When you go to the range, one that lets you chip onto the practice green, to practice your short game, practice shots from 10-30 yards (30-90 feet, if that’s more helpful).
The ones from closer are easy to get up and down from. Ones from farther away you don’t have that often to warrant your time.
The biggest bang for your short game buck is that 10- to 30-yard range. If you get up and down from there more often than not, you will shoot a lower score, and drive the people you play with nuts.
Golf is a complex game that must be played as though it were simple.
When you stand over the ball thinking about those little things you need to do to hit a good shot, it’s not because you haven’t hit enough golf balls to make your swing automatic. It’s because you haven’t installed your swing into your mind.
There a lots of little things that go into a golf swing. It’s not a natural movement. But all those little things add up to just one thing–a golf swing. That is how you have to approach it.
You need to be able to visualize your swing not as one bit after another, but as just one free-flowing movement that proceeds by itself once you get it started.
Can you do that? If you notice even one part your swing, something you consider to be important, you’re not there yet.
The thing to do is to sit down, close your eyes if you want to, and imagine yourself swinging a golf club. Do this over and over until you visualize only what it feels like to swing, not what you are doing when you swing.
Do that over and over. You can’t do it too often. You can make it daily practice. Many-times-a-day practice.
You know how when you go to the range and the first shot you hit is pure gold, because you didn’t think about it, you just did it? And then you start thinking about it and it’s a lot more work from there to get results that aren’t as good?
The mental practice that I’m suggesting is how to hit that first shot all the time. How to stay out of your own way.
There are lots of points you have to pay attention to in your golf swing. By that, I mean the points that make your golf swing work. There are likely more than one or two. I have six.
What I’m getting at today is that you don’t have to exaggerate any of them. Don’t overdo them. Just hit each mark in a relaxed way as you proceed through the swing, and you will be just fine.
Harvey Penick said it well when he advised us in his Little Red Book that if he asks you to take an aspirin, please don’t take the whole bottle.
The hands lead the clubhead going into the ball? Just by a few inches. Not by a whole foot.
Retain your lag at the start of the forward swing? Yes, just at the start. Don’t hold on for dear life all the way into the ball.
And so on.
Another way to put it is that when you swing the club, a beginner watching you should say, “That looks so easy to do!”
They shouldn’t think, “Oh, my. I could never do that.”
I think the hardest part of the golf swing is learning how to keep the clubface square. This is how I practice it.
I use a driver. This club is, in my opinion, the easiest club to hit because we are standing the most upright. It is therefore the club to use when you are learning how to keep the clubface square.
I pay lots of attention to my grip and to how I take the club away. From there, it’s figuring out how to swing without upsetting the clubface’s alignment.
How do you do that? Because everybody is different, I can’t say. Either make it your own exploration, or get a lesson(s). Hint: If the clubface is still square at the end of your backwing, you’re ninety percent there.
Once you have the matter figured out, transfer that swing to the rest of your clubs, always referring back to the driver as you do. Let you driver bleed into your 5-iron, not the other way around.
1. Play from the right set of tees. Don’t give yourself a problem you can’t solve.
2. Hit fairways with your driver. If you spray it, learn how to hit it straight. It’s not that hard to do. This, use your 3-wood instead, stuff is nonsense.
3. Know, I mean really know, how far you carry each iron. By that I mean your average distance, not your maximum.
4. Given the distance to the pin, all things being equal, pick the iron that will pass it, not just get to it.
5. Short game, short game, short game.
6. Did I mention the short game? Your long game that gets you up to or on the green quickly makes good scores possible. The short game makes the score. From greenside, down in two must be an expectation.
7. Putting. Get very good at approach putting and putts from four feet and under. That’s all you need to practice.
8. You’re a handicap golfer. Some holes out there are too hard for you. Get your bogey on them and get your pars elsewhere.
9. Play only shots you can hit. If you don’t have absolute confidence in what you’re about to do, then do something else.
10. If there is a shot or a club that is working really well, ride it as hard as you can all day.
A note in today’s GolfWRX has Scottie Scheffler saying that when he plays with his friends, he plays at +7.
I have heard, and believe it be reliable, that the winner of a PGA tournament is playing at +10 that week.
So how are you doin’?
A few months ago I wrote a post about light grip pressure, which I renamed soft grip pressure. I titled this post “light grip pressure” for SEO reasons, but I still mean “soft.”
But why have soft grip pressure? Because it gives you the clubhead speed you have coming to you.
If you hold the handle too tightly, you tense up your arms, shoulders, torso, and actually slow down the clubhead.
Try gripping a baseball tightly and throwing it as far as you can. Then grip it lightly and see. It goes a lot farther with number two.
Same thing with a golf club, especially your driver. The clubhead doesn’t have to hit the ball hard, but fast.
A soft grip sends the clubhead into the ball unrestrained. Free distance.
Do these four things every time you hit the ball, and you’ll have a game.
1. Check your grip visually before every shot.
2. Check your aim before every shot.
3. On every shot, the butt end of the club needs to be moving foward as the clubhead comes into the ball. Even when you putt. Especially when you putt.
4. Swing with rhythm in mind, nothing else.
Driver
24* hybrid
7-iron
56* wedge
Putter
That’s your game, right there.