Other than private country clubs which often have excellent practice facilities, most of us have to rely on public driving ranges for places to practice our golf skills. The only problem is that getting good at the range does not guarantee we can transfer those skills to the course. Hitting off a mat or even a flat grass area is very different from hitting off uneven or thick grass lies. And it's rare to impossible to find a range that allows you to practice off such lies.
The other day I found this out the hard way as I played my weekly round. Lately, I've been practicing my chips and pitches at the range and have gotten pretty adept at these shots. My confidence was sky high as I approached my round, thinking I could make a lot of up and down pars if I got fairly close to the green on my approach. Well golf slapped me down hard when heavy, thick hilly lies just off the green to a short sided pin interceded. Nothing at the range prepared me for those shots, so I was left scratching my head as to what club and what technique to employ to pull these shots off. Consequently, I either flubbed the shot or hit it way beyond much hope for a one-putt. These kind of results are among the most demoralizing shots in golf and affect your play in the holes to come. So unless I can find some long grass on hills to practice chipping or pitching out of, my only recourse is to practice while I'm playing, which is awkward, to say the least. There are three possible solutions to this conundrum.
Find a practice chipping area on a range (or someone's backyard) that has some long grass to play out of.
Try to play practice rounds alone when not many others are on the course, dropping several additional balls when confronted with the above situation.
Engage a pro to cover these shots during a playing lesson.
The latter is the most effective, but it's expensive and many pros don't offer this option. The second is also effective but if you can find a course that gives you that option, let me know where in Mongolia it is! So that leaves me with the first option, which involves trying out practice ranges in your area until you find one that fits the bill, which is unlikely.
In fact, the only shot most ranges are good for are tee shots, which always take place from flat perfect lies (even here, you don't get to choose tee height which is often crucial in club selection). Even ranges with grass tees are only on flat, relatively tight, lies, whereas many shots a handicapper plays from on a course are from the rough or on some sort of downhill, uphill, sidehill, fairway bunker, or otherwise questionable lie on a fairway (particularly on most public courses). Again, we are faced with having to know how to play those shots without the benefit of a place to practice them.
I think that is one of the reasons so many of us struggle with this game. With most other sports, the practice areas are the same as the competitive playing fields or arenas. When learning tennis as a youngster, I didn't have a sidehill lie to contend with. A gymnast has no hills to contend with. And a basketball player plays on the same basic regulated court and basket height always. True, there are plenty of YouTube videos showing you how to handle these difficult situations when playing golf, but, as one of my Buddhist teachers always used to say, the taste of honey can't really be described; you only know its taste when you taste it.
So I leave it to you to solve your own conundrums of golf. They are, indeed, what make it the most daunting, the most challenging, the most frustrating, yet, the most intriguing sport on the planet. I haven't seen any other sport where a player breaks a club over his knee or throws it into a lake, and then lays out hundreds to buy another in the hope of a different result!
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Golf in the Olympics proceeds this week in Japan. This year, there are no fans because of the Covid pandemic, but there's still the worldwide collection of its top athletes. The golf course is pristine and immaculate like a Zen monastery. The players of this mostly individual sport are representing their countries which gives them incentive besides money to succeed. It's not considered a major. For golf, that may take a hundred years or so. For like its rules, things move slowly with this game. The U.S. is represented by Collin Morikawa, Zander Schaflee, Justin Thomas, and Patrick Reed, the last added when Bryson DeChambeau tested positive for Covid. The regular PGA Tour has the week off during Olympic competition. I would say that just about any entry has a chance to medal, given the talent that is in this international field.
I have seen one suggestion that Long Driving replace regular golf as the Olympic event, which I think has some merit.
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I'd be remiss if I didn't tout my new book, The Valley Spirit: Living a Tao-inspired Life, which is now out as ebook or paperback on Amazon. It involves applying Taoist and Buddhist practice to everyday life, and, believe it or not, can improve your golf mental game as well. Check it out. I think you may enjoy it.