All posts by recgolfer

mental game

Do You Learn From Your Golfing Mistakes?

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Golf is a complicated game. Almost every shot is different from any other you have hit before. At best, you take your knowledge and experience and bring them all together as they bear on the shot you are about to hit. Or do you?

Earlier this summer, I hit a drive, just a beautiful one, split the fairway at the greatest distance I can expect to get out of a driver. 110 yards to the pin. Pitching wedge. Except after I had taken my practice swing and stood up to the ball, I noticed for the first time that the lie was slightly sidehill, with the ball below my feet.

Not to worry. But I should have. I had to take an easier swing at the ball in order not to lose my balance. Easier swing, less distance, and the ball fell into a bunker in front of the green.

I know that when on a sidehill lie you have to take more club because you will be swinging more easily, but I didn’t do it. Mistake. A great drive ruined. And the shot with the pitching wedge was a great one, too. Just that it should have been hit with a 9-iron rather than the PW.

So yesterday I drove through the fairway on a sharp dogleg and was hitting uphill into the green from atop a mound, with the ball below my feet. Uphill, plus one club. Ball below my feet, plus one club. From about 130 yards I had my 150-yard iron in my hands. The ball ended up ten feet short of the hole and I canned the putt. Lesson learned.

There are lessons to be learned within the same round, too. Did you play for a particular amount of break on the first hole and were wildly off? Adjust your read on the next few greens at least because the greens are behaving differently than they look. Adjust the next time you putt — don’t believe your lying eyes.

Or maybe you didn’t hit the first two irons the same distance that you usually do. Adjust. Take one more club until it starts hurting you (odds are it won’t).

Remembering is a big part of learning from your mistakes. Hypothetical. You hit your ball to a spot about 20 yards from the green where three weeks ago you tried to hit on with a sand wedge and the ball didn’t release when it hit the green. You might try bumping the ball on with an 8-iron, if you remembered that earlier shot. Do you remember these things?

Back when I had lots of spare time, I read those funny Zen books. One of them mentioned a guy who was famous not for never making a mistake, but for never making the same mistake twice. I have to admit it usually takes me two times through. 1. “Well, I’m not going to do that again.” 2. “You dope! You knew that was the wrong thing to do from there.” 3. “OK, not that way, this way.”

I’m a big believer that every recreational golfer could lower his or her score by 5 percent if they would only (1) think, and (2) remember and learn from the past. This post has been a word to the wise about the second one.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

playing the game

I Played From the Red Tees Today

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I played from the red tees today. Not the Ladies’s Tees, the red tees. Yes, it is primarily women who play from the red tees, but also seniors and people like me who want to try something new. So let’s just call them the red tees.

But why would I want to play from there? It’s really too easy, isn’t it? Not really that fair. Kind of like the varsity football team playing the junior high 7th-graders?

You see, you get a shorter course from the red tees, but it’s a different course. You have to hit your tee shot to different places. You have to hit different shots into the green. You’re hitting shots you don’t usually hit from places you don’t usually play from. That makes it a different game, and not necessarily an easier one. And you still have to putt.

It took me about six holes to adjust my thinking to a new shorter course. What club to use off the tee to set up the club I wanted to use into the green. The red tees were placed in some pretty nasty spots — there wasn’t always a clear look at the fairway, or hazards got brought into play that kept the driver in the bag. In short, the way I played every hole had to be thought through fresh.

Shorter doesn’t mean easier. You can still hit your drive into the weeds. You can still clank an iron into a water hazard. You can still three-putt. You can get caught up between both getting to greedy and being too conservative, and get bitten each way. You still have to hit good shots to score, and you will still pay for the bad ones.

Playing a shorter course doesn’t mean that you’ll hit very shot pure. It means you have to manage your mistakes in a different way, and find out how to think your way around an unfamiliar golf course. In short, it will open your eyes about how you make your way around a golf course, and expose deficiencies in your game you didn’t realize were there.

I predicted I’d shoot a 78, shot a 79. It was great fun the whole day. I recommend you try it.

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www.therecreationalgolfer.com

golf swing, grip, hands lead the clubhead, rhythm and tempo

Five Tune-Up Tips For Your Golf Swing

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These five tips are little differences that will make a big difference literally overnight in the way you swing a golf club. One hour of practice is all you need to install them in your swing. They will give you a feeling of confidence, control, and ease, three characteristics of good golf.

There is a natural balance point for every club. This is where you hold the club and it feels light, and as if it were an extension of your hands and arms. For most clubs this will be felt when you grip down about 1″-1½” from the end of the grip. When you hold the club at this point, you will feel relaxed and at ease. Swing the club the way this feeling suggests.

Take your stance slightly open to the intended line of flight. Just a little bit. No more than 5 degrees. Being slightly open will let you get your left hip cleared better, and allow you to come into the ball with the right side a little more “underneath” the ball. The first gets the club down the target line more easily, and the second gets the ball in the air more easily.

Swing the club easily. There is no need to rush going back, and certainly no rush going down. If anything, swing more slowly than you think you need to. Make it almost like an easy practice swing. The speed that such a swing will build up is greater than you feel. Combined with the design of the club, you will hit the ball a long way. If your ball-striking gets off during a round, check the speed of your swing first. Odds are that you are swinging too fast, especially at the start of the downswing.

You might have heard the phrase, “finish your backswing.” What does that mean? For every club you swing, from driver to wedge, and even when pitching, it means to finish turning your body before you start your downswing. Get the left shoulder as close to your chin as you can, and your right shoulder turned away as far as you can, without straining. It is not necessary that your arms go to a particular place, but that your turn be full. When our mind begins to wander on the course, this turns gets shorter, and our ball-striking worsens.

One difference between the professional swing and the amateur swing is that professionals do not allow the clubhead to pass their hands until after the ball has been struck. That means when the clubhead is impacting the ball, the shaft is tilted toward the target, not vertical, or worse, tilting away from the target. You ensure this happens by maintaining the wrist set you have at the top of the backswing until your hands get back down to hip height. At that point, the momentum of your swing will release the set, but continue swinging and let the hands win the race with the clubhead to get to and past the ball.

statistics

The Golf Statistics You Should Really Be Keeping

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Lots of players like to keep track of their game as they play. They write down fairways hit, greens hit in regulation, up and downs, number of putts, and so on. Those statistics don’t really tell you what you need to do to improve, because they are effects, not causes.

Instead, keep track of which shots come off like you had intended, and the reasons why something else happened. Only then will you get the information you need to know about what is working and what is not.

I would suggest that after you get home you answer these two questions for every shot you hit. Be honest.

1. Shot quality. If I hit every shot like this one, I would:
a. shoot par
b. shoot 80
c. shoot 90
d. shoot 100
e. take up tennis

2. For d. and e. shots, was I:
a. trying too hard
b. thinking about technique
c. not sure the shot would come off
d. losing my focus temporarily
e. trying a shot I had never practiced
f. in a brand-new situation with no clue
g. trying to get too much out of the situation
h. not assessing the situation fully
i. just a bad stroke — they happen

Notice that most reasons you miss shots are mental mistakes. Sure, better technique cannot be denied. But it’s the mind that lets the skills you have come to the fore, no matter how good you are.

putting

All Putts Are Not Created Equal

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A few weeks ago, I teed off on a rather difficult par 4 hole. Goes uphill a bit, angles to the right. The green is guarded by two well placed bunkers on the left and there’s bad ground on the right. My drive splits the fairway, and my approach from ~170 starts off to the right and curls to the left, toward the flag tucked behind the bunkers.

When I get to the green, I see the flag is all the way back left in a little corner that has to be nearly impossible to get to, but there’s my ball only twelve feet away. Wow. Getting a birdie with the pin here would be the accomplishment of the year.

I get the putt lined up, put a good stroke on it, the ball is rolling dead toward the hole, and it stops a foot short. Par.

You know why it stopped short? The putt was slightly downhill and I didn’t want to blow it by and have a four-footer coming back and turn a possible birdie into a bogey. Maddening. And you know what? I found out this morning I’m not alone.

A study by Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitz of the Wharton School, titled Is Tiger Woods Risk Averse? Persistent Bias on the Face of Competition, and High Stakes , shows that PGA pros do the same thing. They will make identical putts 3.3% less often if it is a birdie putt than a par putt.

Why? Because they are risk averse, just like you and me. They consider the risk of getting a bogey and dropping a shot to be greater than the reward of gaining one by sinking the birdie putt.

I’ll bet this applies to you, too, though maybe on a different level. I would bet you make more eight-foot putts for bogey than you do for par. You’re used to getting bogeys, but those doubles just cannot happen. So you bear down more to get that par putt in the hole.

It would be nice if a putt is just a putt. Whatever score it is for, we would treat them all the same. But maybe a bit of reverse psychology would be in order. The next time you have a birdie putt, pretend it is for par. That might help you give the ball the extra oomph it needs to go in.

playing the game

The Secret to Success in Golf – Simplify

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[August 2019: To find out how to have a simple swing, see Bob’s Living Golf Book instead of this post.]

Sometime I go to the range and hit golf balls just great. I come home and think I have finally found it. Then the next time I go out I can’t repeat my success because I forgot what I did. Raise your hand if that’s you, too.

I finally figure out what’s wrong. Those swings have been too complicated. Too many moving parts. Too many positions to hit, too many movements to make. It’s a wonder I can do it once.

The solution, and your entrée to a good golf swing, is to simplify it. Just take the club back, and swing it through.

You have a basic swing; you know how to hit the ball. What I’m saying is start throwing out the complicated stuff, all those little things you try to keep track of. See how much you can simplify your swing. See how easy you can make it. Strip away all the non-essentials and just swing back and through.

Sure, there will still be a lot of stuff going on. Even a”simple” swing isn’t simple. But here’s what you will find out. When your swing has been simplified, the thought that will be in your head when you’re standing over the ball is one of performing with confidence. You will know, trust completely, that if you swing this way the ball will go straight and far. That it just has to.

I would bet that if you asked a number of golfers how confident they feel over the ball, they would say, “Not that much all the time.” It’s that confidence that leads to a good shot, and you only have confidence if you know what you’re doing. Really know what you’re doing.

And how much easier is to really know what you’re doing if your swing is so simple that you could do it in your sleep? That’s the key here. It’s getting a swing that is so easy for you to remember that you can do it time after time, day after day, month after month.

That swing is a simple swing.

So go to the range, or better, take some plastic golf balls to your back yard, and start getting rid of the baggage. Go for a simple, relaxed, rhythmic swing. It’s all you need to play well.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

practice, short game

Practicing My Wedges

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I don’t have a lot to do this week. Big Break Sandals is finally over, pro golf is over (it ends with the PGA, in my book), and I jammed my thumb (you don’t want to hear the details) so I can’t swing a golf club. Or any kind of club. Which makes me think, why is it that they say on TV, “That was an excellent golf shot.” As opposed to a hockey shot? What other kinds of shots are they expecting to see at a golf tournament?

When I don’t have a lot to do, my mind wanders. So it wandered yesterday to my wedge game. Precision. Tap-ins. That’s what I want in my wedge game. And you know how to get that? Practice. There’s no way around it.

I took my ball bag, that has about 100 balls in it, out to the back yard, and began hitting twenty-yard pitches. I have that much room. Boy, did I learn a lot about myself. I don’t think I hit the ball the same way twice in a row. Different trajectories, different distances. Without knowing, you would have thought I was pretty versatile with a wedge. But I was trying to hit the same shot every time.

Again, this morning, I went out with my bag of balls. More wedges. I have a real good target to hit to, or rather hit through. There’s a huge apple tree in the center of the back yard, this thing must be 60 years old, and it’s about twelve feet around at the base. There are big limbs that start branching off about four feet above the ground, and they make a nice little opening for me to hit golf balls through. A little opening. There’s only one way to get the ball through. Hit it straight, and hit it the right distance with the right trajectory. IOW, hit the same shot every time. After all, you can’t be versatile until you’ve become consistent.

I did much better today, but there’s still work to do. It will be time well spent, though. You know how the pros get so good? They hit ball after ball for hours, not just five or six at the range as an afterthought. They have shots like this programmed. And the only way to do that is to practice a lot. Now I have something to do this week.

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rules

Julie Inkster’s DQ Was the Right Call

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Saturday at the Safeway Classic in Porltand, Oregon, Julie Inkster was waiting on the tee. A 30-minute wait. So to stay loose, she took a few practice swings with a club on which she had put a “doughnut”, a weighted training device. A TV viewer called this in and Inkster was disqualified.

Here are the rules: Decision 14-3/10: Question: During a round, may a player make a stroke or a practice swing using a club with a weighted headcover or “doughnut” on it, or use any other device as a training aid or swing aid? Answer: No

Rule 14-3: Penalty for breach of rule 14-3: Disqualification.

There you have it. She made a practice swing in violation of the Decision, hence the Rule, and the penalty is DQ.

Inkster said, “The device had no effect on my game whatsoever.”

1. If so, then why did you use it, and

2. Lots of rules violations might have no effect on one’s game, but they’re still violations.

On the air, commentator Judy Rankin, a former touring professional, said the penalty should have been two strokes. But that’s nowhere in the Rules, Judy. And we don’t make up rules just because something isn’t “fair,” or happens to a player we like, or we don’t like how severe the consequences are.

Then there’s Rule 1-3, which Judy’s comment gets right to, which says, “Players must not agree to exclude the operation of and Rule or to waive any penalty incurred.” An unbelievable comment from someone who used to be in the mix.

Golf World magazine said, in its August 23rd Golf World Monday e-mail edition, that “players who happen to be on TV are arbitrarily being held to an unfair standard.” What standard is that? Obeying the rules? That’s unfair? Did I miss a memo?

In the sport where players are expected to call rules violations on themselves (see Brian Davis at the Verizon Heritage last April) Golf World apparently wants violations to be called only if a rules official sees it.

Golf is played on a 150-acre arena with players scattered all over it. The actionable event in other sports takes place in an area about the size of your back yard and there are officials right there to make the call.

Michelle Redman got it right when said why she told a rules official about Lisa McCloskey’s caddy violating a rule concerning riding in carts during a round. “I was fulfilling my obligation to protect the field.”

That’s exactly the point.

The field has to be protected from players who violate the rules, intentionally or not. Otherwise, the integrity of the sport will plummet. The shocking thing about this incident is that people who should know better believe otherwise.

equipment

Yes, You Can Play Blades

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There’s a rumor going around that blades are for low-handicappers only. Middle- and high-handicappers should stick with cavity-back irons. Game improvement irons. Like most rumors, this one doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Blades, or more correctly, muscleback irons, have a fairly flat back with extra weight on the bottom of the clubhead, which helps get the ball airborne. The weight distribution of a muscleback, though, lets a mishit be a mishit. A CB, with weight distributed all around the perimeter, tends to smooth out mishits and keep the ball going straight. This works against the intentions of players who like to work the ball. They tend to be the better players, and they use blades. Hence the rumor.

But there are other reasons why blades have a devoted following. More weight is concentrated behind the ball because the clubhead is smaller. This means that when the ball is struck it has more authority, and the sweet spot is thus much sweeter. You also get more feedback with a blade, since you can feel exactly where on the clubface the ball was struck.

For a long time, every golfer played blades because that was the only type of club to be manufactured. Unless you have good hand-eye coordination, it is hard to hit the sweet spot, or sufficiently near it every time. Hence the introduction of game improvement (GI) irons.

But at the same time, hybrid irons were introduced. They replaced the difficult-to-hit long irons, which were the clubs that made people shy away from blades. Many golfers now carry nothing longer than a 6- or 5-iron. The longest iron in my bag is a 6-iron.

It is not that hard to hit a short iron in the center, because the swing is not that big, so blades at this end of the set are now a reasonable option. The benefits of blades listed above are now available to you.

No golfer should be reluctant to try out a set of blades and find out how it feels to hit them. True, there is a bit of snob appeal — they are the sports cars of golf. But there are serious benefits to using them and you should not be dissuaded unless you have tried them for yourself.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

December 1, 2011 update:

A few days ago, I stumbled across this web page which showed that while blades have a smaller sweet spot than CB irons, the sweet spot on a blade is much sweeter than on a CB iron. There’s a lot to be said for that, especially if you have nothing longer than a 6-iron in your bag, since you will hitting the sweet spot more often than with the longer irons.

If you would like to try a set of blades, I recommend Ben Hogan Apex models. I have a set of the 1999 Apex irons, the last blade model the Hogan company put out, and a set of Apex Red Lines, built in 1988. I bought the 1999s new, but I got the Red Lines from a dealer on the web for under $200 and they were in top-notch condition. They are my everyday clubs now. The Apex Grind model (1990) is also highly thought of. At his death, Hogan himself had the 1979 Apex II (white cameo) irons in his bag.

improvement

Play a Difficult Golf Course – 2

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I blogged earlier on this subject and would like to continue the thought. The basic idea is that your learning curve flattens out when you play courses on which shooting your handicap or below has become an expectation. To get better, you need a new challenge.

Find a course that takes about six to seven more strokes to get around than what you’re used to scoring on your home course, which I assume you play well on. Go play that course straight up. Confront the hazards. Hit the forced carries. Hit driver to restricted landing areas. Play the shots the architect makes someone play to shoot a good score.

What’s going to happen is that you will get eaten alive for a while. It won’t be fun, you’ll shoot high scores, you’ll lose lots of balls. But take your lumps. Keep hitting the shots that need to be hit until you can hit them without worry and with good result. Consider this to be tuition in golf school. Play that course over and over until you have a solution to every problem it gives you.

You’ll learn to be unconcerned by shots you once feared. You’ll learn to hit shots with precision. If you have to hit it right there, you’ll learn how to and be confident when you have to. You’ll learn how to play a course using the shots you want to hit, rather than the shots the architect wants to scare you into hitting.

Of course you improve by spending time at the range learning to hit shots and taking lessons. But you don’t become a player unless you play, unless you challenge yourself to hit those shots you spent so much time working on, and put trust in your skills.

That’s how you learn to shoot lower scores.

See also How Solid is Your Handicap?

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com