How To Run A Practice Round 1

All right, so we've mapped out the golf course. Now we're going to play our practice round. If you haven't already gone through the process of mapping the golf course, go back and do that because this builds on that. Now, one of the biggest mistakes that junior golfers make is you're going to go into your practice round and you're just going to play it like you're playing a normal round of golf. That is the worst thing you can possibly do going into a practice round. What we want to do instead is we want to validate the tee shots that we mapped out in the last video so that everything is accurate. We're not going into any holes with surprises. If there's something that's materially different where it looks way different on the ground than it did on when you're mapping it with the Shot Pattern app, we want to go ahead and make those adjustments. So fundamentally what we're trying to do is figuring out where we cannot miss off the tee and where we cannot miss around the green. So in this case, it's not super relevant, but it's worth noting this down here, this whole line, this is out of bounds versus, you know, this is all technically like gravel. And, you know, it's not actually that terrible. Like, it's definitely not grass, but it's not as bad. If you're going to miss, you got to miss it over here comparatively to over here. You want to know that off of every single tee. Hey, if I did miss this, which direction would I need to miss it in? So if I'm hitting this tee shot here, if I made a mistake, I need to hit a pull, not overflare it and hit it out of bounds. Okay, so that's what we want to do off the tee is just validate those tee shots. We're going to hit most likely multiple tee shots off some of the holes, especially if you're not sure. Okay, once you've got that, you want to go ahead and have an idea of where your approach shot's coming from here. But more than anything, this approach shot is pretty straightforward because you got to think about it like, if you're in the crap here, well, you know you've got to pitch out. You don't really need course knowledge to figure that out. You're not going to go practice pitching out, right? So if you're on your approach shot Again, pretty straightforward. You don't need to figure out like, like maybe the rough is way different, you want to know how that comes out. But a lot of the time it's not overly important here. What we really want to figure out, like, so again, you can go ahead and just drop like whatever is going to be kind of your normal approach shot in. Hopefully you hit a decent enough tee shot where you do see like, okay, cool, yeah, that's my number in. But once we've done that, what we want to actually figure out is where can you not miss around the greens? So you guys are gonna hear me talk a lot about front pin, middle pin, back pin. We want to be asking ourselves, okay, what spots are completely dead on this approach shot? So if I'm going to miss, where do I need to miss? Now I'm just going to tell you about this hole so you can use this to illustrate it. This is totally dead. Use a really tough uphill shot, really, really difficult. This bunker is okay, but still not really a spot you want to be in. This whole back ridge here is really bad, so it's very difficult to get that up and down. So what are the spots we're trying to get up and down from? Well, this is pretty easy, this is pretty easy, this is pretty easy. This is definitely the most difficult pin here, but even if I left it kind of short on this apron, that also works for me. So what I'm figuring out on this hole is if I miss the green, I need to bail out to the right. This whole right-hand side, this is going to be okay. I just can't miss long left, I can't miss short left, I just really can't miss left at all on this hole. And so I guess I should use red here. That's really what we're trying to figure out. We do not need to figure out where the pins are necessarily going to be. We We just want to know, hey, where can I not miss on my approach shots? And where can I not miss off the tee? That way, if you also know here's where I can bail out on every shot, you're looking at that, you're like, okay, cool, here's my main target. And if I do make a mistake, I can go there, right? You understand within the feels in your golf swing, hey, if I'm going to make a mistake, I need to bail out in that direction. Same thing with your approach shots. Okay, I've got a back pin here. I know I can't go long left. So if I'm in between clubs, obviously I'm taking the shorter of the two clubs. And if I miss that, I need to miss it to the right. Okay. That's really the way that we want to be looking at that. Same thing for middle pin. Hey, if I'm going to miss it, I need to miss it to the right. Front pin, I want to be deep and I want to miss it right if I'm going to miss it. Okay. So hopefully this video makes sense. If there's something that's unclear about what you need to be doing in the practice round, comment below. Just real quick on that though, we don't need to worry too much about the speed of the greens. Odds are the speed of the greens is going to change by the time you get to the golf course. That's not something that we really need to worry about in the practice round. That doesn't mean you can't hit a few putts, but what you want to do is practice getting up and down each one of these pins just to figure out where these are impossible, right? Throw a few balls in the bunker. Um, use a different color here. Throw a few balls in the bunker. Throw a few balls down here to figure this out and be like, oh, all these situations, these suck. These situations, yeah, these are pretty easy. And so you're just going to practice. The way to do this is if the pin— put the pin 5 yards onto the green from, you know, your short-sided situation and say like, okay, how easy is it to get to that pin that's 5 yards on the green, right? So I can tell you this one here, that's impossible, right? So you know, hey, if I hit it over left I'm making bogey, right? I'm hitting that to the middle of the green and I'm just two-putting that and going to the next hole. Versus this one, you'll find, oh, that's pretty easy. So that's really what you want to spend your time doing in your practice round, is those tee shots and these shots around the greens, which is why this fits so nicely into the ladder drill that you're doing for your short game. So again, let me know comments below. Hopefully this makes sense.