I’ve been watching a lot of rocket launches lately and I’m always intrigued by how they treat weather-related risk. They establish a percentage likelihood of go-weather for launch, but even if it looks iffy they proceed with preparations on the assumption they’re launching. They abort only at their last possible opportunity.
That very much described my range session today. My office is about a half hour from the course. The forecast had a 30% chance of thunderstorms. Normally, I’d abort and just take a quiet walk or run on the national mall, but because of the ongoing protests, that isn’t really an option. Plus, there’s worse weather in the forecast for tomorrow, so this seemed like my best chance to play over the next couple of days. So I went ahead.
I arrived a half hour later, and the practice session went pretty well. As usual, I warmed up in the short-game area with my 60-degree wedge. My feel was very good, with my first five pitching landing within 8-14 feet of the hole, and most of the shots I hit had good height and very solid contact. I kept it short, since my bug spray still hasn’t come and I wanted to get to the range in advance of any thunder and lightning.
On the range, I hit balls at a pretty quick clip. I worked my way up from 60-degree wedge to 7-iron, hitting a few balls with each club, then hit a few drivers and 3-woods. As expected, fixing the weight that moved out of place on my driver head did help to straighten out my drives. Most of my contact was pretty decent, though I still had a bit of trouble with my 7-iron and got a bit tired hitting 3-woods off the deck at the end. I also attempted a few 5-irons, just to evaluate how far off I am from being able to hit that club. I hit 117 balls tracked on Mevo, and 3 more on video before the lightning siren range, drawing my practice session to an end at probably the ideal time (If I hit more balls I’d probably be aching right now, and the bugs were starting to annoy me).
The best full swing I had all day was a 9-iron which carried 124.1 with an apex of 23.2 yards. My driver got up to a clubhead speed of 101.8, but the best drive I hit (and the last driver I hit) carried 217.2 yards on a very efficient 92.6MPH of clubhead speed.
The videos I took indicated my swing has gotten a little long again, but the path is still much better than it’s been.
I didn’t get to putt today. One exciting thing I noticed was a few new range balls mixed into the fairly worn bunch. Hopefully more of those pop up over the next few weeks. Keep swinging.
Michael Golfs 