All posts by recgolfer

practice

A Recreational Golfer’s Weekly Practice Plan

Leave a comment

There’s no way around it. To get better, or even to maintain skills, a golfer has to practice. What to practice depends on how much time you have available. We’ll start with the essentials, and show you how to find time that you didn’t think you had to get even more practice.

At home:
Putting. This is the easiest stroke to practice. All you need is a putter, a ball, and a smooth carpet. The lid from a 28-oz. can of whole tomatoes makes the perfect target, since it’s just ¼” smaller than the regulation hole.

Practice your setup and your stroke. Put two tees on the ground, cup side down, so they stand up on the carpet. Place them just far enough apart so you can swing your putter through the gap without knocking the down. Now put a ball in the middle of the gap and make your stroke. This drill smooths you out in a hurry.

Chipping. Here again is a stroke you can practice at home in a few spare moments. Hit some balls off the carpet into a backstop like a couch cushion or a pillow. Like putting, the point of your practice is to perfect the stroke. The goal is to hit every ball cleanly, no hitting fat, and keeping your hands relaxed as they bring the club through the ball.

Pitching. You can actually practice this at home, inside. I hook a mattress pad over a window curtain rod and hit plastic balls into the pad. It helps to hit the balls off a carpet remnant so you don’t scuff a hole in your good floor carpet. Like with chipping, you’re practicing the stroke, making clean contact and not concerning yourself with the result of the shot. How could you, anyway? The ball won’t go more than ten feet!

At the range:
If you can get out once a week, here are two practice plans:

One-hour plan

Two-hour plan

If you don’t even have time for that, practice after your round is over. I know that’s socializing time, so pay your respects to your friends at the 19th hole, then buy your bucket and go out to the range. Start by hitting a few of the shots you played well today, so you can solidify that feeling of how to hit them.

Spend most of your time on the shots that gave you problems during the day’s round. Take lots of practice swings before you hit a ball. Hit one only when you feel that your swing for this particular shot is where you want it.

Spend some time hitting pitches. Now you can practice hitting the shot to a target. Go the practice green and chip to a target, and hit some approach putts. All you had a chance to do at home is practice your stroke. Now you can practice the shot.

If you can practice at home daily, just a bit, and get live practice of some kind during the week, that will be all you need to maintain your skills and play golf that you can be proud of.

To step it up a bit, here is a professional practice plan.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

drills

Hitting the Ball Off the Ground

Leave a comment

In this world, you have to give a little to get a little. Baseball and tennis are difficult sports because the ball we have to hit is moving so fast. Let’s slow the ball down a little, like to a complete stop, waiting for us to hit it at our leisure. Welcome to the ground, welcome to golf.

What we gave up to get a stationary ball is the freedom to hit a little above or below the ball, and now a second dimension, behind the ball, is added. The spot the clubhead has to hit is about the size of a dime, and the clubhead will be moving at about 80 miles per hour at the time. The margin for error is gone.

Learning how to pick the ball cleanly off the ground is the hardest problem new golfers have to solve. It will haunt them well into advanced golf, and may be an issue for their entire playing career.

There’s an easy way to learn this, and if you’re willing to put in the time, you can move on from wondering if you’ll hit the ball to planning exactly where you’re going to hit it.

Get a 9-iron, drop a ball in front of you, and take a stance with your feet about six inches apart. Now just chip the ball with a backswing that is no more than two feet long. The ball doesn’t have to go anywhere, you just want to focus on clean, ball first-ground second contact.

You’ll soon be able to tell if you hit the ground first, even by just a little, and also if you missed the ground completely, even though you hit the ball reasonably well. You’ll learn, too, what the perfect strike feels like, where the ball, ground, and club all come together at just the right moment. That’s your ball striking goal.

Do this exercise for a few minutes every day. Make short swings, get clean contact. You can’t get too good at it. Once you have mastered the two-foot swing, and I truly mean mastered it, lengthen your swing, maybe by about a foot. If you have problems making clean contact, go back to the two-foot swing and gradually work back to the longer swing. This is the Madsen Rule in practice.

Keep lengthening you swing, but only when you feel you are ready to. There’s no need to rush, and there are no short-cuts. This exercise builds a lifelong habit that will produce effective golf shots to the degree that you develop your skill with it. Six months of dedicated practice will get you to where you want to go.

If you have taken your time with this exercise, working in a controlled way through longer swings, being thoroughly prepared for the the time you move up, by the time you get to your full swing, you will be the ball-striker you had hoped you would be.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

chipping, ten rules

Ten Rules For Better Chipping

Leave a comment

[Commentary added January 2018.]

No one hits every green. Getting your ball one-putt close from just off the green is not that hard to do if you know how. Here are ten rules that will help you get your ball tight to the hole and prevent a missed green from costing you an extra shot.

1. Read the green. The ball will roll for a considerable ways across the green, and behave just as if you had hit an approach putt. Plan a chip with all the care you give to a putt, because the objectives of each shot are the same–leaving the ball close or even sinking it.

2. Chip with the least-lofted club you can. Your bread-and-butter club would be something like a 6-iron. Use more lofted clubs only under special circumstances. Chipping with a lob wedge is a professional technique.

[I have changed my mind on this. See My Chipping Formula.]

3. Relax your mind. This is a simple shot. You are trying to save yourself a stroke, but don’t get so careful that you get too delicate and muff the shot.

4. Do not break your left wrist as you swing through impact. This leads to consistent contact and predictable distance control. A breaking left wrist is the leading cause of poor chipping by recreational golfers.

5. Hit the ball with a descending strike. The bane of golfers everywhere, from beginner to winner, is hitting the ground behind the ball on one of these simple shots. When the club comes into the ball from above, you ensure that clean, ball first-ground second contact.

[I have changed my mind on this, too. See Stop Chunking Chip Shots.]

6. Keep a light grip pressure. You want no hit in the stroke. It is hard to have a hit when you are holding the club very lightly.

7. Hit the ball off the toe of the club. This deadens the strike, leading to minimum backspin and pure roll. When the ball is hit on the sweet spot of the clubface, it can come off hot and roll too far.

[Please ignore that.]

8. Keep the club low to the ground in the follow-through with the clubface still aligned to the target. There is no forearm rotation.

9. Land the ball on the green. Regardless of how far away from the green the ball is, its first bounce must be on the green so it can start rolling. A ball that lands short can get grabbed by high grass or soft ground and stop dead, or take an odd bounce.

10. Practice from every kind of lie, from and into every kind of slope, and to every combination of ball-to-green-to-pin distances. You will never hit the same chip twice on a golf course. The more scenarios you practice, the more you will be able to handle the real scenarios the course hands you.

If there is one shot to get real good at, this is it. Being able to get up and down from anywhere builds confidence into every other part of your game, because you know you can erase your mistakes. It drives your opponents nuts, too, because a good chipper is never out of the hole.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

brilliant ideas

Fixing the Out-of-Bounds Rule

Leave a comment

There are few rules golfers hate more than the stroke and distance penalty incurred for hitting a ball out of bounds. For a shot that was perhaps two feet away from leaving you with a playable next shot, golf assigns you its toughest playing penalty.

Harvey Penick says as much in his Little Red Book under the heading, Strange Penalty:

“The most embarrassing thing you can do in golf is swing your driver on the tee and completely miss the ball.
“For this humiliation, the penalty is one stroke.
“However, if you smash a drive a long way but the ball lands an inch out of bounds, the penalty is stroke and distance–in effect, a two-shot punishment for what was nearly a good drive.”

Golf (with a capital “G”) understands this. Few rules have been tweaked as often.

The problem is a neat one, as Tom Watson explains in his book about the rules of golf. He says if the penalty were distance only, as it was for a brief time, the next stroke from the same spot would be essentially a mulligan. Watson supposes hitting the tee shot on a par 3 out of bounds, teeing up the second shot, knocking it stiff, and tapping in for a par. That bothers him. It bothers me, too.

Where his argument breaks down is when he goes on to say, “…common sense demands that the procedures be the same for balls lost or out of bounds.” No, it doesn’t. We make a distinction between a ball found and lying out of bounds, and a ball that could be out of bounds, but is not found.

In the first case, it is a fact that the ball is out of bounds. The ball would be dropped in-bounds, two club-lengths from the nearest in-bounds point, but not nearer to the hole, with a one-stroke penalty. If that were not possible, or would result in an unplayable lie, the player could choose to hit another ball from the spot where this ball was hit, and take a one-stroke penalty. This was the rule from 1964 to 1968.

I know that second option is stroke and distance, but that is an option that exists in the unplayable lie rule and the water hazard rule. No reason why the OB should not have it as an option, either.

In the second case, where it is not an ascertainable fact that the ball lies out of bounds, the ball would be treated like a lost ball, and that current rule would apply.

In short, if you find your ball, a penalty less severe than stroke and distance should apply. Only if you can’t find your ball, should the stroke and distance penalty apply.

Problem solved. Now all I have to do is get rules officials from the USGA and R&A to start reading my blog, and rescue golf from this strange penalty.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

playing the game

Two Clubs and a Putter

Leave a comment

I’ve been going out with my grandson the past month to play golf with him at local nine-holer. I decided these rounds weren’t that big of a deal for me, so I would just take a few clubs to knock the ball around the course, and so I could carry my bag instead of using my pull cart.

I pack a 7-iron, a gap wedge, and a putter. After three rounds of this, let me tell you. You can put up a pretty good score just that set. One of the reasons I’m only taking those clubs is that I’m undergoing a difficult swing change. A 7-iron is the longest club I can reliably hit right now.

We play from the red tees, since he isn’t hitting the ball all that far yet. Still, there’s distance to be covered. The red tees don’t turn it into a pitch-and-putt layout. I tee off with the 7 and hit it from the fairway, of course, hit 7-iron punches into greens, chip with it. It makes me feel like a regular Seve Ballesteros the way I have to create shots with this club.

And you know what? They work! Last time out I started bogey, bogey, bogey, then finished par, par, par, birdie, bogey, par. Not bad.

We have a three clubs and a putter day every year at the men’s club of the course where I normally play. The first time I tried it, I took a 2-hybrid, a 7-iron, a sand wedge, and my putter. Shot a 39 from the white tees measuring 3,150 yards.

There’s something about having a limited set of clubs that frees you up, even relaxes you as you stand over a shot that is clearly not suited for the club you’re holding, about to use it not as it would “normally” be used. Now your creativity has to save the day, and this is where golf starts to get fun. “If I do a little of this and play it like that, it just might work.”

If the shot doesn’t come off, it’s no big deal, since it wasn’t supposed to anyway. But if it does, you have added a great positive experience to your mental skill set that is quite liberating. Instead of playing golf the way everybody else does, the way your pro says to, the way you see on TV, you’re playing it your way. Once you get the hang of having to create, you’ll be in touch with a skill you didn’t know you had.

Try playing a round or two from the red tees with just three clubs and see what I mean. Then move on to playing a course you normally play, from the tees you normally play, with six clubs and a putter. Francis Ouimet won the U.S. Open in 1913 with just seven clubs.

I would pack a driver, a 3-hybrid, a 5- and 7-iron, a pitching wedge, a sand wedge, and a putter. I’ll bet I could shoot a decent score, too. I’ll bet you could, too.

Golf is supposed to be fun. Do fun things with it. This is one of them.

For tips in how to hit the full set of clubs, visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

drills, impact geometry

Solid Golf Shots Depend On Knowing Where the Ground Is

Leave a comment

One reason why golf is so much harder than other stick-and-ball sports is that the ball is on the ground, not in the air, when you hit it. There really isn’t any room for error. If the club comes into the ball a half-inch too high or too low, that’s a mis-hit.

Maybe it wouldn’t be noticed if you were off this much while hitting a tennis ball, but in golf a half inch is a lot. It is imperative, then, that you learn how to find where the ground is.

Imagine this. I’ll bet you have done this more than once. You take a practice swing and miss the ground. You take another swing and miss the ground again. Now you know this is not the way to hit the ball, but you say to yourself, “That’s OK, I’ll get it right when I hit the ball.” And you mis-hit the ball.

Why? Because you had no feel for where the ground is.

You might say, “I know where the ground is, I can see it right there in front of me, I’m standing on it and I can feel it with my feet.” True. But when you swing a golf club, can you find the ground with the sole of your golf club?

Hitting into the ground and raising up a big chunk of dirt doesn’t count. That’s finding one inch below the ground. You have to be able to nip the surface of the ground with your swing every time, or at least much more often than not, to play golf well.

In 2006, I saw Paula Creamer at a golf tournament waiting to hit on the tee of a par-3 hole. She was taking loose practice swings, and she hit the ground in the same spot every time, and the hit made the same sound every time.

That sound of her club thumping the ground was the key. The only way she could have made the same sound was for the club to be hitting the ground at the same depth. That’s knowing where the ground is.

Practice this. Practice without a ball. Take easy swings and have the club brush the surface of the ground the same way every time as you swing through where a ball would be.

This is Johnny Miller’s “brush-brush” drill. Practice this so you get the club down to the ground consistently and without having to consciously search for it with your hands as you come into the ball.

On the course, if you take a few practice swings, brushing the ground each time, put the ball in your stance about an inch behind where the brush was at its lowest point. That is the perfect spot for it.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

mental game

Play Your Best Golf All the Time

Leave a comment

There’s a kind of golf you could be playing right now that is much better than the kind you are playing. It doesn’t require any improvement in your physical technique. Just by improving your mental approach to each shot, you will get the most out of the skills you have and shoot lower scores.

When you stand behind the ball and look at where you want to hit it, you can think in one of two ways. You can be afraid of all the bad things that can happen–the mis-hits, the bunkers, the water, and all that. Or, you can think about the spot where you really want to hit the ball, and see it on its way and coming to rest right there, without those other things even entering your mind.

I don’t have to tell you that the second thought is what you want your mind to be on. But how do you get your mind on that and only that? You have to practice. You practice your short irons over and over, for example, to get them target-ready on the golf course, so when you pull one out you know you have the skill to put the ball on the green.

In the same way, you have to practice focusing your mind on the shot to come so that when you look at the shot you’re preparing to hit, you have the mental strength not to become distracted or disturbed by the places where the ball shouldn’t go.

When you’re at the driving range with a bucket of 100 balls, warm up, and then take out one ball. Step behind it and look downrange. Pick a target. Do more than say, “I’ll aim for there.” Keep looking until you know, really know, that’s where the ball will go. Accept that believing the ball will go there and hitting the ball there are the same thing. To do the first is to do the second. Then hit the ball with that belief in mind.

Prepare your mind that way before every ball you hit. Every ball. Not just when you remember to. You’re building up a mental habit, one that requires tremendous discipline. That will only happen if you promise yourself that you will practice this as much as you practice swing techniques.

At first it might seem difficult, tiring, boring, maybe even pointless, because it doesn’t always work. You still hit a few clinkers. That’s OK. You’re creating a mind-body link that takes time to get established. Keep at it. With steady practice you will be both amazed and pleased at how well your shots start mirroring the mental belief that guided your swing.

You will be similarly amazed  at the deep concentration you can summon in an instant on the golf course. In the thirty seconds you have to prepare your shot and hit it, you will be drawing on tremendous mental strength. Your physical skills will come to the fore, and you will play the best golf you can play.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

driver

Hit Your Driver Straight: A Checklist

Leave a comment

Recreational golfers shoot good scores by getting the ball in the fairway off the tee. By going through the following checklist before you swing, you will increase your chances of hitting good shots with the hardest club to hit well.

Straighter shots begin when you set up to the ball. Most golfers set up aimed to the right of their target.

Either the ball goes right, or a subconscious correction sends the ball pretty much anywhere, only sometimes where you intend.

Practice your aim every time you go to the range. It is a skill that cannot be learned for good; it must be refreshed at every opportunity.

Ball position counts, too. With your driver, you want hit the ball slightly on the upswing.

Lay an alignment stick on the ground pointing from your stance toward the ball (at a right angle to your target line). When the stick points to the ball, and inside of your left heel lies against the stick, the ball is in the right place.

The following traits can be easily built into anyone’s swing. They help keep the club under control so you can return it to the ball square and in line.

1. Grip down about a half inch from where you normally do. This will give you more control of the club.

1a. Slow down. I want to say this before you even step up to the ball. Slow down, make an easy swing at the ball. When you try to clobber it, your swing gets out of sequence and the clubface goes in funny directions. Don’t worry. Distance is built into the club. Think of chipping the ball off the tee, but with a full swing.

2. Take the club back straight. It’s hard to take the club back outside, but easy to take it back inside. Have a friend stand down the line behind you to give you feedback on getting this right.

3. Do not swing the club back too far. Take it back only as far as when you hit your 9-iron and see what happens.

4. Start your downswing by turning your body. Let the arms and hands go along for the ride until the momentum of the downswing, on its own, unleashes them into the ball.

5. Keep your body turning. A common error is to slow down your body turn near impact so can apply a hit.

6. There’s a race between your hands and the clubhead to get to the ball first, which your hands have to win. Keep pulling your hands through the impact zone.

7. Suppress the urge to clobber the ball with your right hand. Swing your arms and hands through the ball with your body turn.

2013 update: This summer I have been hitting my driver exceedingly straight. I attribute that to the work I have been doing on making sure my hands are ahead of the clubhead through the hitting area.

Bonus: Until you can hit your driver straight, tee off with the longest club that you can hit straight.

driver

Should You Buy That New Driver?

Leave a comment

Every year, golf club manufacturers come out with new drivers, guaranteed to let you hit the ball longer and straighter. New technology and design trump last year’s up-to-the-minute advances. Now At what point should you be willing to lay out $4-500 for a newer driver than the one you have, and if you want a new driver, should you have to pay that much for it?

Let’s look first at the job a driver has to do. It is a club designed to hit the ball off the tee a long way down the fairway. Its bigger head and longer shaft mean that extra distance comes without any extra effort on your part. All you have to do is make sure your swing hits the ball straight, which, because of its relatively upright face, is harder to do with a driver than with any other club.

So before you start looking for a new driver, ask yourself this question. Am I getting everything I need out of the driver I’m using right now? If the answer is yes, I’m getting satisfactory distance and I can put the ball in the fairway consistently, there might not be a reason to switch. If the answer is no, and you hit all your other clubs just fine, maybe all you need is a lesson to figure out what the problem is. If the answer is you don’t hit your other clubs much better either, then it’s the singer, not the song, and that $400 would be better spent on lessons.

So it looks like in every case, you should stick with what you have rather than upgrade. Not quite. There are times you should switch. The new designs and technology do make a difference. Maybe not so much from one year to the next, but the improvements compound themselves. If your driver is five years old, advances since it was new could well let you hit significantly better shots, or the same shots more easily.

How would you find out? Go try out some of the new ones under the supervision of your local pro or club fitter. Unless your current driver was fitted when you bought it, you might find that a new driver, fitted to your current swing, makes driving the ball a completely different experience.

You use your driver 10-14 times every round, depending on it to get you into a position from where you can attack the hole. Ben Hogan regarded it as the most important club in his bag. Make sure the one in your bag is your driver, and delivers everything a modern driver should. You owe it to yourself.

See also Custom-Made Driver?

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

playing the game

These Are the Golf Shots You Need

Leave a comment

Even though everyone on the course is playing the same sport, with the same equipment, players of different skills are playing a different game. The object is to get the ball in the hole in the fewest strokes, but depending on your skill level, you’ll rely on different shots to do that.

I’ve identified four skill levels common to recreational golfers and the shots that you need to be able to hit well in order to achieve that level.

If you are brand new to the game, you need to just keep the ball in play and have an idea of what putting is all about (it’s not as easy as you think). So work on the 10-foot putt — learn to get it to the hole and not way beyond or way short — and a strong chip with a 6-iron. This shot is much like a greenside chip, but the club is taken back to hip height, the club shaft rising no higher than parallel to the ground, and your wrists stay firm throughout the stroke. You can acceptable play golf with this shot while you’re developing your swing.

If you need to break 100, you’re hitting the ball reasonably well, but leaking strokes that you shouldn’t. It’s time to start tightening up your game. Practice sinking putts from 3 feet and under — you miss more of these than you think you do; the fairway-wood off the tee — do not try to hit it hard, just straight; and, a pitch to the green (from about 40 yards and in) that lands on the green and stays there. It doesn’t matter where the flag is, just get the ball on the green.

If you need to break 90, you have too many three-putt greens. Practice 30-foot putts, because that’s three-putt territory; the greenside chip, because you’re leaving the ball too far away to get the ensuing putt in the hole. You also have a swing flaw that sends the ball off line too often. Get lessons and get that flaw corrected. You’re stuck where you are unless you do.

If you need to break 80, practice the 5-foot putt — missing these can be the difference between 79 and 81; irons that reach the green because you can hit them straight, and you know, really know, how far you hit them; the driver, which you will use to hit fairways at distance — it’s time to start taking your game to the course instead of the course handing you your hat.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.