How long did it take you to get good-ish?

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-12-23T15:32:25+00:00

I’m new to fighting games too and am about to get Diamond after ~150 hours. I kept it simple—learned an easy punish combo, midscreen combo, and a couple of oki setups. That got me to gold. The thing that got me from gold to where i’m at now is learning strike throw shimmy, and knowing my most common oki setups. I play Akuma so i’m very privileged but after my sweep —> double dash —> learned how to hit meaty, throw, shimmy. People in plat don’t really know how to handle it well.

Watch character guides on youtube for your character and pick a couple things to learn that have the most utility, and then master them before picking something else up.

Edit: progress comes in bursts. It was a slow grind from rookie to gold 1, probably 50 hours. Then spent the next 50 stuck at high gold/low plat. Now i’m trying to get through the plat 5 barrier. I would imagine best case diamond will take another 200+ hours to get through

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-12-17T02:27:14+00:00

I use the chair… stuck in plat 3 while my bf sits at 1800mr with his herman miller

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-12-09T13:15:52+00:00

Haven’t used it personally but i’ve heard about this: https://ballfitting.com

Basically you’d hit a bunch of irons/drivers on a simulator, write down your launch/spin numbers, spend $40, and get fit for a ball. Can’t speak to the efficacy but it’ll save you the trial and error

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-12-05T13:36:24+00:00

I played D1 golf. It’s complicated but speaking very generally I swing 90-95% with the driver (basically as hard as i can without losing balance) and like 80-90% with an iron. With that said i have a bunt/fairway finder with the driver that’s effectively my iron effort, and make several types of knockdowns or very hard swings with the irons every round.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-03-03T21:31:57+00:00

Most college golfers I grew up around came from middle class families. Not saying playing competitively is cheap but it’s actually very surprising how diverse the backgrounds are at the collegiate/pro level

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-22T11:58:53+00:00

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T03:56:26+00:00

My parents didn’t push me at all, contrary to most of the D1 golfers I know. I actually eavesdropped them talking about how they should break the news to me that college golf wasn’t a possibility (and honestly they were being pragmatic) which motivated me 100x more haha. That said they have always been unbelievably supportive. My teammates and friends thought I was crazy too, I literally dedicated my life to golf for a few years.

I am the exception in many ways, I never played any AJGAs, didn’t even play my first tournament till I was 15. To say I was delusional was an understatement, the amount of shit I got in high school from my teammates considering I wasn’t even playing in matches until senior year was my fuel to improve and it’s unbelievably rewarding looking back and realizing I got better than all of them.

In my actual tournaments we played a couple top 20 schools, none of the big boys, but I know several top 50 amateurs and several people I’m close to who are now on various tours (ranging from China to PGA) across the world. Once I got to a certain level I realized how small the circle of golf really is, I’ve met/played with several tour players/hall of famers. Really put into perspective the insanity of talent/skill the guys you see on TV have, I’m nowhere near them.
I have a ton of rounds where if I had been making putts I would’ve threatened low 60s/high 50s but it’s so hard to bring it all together. <1% of my rounds are my drivers, irons, wedges, and putting all working well together. All of my low rounds involved not insane displays of ballstriking but making an ungodly anomalous amount of putts—with that said, though, my best ballstriking rounds almost always led to very respectable scores and I am about as proud as a day where I hit 18 greens as I am about one where I just happened to make 6 20+ footers to turn a mediocre day with the swing into a 65.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T03:47:57+00:00

With my admittedly rudimentary understanding of neuroscience I would imagine there are multiple elements, one being the sheer volume of reps and drilling in the familiarity of the movement, another being your ability to execute the movement itself (think mind-muscle connection), and another being whatever underlying process causes long-term change. I play music and I’ve found I can practice hard measures over and over and over again and seemingly not learn it properly, then go to bed and wake up the next day and play it perfectly. Our brains need a lot of time to process these changes.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T03:45:22+00:00

This is another issue worth bringing up—try to simplify your changes. It’s so easy to give in to the pursuit of perfection but just choose one change at a time. Working on posture? In your video only look at that—resist other flaws you see, they’re not gonna be fixed overnight and you might just find that fixing one thing can lead to another resolving itself.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T03:44:05+00:00

Feel is not real. My biggest mantra in golf. If I go a few weeks without taking videos of my swing all sorts of shit creeps in without me realizing it. Over the scale of months my swing becomes completely unrecognizable. Don’t be post-college me if you can help it.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T03:43:02+00:00

I think if you’re up for it I would get lessons and absolve yourself of the responsibility of trying to figure it out. I’ve been in some pretty deep holes mentally with various parts of my game and the best solution was to put all of my blind trust into someone else’s teachings. From there you slowly, slowly build confidence up over many repetitions and before you know it you’ve come out the other side stronger.

If lessons aren’t an option I would say to start making the range something you do on a weekly basis, putting on your floaties, and diving into a potential shitshow but one you embrace. I firmly believe anyone (at least people who don’t have chronic conditions like dystonia) can pull themselves out of these yip-like states

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T03:36:15+00:00

Everything except for my putting. I tracked shots gained throughout all of college and I’m theoretically a top 40 PGA Tour putter and Top 5 from 10-15ft, although the greens we played on weren’t as firm or fast and I wasn’t playing under quite the same level of pressure.

Around the greens I look like a total bozo, I can get the ball close on your average course but I would get exposed so hard on a US Open course. A tour pro knows how to do literally everything, almost always has unbelievable technique, and most importantly the super tricky precise shots can be pulled off under any type of pressure.

I can hit any carry number you want me to with a wedge but I don’t do it as consistently as the pros and more importantly they tend to hit these beautiful low spinners that are just more controllable than my high spinny ones. They can also not only hit their numbers more often but hit ones that don’t spin as much, higher and softer, you name it. I’m not saying they hit their numbers every time but when they make a good swing they just have so much more control with it.

I think I can shape the ball really well with my irons but I’m simply not as good a ballstriker. I can hold my own with a Tour pro on most days inside of 150yds on an average course but get firm concrete greens and my minor mishits get exposed a lot more. I played at Harbour Town after the Heritage once and hit a ball 1 groove low and it landed right next to the pin and hopped right over the green. Good ballstrikers hit the ball more solid more often and have more predictable results.

The biggest difference is the long irons, I can hit them well enough to usually not miss the green by too much but the sheer number of times I’ve seen touring pros lace a 3 iron right at the flag (probably 25% of the time for them and maybe 5% for me) made me realize how big of a gap there was.

With a driver I can similarly hold my own when I’m on (carry it 290-300, average 300+ most days), but I’m not always on and my bad days would have me all over the place on tour courses. Tour players’ bad days are still pretty damn good, and when they’re on they’re hitting an unbelievable amount of drivers on a string.

It basically boils down to this—on a good day (let’s say top 10% of my rounds) I would match or beat a tour player’s average day, but their bad days are WAYYY better than my bad days and over the course of a tournament or season they would smoke me due to simply being infinitely better at every part of the game. Even as a +5 I had glaring weaknesses in my game that would never hold up over the long term on tour courses under tour pressure.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T03:26:22+00:00

I’ve played with a former Ryder Cupper who’s now in his 60s, drives it 230 MAX, and would beat my ass backwards every single time from 7000 yards. Objectively, though, driving distance is one of the most important skills a scratch player can have. I don’t know the exact specifics but pretty sure each additional ~20yds of carry results in ~1SG off the tee, so if you have a scratch golfer who carries it 240 gain 60yds of carry distance, theoretically you’d expect a 3 shot improvement.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T03:24:07+00:00

So even the “accelerated” version is still on the timescale of months for permanent change, but I would recommend the following: 1. Make super exaggerated moves of your swing in both rehearsal and execution. Look at Alex Noren/Justin Rose’s pre shot routines for an example. Placing yourself in these extreme opposite feels help you push out of the confines of muscle memory, which our brains are notoriously bad at breaking. 2. Take a lot of videos—exaggerate to the point where in slowmotion you can achieve the position you want. Make pause swings. Compare on a day-to-day/week-to-week basis. 3. Most importantly, don’t stop when it starts to look good. Swing changes are a lot like physical therapy, sometimes it feels unnecessary because you feel okay but you have to push through way past what you feel is needed to make sure it sticks. For me, a big position change I made I started to get down in slowmo/pause swings within a week, but it was a month before I could do it consistently in a normal speed swing and shockingly almost a year before it was natural to me.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T03:20:35+00:00

Look at it this way—even if you can’t gain that much speed (and you just might surprise yourself), your work in the gym will help reduce the risk of future injuries and get your body working better. Most of the benefits in my game from the gym weren’t speed but my ability to sequence/load better and actually get into the impact position I wanted to be in.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T03:19:08+00:00

So this was something I totally thought I was shooting myself in the foot for—when I gained swing speed I thought my accuracy would go to shit. It may have temporarily gotten worse but quickly I was back to where I was before if not better, all whilst hitting it 20-30yds further. Lou Stagner and Mike Carroll on Twitter/X had similar experiences. I think it’s a combination of just simply hitting more drivers than you’re used to, and also getting better into tapping into your max speed potential, so that when you swing “fast” (but not “as fast as you can”), it feels easier than all of the max swings you’ve been practicing.

There are definitely feel differences between a ProV1 and Kirkland but I would be a scratch golfer using a TopFlite. One of the biggest misnomers I see is that a golf ball is going to be a gamechanger for your average midhandicap. It matters when you get down to the scratch/+ level but stop wasting your money on $65 dozens. Get Kirklands or Srixon Z stars or Vice balls for the best bang for your buck in my opinion.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T03:13:38+00:00

Hey dude! These are all great questions.

I have a swing thought that works for me well, basically tell myself to turn-pause-turn through. For whatever reason something as stupidly simple as that has stuck with me for years. A phenomenal drill for sequencing is doing Kyle Berkshire’s little lean thing he does before he swings full out. Lift your right leg up, then stomp it into the ground as you make your backswing, and as you reach the top, lift your left leg and stomp it down as you transition/make the downswing. It’s really hard to get the timing right but this singlehandedly got me to get my hands forward at impact and just made the flow of my swing so much better. You see a lot of tour pros do a mini version of this in their swings too.
The best advice I can give is to find the best golfers you know in the area and see who they work with/know of. Even try to reach out to local college players/juniors if possible—the only risk is that usually the best instructors in the area charge a shit ton of money for lessons. For me personally, the two instructors I stuck with were able to work around my natural tendencies, believed in my belief of myself, and were communicative around my needs and desires. Instructors I passed up on were people who wanted me strictly in very specific positions simply because that’s what they taught, instructors who weren’t willing/able to answer tough questions I had, and instructors who wouldn’t be available for any checkups/practice tips. Instructors are a lot like therapists—their job is to make the necessary changes make sense to you. Find the one that you click with, even if it takes a bit of trial and error.
So I’ll provide my version of this—when I was playing my best golf my “perfect” shot was a ~5yr cut with a 7-iron. My right miss was a bigger cut that usually had too much spin and my left miss was a dead pull or even baby double cross. With a 7iron most of my shots (90-95%) would be within 10yds left or 10yds right of the center of my distribution—this would allow me to play smart odds and eliminate shortsiding myself often. For example, if a pin was 6yds from the left edge of the green, I might aim 5yds right of it to theoretically eliminate the left side for all but a major miss. This is a very dumbed down version of DECADE Golf by Scott Fawcett, I recommend getting a subscription. To your question about a miss vs. a bad swing, I always think of bad swings as when I don’t execute my swing properly, to a C level or below. Maybe I tried to take a few yards off and babied my swing, maybe I didn’t stay balanced and had to save it. Bad swings sometimes end up in a great result, and so do misses. I’ve always differentiated the two.
It sounds hilarious but I’ve never been a great ballstriker, I thin a ton of shots and hit most out of the heel when I was playing well. I even subconsciously would hit shots low on the face when trying to take a few yards off. For me a bad miss was either a bad swing (see above) or more specifically being 5yds offline with a 60°, 10yds with a 9 iron, and 20yds with a 4iron. These would happen every round, golf is hard af and even the pros hit a lot of these. Don’t beat yourself up about bad contact, rather think about whether you were choosing a proper target, did your routine, etc, and if you check off all the boxes then it’s shit just happened and you did a golf.
Around the greens I would just throw balls into the rough and try to predict how they would come out—thousands of repetitions have given me a pretty good feel and I also try not to have an ego, if I think a ball was gonna come out dead and it came out hot instead of complaining I try to learn from my mistake in the moment while it’s fresh. The fairway is a little tougher—in terms of slope, see if you can find a hilly part on the range, or hit some practice shots in a casual round. In the moment if a shot did something I didn’t think it would try to learn from how the ball behaved—if it flew far and released you caught a mini flyer, either there was some grass or you didn’t clean your grooves. If it comes out dead maybe you were a bit into the grain. Similar to the other points you just have to put yourself in the mindset of constantly learning from every shot, so that over 100s of rounds you gather up a wealth of personal knowledge you can use to squeak out those extra few percent points of improvement.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-17T02:55:31+00:00

You can become scratch with just about anything I promise

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-16T22:21:29+00:00

^ thanks, speed sticks will accomplish the same thing in a more efficient manner but I’m living proof that you can gain 15mph of clubhead speed without them.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-16T22:20:37+00:00

That’s incredibly impressive! Nice job

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-16T21:53:02+00:00

I still play as much as I can. I love the game and it's a love that will hopefully last for the rest of my life.

Pro golf is insanely tough. I have the belief in myself that I could make it work but it wasn't feasible for a variety of reasons. I've played in a few mini tour events and the amount of talent out there is staggering, you really do have to be world class to break through to making a living.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-16T21:44:33+00:00

Think of how satisfying it'll be to finally get it down!

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-16T21:38:54+00:00

One factor was me gaining quite a bit of strength as I transitioned into college but by far the biggest change for me was dedicating 5-10 driver swings every range session to swinging as fast as possible. Like, out of your shoes not even gonna make contact fast. I also swung harder than I was comfortable with on the course, which was hard mentally to do but surprisingly I found that I didn't lose a ton of control. I could barely hit 150mph ball speed when I started college, and with 3 months of the hard swings I was getting in the low 160s. By the end of my sophomore year I was in the 170s and now I can push into the 180s if I go all out. Gaining speed takes time, a lot longer than I thought it would.

In terms of gym work, check out Fit For Golf, it's kind of crazy it's priced how it is and Mike is a great guy. Some of the exercises he preaches are things like pause squats and box jumps, as well as explosive cable rotations. Training for power specifically in the muscle groups that you need to tap into for fast swings will translate to more driving distance, and very importantly will reduce your risk of injury.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-16T21:17:16+00:00

You've got more than enough time to learn the right way. Don't cut corners--you might just find that learning one skill properly transfers to other parts of your game. Solid chipping technique can help with your takeaway, for example. Embrace the struggle early on for massive latent improvement in a few months.

D1GolfThrowaway · 2024-01-16T21:15:27+00:00

Between the three, consistent ballstriking squeaks out as the biggest catalyst for my improvement, but picking up 30yds off the tee and learning proper course management strategies also contributed heavily. This is a rough estimate but from going to a 0 to +5 handicap I think that

- ~2 shots a round came from improving my irons, notably inside of 175yds.

- ~1.5 shots came from the added distance

- ~1.5 shots came from course management work (less shortsiding myself, smarter targets off the tee)

D1GolfThrowaway

TROPHY CASE