% and on average would have made it to the center of the green.  Lesson learned.  Starting today, I’ll do a better job of collecting the data for each of my clubs and modifying my distance cheat sheet to include that information.  The Top Tracer app has a lot of that data, and I’ll be going back to previous sessions to see what insights can be gained. 

    Let me know if you already do something similar, how you collect it, and how you put it together to make it easy to use while out on the course.  And if you use a launch monitor, let me know what one you use and what information you find useful.       

  • Top Tracer at Severna Park Golf Center

    I had planned on going out on a new course today, but Mother Nature had other plans.  It snowed yesterday, just enough to cover the ground and then froze solid overnight.  I decided to treat myself to a Top Tracer practice round at the SPGC since I’m generally too cheap to buy a launch monitor.  An hour on Top Tracer and a bucket of 80 balls cost $18.  I ended up hitting half and three-quarter sand wedges, pitching wedge, 8-iron, 5-iron, 4-wood and driver.  For some unknown reason, I am a worse ball striker on the range than I am on the golf course.  Perhaps it’s hitting off the mats, getting tired from hitting that many shots in a short period of time or it could be that I subconsciously trying to squeeze just a little more distance out of a club since you get automatic feedback on the results.  Whatever the reason, I don’t play to my 18.1 handicap when I go there.

    If you haven’t done Top Tracer or used a launch monitor, it’s pretty sweet that they can pull that much data together each time you hit the ball.  Top Tracer reports the carry distance, total distance, ball speed, launch angle, peak flight height, landing angle, hang time, how much the ball curved left or right and how offline the shot was.  After each shot, you can look at the monitor in your bay to see the results, including a graphic, and while that is interesting, I find it much more helpful to look at the data collected on my phone after I get home and potentially comparing it with future practice sessions.  If you want to do that, you need to download the Top Tracer app on your phone (before you go to the range) and set up an account, all of which is free.  When you get to the range, you pay for Top Tracer in the pro shop and then scan the QR code in the bay to get it to sync with your account.  In addition to SPCG, Top Tracer is also available at the Mountain Branch Golf Course in Joppa and the Pine Ridge Golf Course in Timonium.  The app also allows the user to play several games that require you to hit a ball at specific targets, but I haven’t tried any of those yet.  If you don’t have a launch monitor, you should try it.  It will only cost you $18.

    What were the big takeaways from the range session?  First, it appears that about 95% of my wedge shots landed left of the target.  That wasn’t something I had picked up during my last couple of rounds, but it does explain the number of greens that I’m missing.  And now that I’m thinking about it, I was almost always chipping towards the pin from the left side.  Until I can get back to the range and check my alignment, I’m going to start aiming toward the right side of the green to try to improve my greens in regulation.  Second, there was a lot more consistency with my 4-wood off the deck than I’ve had in the past, and it was a little more than 10 yards longer than my 3-iron.  I probably should pull that out on my second shot at the par 5s and maybe even on the tee shot on some of the tight, short par 4s.  Lastly, my 5-iron was erratic at best, meaning my longer irons need some attention.

    And no, I’m not getting anything from Top Tracer or the SPGC.  Clayt