Thursday 10/27/16 a day of rest

It's been raining a bit here, but undaunted with a couple of youtube videos under my belt, I did wander off to the range to hit a bucket.

The technique that I was interested is was "How to hit penetrating wedge shots."  I was curious about this as the guy doing the video was hitting 80 yard 60 degree wedge shots with a 3/4 swing.

A full swing for me with that club used to go about 100, but it doesn't seem to anymore.  80 might be the current full swing maximum now. 

But undaunted, I thought I would give it a try.

The technique is to:

• Put the ball back in your stance
• 3/4 shot
• don't be shy about smacking down on it

What this gives you is less effective loft and the 3/4 swing ought to provide a bit more control.

I used the range finder and found a 70 yard target and gave it a go.  I was able to easily put the ball beyond the 70 yard marker.  80 and 90 did not seem out of reach.  The ball flight was lower which was part of the goal of the shot.

I don't know how much of this I'll use, but I can see that it might be handy.  I had a 70 yard shot yesterday that I hit about 40 yards and having a shorter swing with more of a hit might have made that shot easier to manage.


The other item was an analysis of Patrick Reed's swing.  The points that I wanted to try on this was:

• Very relaxed hands and wrists
• hands and arms being passive to the body spin

I was able to do this.  It's probably a good thing for me as I don't always start the swing from the bottom.  That's a habit I would like to break.


Finally, a video suggested that the shoulder turn is more like starting a lawn mover with the pull cord.  There is a use of muscles just below the rib cage.  This can be thought of as when one hand goes up, the other goes down.

Using that thought, it kept me from swaying and I stayed more centered in my initial setup position.

I look forward to see how this plays out tomorrow at 8:45 - weather permitting.