A Driving Range Outing

I have been doing a few balance exercises recently along with some stretching so I thought it was time to take to the driving range. (Still too cold for me to take to a course, I’ll admit!).

While I was preparing my old muscles with some stretching and flexing (!) I noted that several people came to the range, took the allotted balls to the bay and went straight to hitting balls with a Driver - no thought of preparing or warming up. Surely that’s not the way to practice.

Well, watching the quality of their shots it was obvious that they were not doing things properly.

Not that I am perfect, you understand, just still trying to warm up.

Getting ready to hit the 50 balls that I had purchased, I split the balls into groups of 5.

The first batch were really for warm up. The second batch was 90% for wedges while the third and fourth were for full 9 irons.

Thus far things were going ok. I had a tendency to hit the ball slightly to the toe of the club but this, I think, was due lack of muscle control in my lower legs allowing the momentum of the club to push my torso backwards. More work required here.

I then progressed to full 6 irons and hit two batches of 5 balls.

I was happy to take my time and think about ensuring some basic set up positions were adhered to: grip, posture, alignment, posture and posture.

As you might be able to tell I think that posture is quite important!! Bent knees above balls of feet, shoulders not rounded but as straight as age allows, head held up and upper arms hanging vertical.

I remember a comment from someone who was learning golf which went something like “I started off feeling comfortable but when I was in the correct address position everything felt as uncomfortable and unnatural as you can imagine”.

In order to make sure that I was adhering to some of these basics I had my phone camera on a small tripod. Post practice review is fun. Well, no, what I should say is post practice review is funny. Very funny in my case although I do like this slow mo!

The other thing that I noticed was that the balls were very cold (as cold as the weather -5ºC) so ball flight was maybe 15 to 20 yards less than normal.

The next stage of practice was to hit another 2 batches with my 17º Mizuno rescue club. I bought this to replace an old 2 iron which was becoming more difficult to hit. I was quite pleased with the results - ball hit generally out the centre with a reasonable flight.

I went back to my wedge for the final 10 balls, selecting a variety of targets at varied distances from 50 yards to 90 yards. Just trying to build a little feel although this will take thousands of balls to build back up after a winter of golfing very little.

I finished off by a visit to the putting green. After 15 minutes I was glad to get back to the car and switch on the heat to the seat.

All in all a fun afternoon out and even better that my driving range now has an upper tier. There’s something a little more manly about hitting golf balls from a second storey!!