Scratch by 50: How I Started Practicing Better

Graham Averill will turn 50 this year and he’s freaking out. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He started this project in March as a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. He is now an 11.2. Welcome to his midlife crisis. 

I hate to sound like a grumpy old man, but I’m jealous of college kids. Specifically, the college kids that play Division 1 golf and dominate my algorithm with their practice sessions. You know what I’m talking about. They make short videos that start with, “This is how a D1 golfer practices…” and then they walk you through their four hour practice session where they fine tune every damn aspect of their game. I’m happy that these kids get to live their best lives, but if I could siphon some of their free time for myself like a vampire, I would. 

Time is limited and I’ll be the first to admit that practice is the first thing to get sacrificed when I’m carving out a schedule, especially since I’m trying to play more rounds. Sometimes I feel like “just practicing” is a cop out and I should be out there playing 18. 

“You shouldn’t feel guilty about practicing when you’re focusing on the things you’re working on,” Hahn told me. “Playing a bunch doesn’t do you much good if you’re not working on the technical side of things too.” 

I’m still trying to bake in the swing changes that Hahn instituted and build on that foundation, so yeah, practice is key. Fortunately, with Hahn’s help, I’ve gotten much better at making my limited practice time actually count for something. Here’s a look at a typical hour-long practice session as I attempt the impossible of trying to reach scratch. 

A Bucket of Balls 

If I can, I’ll go straight from the gym to the course, but that doesn’t happen often, so most days I have to devote 5-10 minutes at the beginning of practice doing weird things that make me look like I’m in a Jazzercise video from the ‘80s. After taking my leg warmers off, I work through a bucket of balls, but this process looks entirely different than it did just a couple of months ago. With my coach’s guidance, I’ve stopped spending hours just raking and hitting balls at the range and started focusing on very specific aspects of my game. 

The specifics shift depending on what Hahn wants me to incorporate, but right now I’m dialing in my setup with my long irons and driver, trying to create a shoulder tilt so that my body is forming a reverse “K” at address, with the lead shoulder slightly higher than the trail shoulder. My natural set up is the opposite, with a lead shoulder that’s lower than the trail shoulder, which makes it hard to rotate and results in a pull. Elevating my lead shoulder and hip opens my body, allowing me to get deeper into my back hip on the turn and create an inside to out swing path. It’s also drastically improved my start line, eliminating my nasty pull. 

Every range session also includes partial swings with an abbreviated finish with my wedges. This simple move seems to ground my swing in solid mechanics and help me compress the ball with all of my irons. 

I’m a red-blood American dude who likes big trucks and ‘90s rap, so naturally I devote some of the bucket to my driver. But instead of sending it with full swings, I work through a progression of 25% swings where I focus on the club release, and 50% swings where I pay attention to the club path and ball flight. I’ve also been playing with the pause drill, where I stop at the top of my backswing for a fraction of a second, which seems to help me time up the sequence of the downswing. I still have some issues I’m working through with the driver, but breaking the swing down like this during practice has given me so much more consistency with the big stick on the course. 

That might sound like a lot, but it doesn’t take that long. Some days, I don’t even make it through an entire bucket of balls. 

Small Ball 

After the range I move to the practice green to work on my short game, focusing on close range chip shots. But instead of hammering out easy shots from the collar, I treat myself like a dick and drop balls in the thick rough and on drastic slopes. Why? Because that’s where my ball seems to land on the course.  I’ve had blow up holes in the past where it will take me three attempts to get my ball out of the thick rough just four feet from the green. Practicing these hard shots on a regular basis has helped me get out of trouble in the last few weeks more times than I can count. After I’m done torturing myself with painful lies, I’ll play a quick round of “up and down” where I chip from the collar and try to one putt through nine holes. 

Putting 

Putting? No, I don’t practice putting. Not really. By the time I get to what is arguably the single most important part of the game, I’m usually out of time. As a result, I’m losing a shocking amount of strokes to a scratch player once I reach the green. Crazy that I’m not getting better at the thing I’m not practicing, right? 

What can I say? I’m not perfect. I know I need to dedicate more time to the art of rolling the ball. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to miss another four foot birdie putt, so I’ll work on it. I promise.

But putting isn’t the only hole in my game that I don’t practice. Pitch shots longer than 20 yards are hard to pull off at my club, and there’s no practice bunker either. I suck at sand shots too. Is it crazy that I’m thinking of building a sand bunker in my backyard? 

I’m a work in progress and I can still get better at this whole practice thing. For instance, I built a really great hitting bay in my backyard and I have a quality putting mat beneath my porch. Since joining a golf club in March, I’ve barely used those facilities in my backyard. Sure, going to the range and putting on a legitimate green is better, but why aren’t I hitting balls for 20 minutes at the end of each day in my backyard? Why aren’t I taking 10-minute putt breaks during the work day? How much better could I get if I added these low-lift practice sessions to my regular day?

I’d like to find out.

Hit me up in the comments and let me know if there’s a practice schedule, or particular drill, that works for you.

Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch by 50 where Graham learns to stop aiming at flagsticks. 

Scratch By 50: Forget The Flagstick