FIPPA Newsletter - March 2007.
Welcome to this edition of the FIPPA Newsletter.
A lesson with Willie.
FIPPA is pleased to bring you a Willie Parker coaching article from the Pitch and Putt magazine, Backspin.
"PROPER PRACTICE"
By Willie Parker
Players often announce that they're "going for a practice round" when in fact all they do is play a round and don't really practice at all. They count the score, become absorbed in that instead of considering what went right or what went wrong with a particular shot and how to get it right all the time. It's far better to concentrate on one aspect of your game, study it and think about it until you know exactly what you are doing.
To illustrate such practice in its purest form, let's take putting. If you set a marker four feet from the hole, and try to sink ten putts in a row, you're concentrating on a very simple task, repeated until you get it right. In the first ten minutes you'll learn a lot about your stance and balance, what feels comfortable. You'll find the putter moves off line at first maybe and you learn how to keep it square and how to eliminate unnecessary movements. Colin Montgomerie reports that he used to sink one hundred two-foot putts in succession, while at the University of Houston. This was the requirement set by his coach. Jan Stephenson, former US LPGA Open winner, used to go for one hundred from four feet. Tiger Woods, they say, will sink the same number from six feet. So ten or twenty in succession is not too stiff a task to set yourself. The main point is, by singling out a single aspect of your game to work on you can really improve in that area.
Chipping is another matter. It is worth while spending five or ten minutes chipping whenever you can, but here I would try to hit say three high chips, three low, and three medium high, as all sorts of chips may be needed in the course of a game. Learn how to control the height of the chip by the angle of the clubface at address, and study how the ball will check or run depending on the type of shot played and the surface it lands on - flat or sloping.
It is also worth while practising bunker shots, but very few courses have a spare bunker for use in practice. Instead you're frowned upon if you continue to splash sand onto a green. The best you can do may be to practice the high chip and apply similar technique when you find yourself in sand.
Most people who practice pitching seriously will take three balls and go around, carrying no putter and picking up the balls and moving on to the next pitch. This again focuses the mind on the specific shot. Think about varying the ball position relative to the feet for the shorter and longer pitches, and establish a pattern that you can use always.
An enjoyable way of practising particularly when you are trying to familiarise yourself with a new course, maybe with a championship coming up, is to pitch two balls on every hole. Play out the hole with the better ball, picking up the other. You get a nice mix of pitching, chipping and putting practice, and at the end of the round you have a score which is probably a couple of shots better that you expect to do with one ball. But at the same time it gives you confidence and makes you comfortable with your score when you do well in competition.
Finally, you don't have to wait until you got to the course to practice. You can putt on the carpet, and chip also, if you use a doormat as a base to chip from. You can play high or low chips safely indoors if you use those plastic practice balls with the holes in them, "wiffle balls" they're called in the USA. You can even use them to pitch in your backyard. In your living room or hallway you can learn how to put spin on a ball, to make it check or let it roll. Believe me, it all helps.
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