BY JULIE WILLIAMS
First appeared in Fall 2022 NCGA Golf Magazine
When Dana Dormann (right) played for San Jose State from 1985-88, it wasn’t out of the ordinary for team members to hit golf balls through the goalposts on the football practice field. It’s a far cry from the Spartan Golf Complex that opened in June 2017. The Spartans won an NCAA Regional title and advanced to the quarterfinals at the national championship to end the 2021-22 college season – success that Dormann, who is about to start her fifth season at the helm, ties back to the quality of the facility they call home. Dormann’s team can often be found around the short-game area or on the two massive putting greens (conveniently reminiscent of traditional sloped Alister MacKenzie greens – San Jose State’s women host an event at MacKenzie’s Meadow Club while the men host at Pasatiempo). If there’s a theme to the way Dormann approaches shortgame work, it’s the way she builds significance into each drill as well as the way her drillwork offers players instant feedback about their own game. Her approach to coaching was heavily influenced by World Golf Hall of Famer Meg Mallon – Dormann’s husband John caddied for Mallon for six years – and Mike McGetrick, the instructor whom she and Mallon shared. Dormann calls Juli Inkster, a fellow Spartan alum, another big influence. “I like to keep it very simple as far as mastering the basic shots and then branching out from there once you have those mastered,” Dormann says of her strengths as a shortgame coach. “We really will differentiate between a pitch shot, the higher shot, and a lower, no-risk bump-and-run type shot. A lot of it is in planning correctly and getting to a point where you can commit to not only the club you’re going to use, but the landing spot. It’s almost like it’s a math equation. You have to commit to that spot in order to have the right club.”
PROGRESSIVE DRILL
After the Spartans lost leads in the fall of 2021 and finished runner-up in their first two outings, Dormann started thinking of ways to simulate tournament conditions in practice. This drill requires players to work through a combination of five or six basic chips, pitches, bump-and-run shots, putts from the fringe or long putts and ends with a difficult, breaking 4-foot putt. The catch? The whole team is watching the closing 4- footer. Miss it, and a player has to work back through the entire drill before getting another shot at the final putt. “Everybody will be working on a different challenge and once you get to that last putt, we draw attention to it and have everybody watch you,” Dormann says. “We’re trying to somewhat duplicate what you’re going to experience when you’re putting to win a tournament or make it to match play. We found that the team was a lot more confident coming to the end of tournaments.”
DISPERSION DRILL
By working with a partner for this drill, players can gain awareness of their shot dispersion when hitting chip shots of 5 to 30 yards. After pairing off, the player hitting places a ball marker on the spot where she intends to land her shots. As she hits, her partner uses tees to mark the spots where the first player’s balls actually land. “Sometimes they’re going to pick shots where it might be on the edge of a tier or something so if they don’t execute exactly where they planned to land it, then they hit that tier and their shot turns out with a really bad result,” Dormann says. “Marking the actual landing spots is eye-opening for them to actually see where they think they’re going to hit it versus where they actually hit it.”
READ VERSUS STROKE DRILL
Just as Dormann’s chipping dispersion drill gives players instant feedback about their shot patterns, this putting drill reveals much about a player’s eye for speed and break on long putts. From distances of 30, 40 and 50 feet, players put down a flat marker then try to roll putts over that spot on the way to the hole. “They put the marker down to try and determine their read and then they do a reflection on whether or not they picked the right spot, which is not often the case, right? It gets better as time goes on,” Dormann says. “Often they will pick a spot that will require a lot of speed and they don’t allow for the right speed on their putt when they’re reading it. So it’s just learning to get the combination of break and speed just right.” Dormann has established a point system for this drill, which has players striking six putts from each distance. They get one point for a ball within a putter length, two points for a make, and they have to score five points before moving back to the next distance.
WEDGE COMBINE
A drill doesn’t have to be complicated or include fancy equipment to be effective, and Dormann’s wedge combine is a good example of that. Its brilliance is in its simplicity. Starting at a distance of 30 yards, players hit five or 10 balls at a time as they move back, in 10-yard increments, to a distance of 110 yards. As they move through the drill, players record how many balls they land within a circle of cones surrounding a Sonix target, which provides visual and auditory feedback that actually facilitates motor learning. “We try to bring some awareness to where they need to spend extra time, at what distances and maybe we need to adjust a wedge or a loft because there’s a gap there that’s just not working for them,” she says.
UPHILL/DOWNHILL CARRY DISTANCE
Dormann brings out the TrackMan and gets creative around the Spartan Golf Complex to address a key variable: uphill and downhill lies. She’ll utilize mounding off the side of the players’ tee to present her team with immediate data to show how such lies impact carry distance. “We’ll have them hit shots off the sidehill lies and really register if the ball goes shorter, what distance it actually carries from these sidehill lies and downhill lies and uphill lies,” she says. “Often they don’t understand that the ball goes shorter off those uphill lies and how much that can impact it.”
HALF PIZZA DRILL
Assistant coach Kortnie Maxoutopoulis Barrett often sets up this drill, which is customizable depending on a player’s strengths and weaknesses. “This drill is less about every putt matters and a little bit more about the repetition,” Barrett says, “but I think you have to find a good balance between them.” Barrett picks five putting spots in a semi-circle (hence the half pizza) and players must work their way through the designated spots twice for 10 total putts, recording how many they make. Barrett likes this drill to follow a baseline drill so that players have already done the work of making sure they’re striking the ball in the center of the face and rolling it on the intended line. She can then tailor the drill to the player by choosing all left-to-right breaking putts, all right-to-left breaking putts, downhill or uphill putts. And don’t expect her to serve up just one pizza. “Let’s say your weakness is left to right, you can do it at a mild slope, a moderate slope and a severe slope,” she says. “You can do it from 3 feet, 4 feet, 5 feet, 6 feet, 7 feet, 8 feet. But what I like the most is just coming up with a variety of them so we wouldn’t just assign a half pizza and say, ‘OK, 5 feet, left to right, do the five and then do the five back and give me a score of 10.’ We would actually assign a variety of them.”