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Pre tournament practice rounds.


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My son plays in his first big tournament of the year today and yesterday shot 4 under on the 6,885y Bear Course at the Okanagan Golf Club in the practice round. He played the practice round with a couple of friends and since I'm not with him, I asked how the others in the group played. My son said "they say they don't keep scores in practice rounds". So, here's my question: How do your son's or daughter's approach their practice rounds from a keeping score, or not, point of view?

I have always encouraged my son to play only one ball in the practice round, to not take multiple shots off the tee because your first one was bad and to not have multiple shots at the green because you didn't hit your intended target the first time. I've always encouraged him to play his practice round as he would any other round of golf and to try to treat every round of golf the same, to do the best he can every time he plays. Some days will be better than others, but always do your best. I believe that if you think or know that you can just pull another ball anytime you like, that you wont put enough importance on hitting it right the first time and obviously in golf you only have the first time to get it right.

Unrelated to the question but other things I'm very insistent on for all rounds of golf are: No mulligans or gimmies ever, hole out everything even if it's inches, count your score on every round, submit (for handicap) every score, good or bad, never leave the course mid round, unless staying on would result in serious injury or death.

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Never keep score in a practice round. It is just practice and not indicative of how you will play the tournament round. Depending on the course and certain holes it is important to play a couple of different tee shots depending on how tricky the hole is. Example, how do you know if you can carry the dog leg and launch over the big tree in front of you if you don't try it. Was given advice by an old PGA Tour caddie that you should never putt the ball inside of 5 foot in a practice round. Said to scoop it up and putt at a painted pin placement or a tee in the ground. That way you have never seen your self missing a putt on that green or course inside 5 foot. You should go to the practice green after the round and practice hitting 3-5 foot putts on the practice green.

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I am GenX.  If you really think I care about what you have to say, I don't.

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I appreciate your answer and hear what you are saying. Just one thing regarding knowing what's possible or what your limitations are on a specific hole. In terms of carrying something or having confusion about the appropriate club off the tee or what club to approach with, there should be very few instances of this being an issue for a +handicap golfer. What I'm saying is that at that level, you should be very familiar with your game and know what you can or can't do. Having said that I understand that you won't always know how the ball bounces and what kind of roll you'll get, or how different landing areas on the greens receive the ball. So yes, there are likely times when you would want to hit another to confirm what the right play is.

I just can't stand 6 hour practice rounds with kids hitting multiple balls all over the place. Most of the time these junior boys are not hitting extra balls to determine a right/wrong play, most of the time they are hitting bad shots and reloading, often 4 or 5 times or until they feel they've got it right.

At Golf Canada tournaments (regional and national), they prohibit you from playing more than 1 ball, most players don't comply though.

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Not sure how old you son is, but I am going to assume late high school.... I don't mean this with any disrespect, but it sounds like you are imposing a Club golfer mentality on a Competitive golfer. If you are truly playing high level competitive golf, practice rounds are just for practice. You don't keep a score, you don't post your score as handicaps don't matter and you do hit multiple shots when learning a course. You often don't even try to putt to the hole, but rather hit putts to the locations of the tournament pin placements.

After all we are talking about practice.

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We never keep score in tournament prep practice rounds. We study the course, figure out where to hit/miss the ball. Here are a few things we do during that round.

Pick out aiming spots particularly on blind shots. Study green contours and where to hit/miss greens. Practice shots from the rough around the greens. Hit shots from areas where we think there might be a good chance the ball could end up. Study carry yardage over hazard, bunkers, or trees. Test yardage to par 3's for front or back pins. Figure out proper layup areas for par 5's.

We figure out the best way to play the course so he isn't surprised by anything come tournament day. Like hh says, we don't usually practice too much putting on the greens either since the pin locations are usually different anyhow.

 

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Played in an AJGA practice round a couple of weeks ago. Literally took 2 and a half hours.

Hole number 2 at the course has about 2 ways to play the hole. 1st way is to lay up to the left with a 3W. Second way is a 240 yard force carry over water with about 25 yards to land the ball before it goes into water on the other side. Took multiple tee shot to see how he wanted to play it. Hole number 12 was a par 5 with water about 260 out and the further right you got the the shorter the water got and was a narrow landing strip. To the left was trees and brush making the fairway tighter. There were also two tall tree to the left. Ball one was to see if he could carry the trees. Ball 2 was to see how much fairway with the driver. Ball 3 was 4i which is what he played everyday.

The point of the practice round is to figure out how to play the course. It should take you no longer than a normal round and quite frankly should be shorter.

I am GenX.  If you really think I care about what you have to say, I don't.

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I can't fault anything that you guys are doing, it's mostly all good stuff. Sometimes though, we can over complicate this game. Most holes are pretty straight forward and what you see is what you get, some holes need extra attention because there's a blind shot or major elevation change. I like to try and get my son to keep it as simple as possible, factor/calculate course and weather conditions before each shot, hit the fairway, hit the green, take 1 or 2 putts, move on.

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I'm not trying to impose anything on him, I'm trying to guide him and I believe that you should practice how you play. As for the youtube video you posted, I'm not sure what's going on there, excuse my ignorance, I don't even know who that is, it's clear though that they talking about "PRACTICE", I'm just not sure in what context.

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I agree most courses and holes are straight forward. There are courses and holes that are not. One of those courses is Streamsong Black which we recently played in a tournament. Links style course with some of the hardest and largest greens complexes he has ever played. When the pin was here you had to hit the green over there to get it to here. Played he first round with a caddie. Talking with the caddie he said most walking rounds there were 6-7 hours. This walking round took us just under 6 hours. A lot of blind tee shots and had to understand the site lines. Tournament rounds were taking about 5 and a half hours because of course set up. Thing was, the kids never had to stop and wait other than a driveable par 4 and a par 3 back to back on the back nine which took forever to play through.

I am GenX.  If you really think I care about what you have to say, I don't.

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The thing is most high level competitive players look at practice rounds as not being a round of golf, but practice in a different setting. You lose allot of potential knowledge by playing the practice round for your best score as opposed to playing the round to learn the course and the different situations you may face.

How old is your kid and what are his golf aspirations?

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I agree with you. My son likes to play the course several days ahead of the tournament. That way he can spend time at our course on the range playing the course in his head while visualizing each hole and each shot.

I am GenX.  If you really think I care about what you have to say, I don't.

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'Practice like you Play' sounds nice in principle, but when it come to athletes performing their best, practice is actually broken out into a number of different elements that may have nothing to do with how they play. When I coached we always preached practice with purpose. What are you trying to achieve in the practice round? Once you decide that, you can decide on the best approach to it.

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He's 14 and currently plays at the highest level in Canada. He would play at the highest junior level in the US if we could afford to provide him those opportunities, he was due to play a big regional tournament in Washington State this August, unfortunately Covid prevented that from happening. My son aspires to play at the highest level and we understand that in order for him to do that he needs to have a very good understanding of how the course sets up and how it plays. This is obviously learnt not only during practice rounds but also every time you play the course. I take on board the fact that in order for him to reach his maximum potential, he'll need to maximize what he can learn during the practice round.

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All our great advice aside ?. There is also something to be said for following your instinct, particularly if it brings success.

Lots of ways to get it done in golf as it is such a personal sport. Practice rounds like we advised are most common on tour, but there are guys that regularly just walk the course with no clubs at all like Justin Rose or I am sure there are goes that just go play the course for money and laughs in their practice rounds.

 

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When I'm playing a practice round I usually just play extra shots around the greens. The course has some false fronts where balls roll back 20-30 yards? Chuck a few balls down there, get comfortable with how far onto the green you need to hit your pitch shot. Sloped collection areas around the greens? Same thing. Severe back-to-front/slope? Drop a few balls behind the hole and see if it is possible to get it to stop near the hole. Etc.

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Makes sense to me. I think that everyone has their way of doing things and that no one way is right or wrong. I guess what matters is that what you and they are doing works for them.

I want my son and I to be able to be flexible in our approach to playing practice rounds. When he was a little younger, less experienced and mentally weaker, I would find that he would just reload if and when he hit a poor shot in a practice round, I felt like he didn't focus enough or place enough importance on the first shot because he always felt like he had more chances to play the same shot. So for me, insisting on one ball wasn't forced on him, I advised him that that is what I would do to tidy up the first shot. Now that he's maturing and his game is improving, I feel like we can revert to mostly playing one ball, practicing multiple shots if and when nesseccary, and perhaps focusing less on the score he shoots in the practice round because it is "PRACTICE" after all.

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Both are huge when playing a practice round. He writes them in his yardage books. I mentioned them as aiming points in one of my posts. Edited to site lines. My mind draws blanks at times with my age.

I am GenX.  If you really think I care about what you have to say, I don't.

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Not as well as he would have liked. He's in the top 40% of both fields, 4th of the U15 competitors. Unfortunately, I can't be there with him and sadly there's a couple of distractions, not excuses but real issues, one completely unavoidable regardless of if I was there or not and another that could be avoided had I travelled with him. He has an eye issue, conjunctivitis, looking better this morning though. Also, he travelled with an older friend of his and that kids parents. That kid wasn't comfortable (no aircon) at the Airbnb and moved out to a hotel with his mom, the dad and my son are still at the Airbnb. The eye is what it is but the "friend" leaving, has affected my son.

Anyway, he's not complaining about either issue. Said he played differently in R1 to how he played the PR. Didn't play as smart and was more aggressive, had some bad breaks and lots of putts left around 7 inches from the hole. By his standards not a good round and would have been worse had he not holed out from 105y on 18 for eagle.

He wants to be smarter today and not take chances. Consistency is one of his strong points so hopefully yesterday was just an unfortunate hiccup and he'll bring it back a little today. If you saw the leaderboard that Heavy posted, no one went really low so, he's not completely out of it. This tournament has been reduced to 3 rounds though, if he's going to contend he needs to go low and hope those ahead of him don' t do much better than they did in R1.

 

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Thanks. Normally this would be 2 tournaments, both with fields of about 156 golfers. Thanks to Covid, two events are rolled into 1, so the junior field is made up of very close to the best 54 U19 golfers in BC and the best 102 Mens Am golfers in BC, there were obviously a couple of NS's and WD's. BC Golf are calling this one of the strongest fields in the history of the BC Am Champs. Obviously a lot of really good players playing this event because they can't really be playing anywhere else right now though lack of tournaments on offer and travel restrictions as a result of Covid.

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