If you ever watch a playing pro in a practice round you will learn a lot. We tend to look back from the green at the fairway and decide where is the best place to be for our approach shot into the green. What will be the best angle with less trouble and where is the fairway the widest.
I carried an orange highlighter to mark my yardage book of places i don’t want to be. We’ll check both sides of the fairway – sometimes from fertilizing the grass and then cutting the fairways smaller for the event one side is left with the deepest, nastiest rough that you would not want to be in. Many times around the greens there are places that have impossible deep grass for a par conversion if you miss the green.
You will see us hitting bunker shots from likely bunkers we may be in during the week. We’ll chip and putt around the whole green to check breaks and grain of the greens.
Also we will putt to areas of the green where we believe the holes will be cut for difficult pin positions during the event.
On par 3’s we will hit a number of balls to different places on the green in anticipation of the tough pin placements during the week.
When you hit a good tee shot with your driver on a par 4 or 5 ” Do Not hit another on”. I’ve seen it happen with myself and other pros where we hit too many tee shots in a practice round and then in the first round on that hole we can’t help remembering that horrible hook from the day before and sure enough….. Keep your pictures/images good and positive.