Found myself with a spare 90 minutes and with the sun in the sky figured it would be nice to be hit some balls for the first time in a couple of weeks.
Due to the time crunch, I headed to the Jackson Park Driving Range. This is a CPD driving range with about 45 very distress mats and a range that goes to I believe 250 yards. It cost 13 dollars for a large bucket which is about the same as other large buckets I’ve purchased at the other ranges in the area.
It’s been a while since I picked up and swung a club for almost three weeks! So I was nervous what my swing was going to look like and what my ball flight path was going to look like. I was ultra nervous about hitting my driver, you never know where that ball is heading lol.
I started out with my usual starter club the 6 Iron.
My usual order of clubs is:
6i,4i,9i, PW, Driver, 52 degree Wedge
With the 52 degrees wedge, I will start with full swings than some 75% and lower to 50%.
I hit my 6 Iron really well and felt my glutes activating which meant I was hitting some pretty good distance. The distance and nice strokes continued through the Pitching wedge. I even worked in some nice little baby fades #beautiful
Onto to the Driver… I was a little hesitant to pull this club out of the bag but, with how well I was hitting the other clubs I felt ready to crush it #GripandRipIt
From my earlier rounds this year and the trial and tribulations I’ve had with my new driver with the flexible shaft it has. I had become very unbalanced and my hands were chasing the head of the club to compensate for my what I thought was a bad swing was really just the shaft doing its job. After a couple of rounds with some experienced eyes, I was able to swing the club and make clean contact and stay balanced throughout the full golf swing.
Remembering my cues to stay balanced and to keep my hands high on the down stroke to give the head a chance to hit the ball square, I hit the first couple of balls well but the distance was lacking so I decided to turn up the power and really drive from the legs and see what a 100% swing produced. Immediate chunked shot, followed by a topped ball that looked like one of those cool trick shot stingers you see on Instagram all the time. I took a quick break and drilled a couple of practice swings making sure to hit all my points to be ultra sure I wasn’t dropping my hands.
The 1st swing after the practice shot was just straight pipped down the middle of the driving range and so did the next 2 shots. Now feeling super confident I decided to get very aggressive and swing my hardest and see what would happen. The full power shot got crushed and went a little right and a little bit more draw than I would have liked but the ball went straight down the line and on a decent size fairway the ball would have been down the right side edge of the fairway or just little off on the first rough. I hit a few more drives and then the ball started to pull left or I was closing the club head. I’d had enough of the driver and was ready to start hitting my targeted checked down wedge shots.
Conveniently my to 50 and 75 Yard are damn near my 50% and 75% shots which come in handy when trying to find a target on the range to hit to. This is going to be my main interest in the upcoming range session is trying to dial in my wedge shots to help give me a better shot at eliminating 3 puts. If I can land the ball within 12 feet of the hole from 85-35 yard away from the pin. Would be nice to score some 1 puts holes as well.
Hopefully, this session will Kick start my interest in practicing more as it really is the only way to get better at playing golf. My goal is to hit 3 rounds in a row under 96 before the end of the summer.
Might have the chance to play up in the Lake Geneva area this weekend, I’ll be going for low 90s. Wish me luck!