This is what I call The Number One Approach Putting Drill. Spend fifteen minutes with this drill a couple of times a week and you will become a deadly approach putter.
Category Archives: Gold Post
My Chipping Stroke
In the summer of 2012, following two back surgeries earlier that year, all I could do was chip and putt. So I decided to start over with that and learn how to do them both the right way, not the way I had fallen into on my own.
I had a chipping lesson that June. I said to the pro, “Pretend I’ve never hit a chip shot before and tell me how to do it from the ground up.” That’s exactly what he did.
Whenever I have a golf lesson, I take notes afterward. I wrote down the points he made on chipping, practiced them a lot, because, remember that’s all I could do at the time, and I became a very good chipper.
I looked through the blog and found out that I had never posted the points he taught me. They don’t really substitute for a lesson, but here they are anyway. I hope you can make something of them. There are six.
1. Setup: The ball is in the center of your stance, weight is slightly left, the clubshaft leans slightly left. Light grip pressure, grip down to the metal for control.
2. The wrists break back slightly when the club goes back. Do not overdo this.
3. Swinging forward, the shaft and the outside of the right thigh feel like they are moving forward together.
4. The right knee continues breaking through the shot. The right heel comes off the ground little bit.
5. The hips turn. There is no slide. The left hip moves straight back, not around.
6. The wrists are straight again at impact and do not break further (the right hand does not pass the left). The clubface ends up facing the sky.
As I have said earlier, think of sliding the sole of the club underneath the ball, not so much on hitting down on the ball. There is a bit of that, but do not emphasize it.
If you perfect this stroke, and calibrate a number of chipping clubs, getting up and down from greenside will become your expectation.
See also: My Chipping Formula
Why You Should Slow Down Your Golf Swing
One of the best comments I ever read on a golf forum was to “slow down your swing and learn to live with the extra distance you get.” The reason eluded me until recently.
I got the November 2018 copy of Golf Digest magazine. You know, the magazine that has playing tips every month that work for world-class professionals, but not for you?
Here’s one that did work, and it was from Daniel Berger. He said you’re never going to get the distance you’re due until you learn to hit the ball off the center of the clubface, and he gave us a drill to work on that.
He said to hit balls with your 7-iron (everybody’s favorite club) at 30 percent of your normal swing speed until you start connecting with the center of the clubface consistently. Then move up to 50 percent, then 70 percent.
Thirty percent is pretty slow. If it takes you one second to go from takeaway to impact, that’s now three seconds from takeaway to impact. Pretty slow.
He also mentioned you would be surprised at how far the ball goes even with those slow swings if you hit the ball on the center of the clubface.
That rang true to me, so I went to the driving range I live next door to. Actually it’s not driving range, but the Oregon State Fairgrounds. It has a big field that is used for a parking lot that is 560 yards long and 235 yards wide. I go there every day and hit a few balls.
So I went out there with a 7-iron and a few golf balls to try this tip, swinging at what I felt to be 30 percent. Slowing down that much is harder than it sounds, but I think I got it.
Wow. Triple wow.
Berger is exactly right. Slowing down the swing makes it easy to get centered contact and when you do, the ball flies off the center of the clubface, and goes farther than you could imagine it would.
I’m working up slowly to a faster speed, but only so fast that I can still make contact on the center of the clubface.
In my Living Golf Book, I define tempo as “the fastest you can swing through impact and consistently hit solid shots off the center of the clubface.” Berger’s drill is a fantastic way to find that tempo.
Try it. You’ll find that tempo doesn’t have to be very fast to hit shots that go straight (slowing down your swing takes the tension out of it, which is what introduces many of your swing errors) and to a distance I know you can live with.
Your Ideal Golf Swing Tempo
It’s funny how you can hear the same thing over and over again and it doesn’t make sense until something happens that just makes it click. That happened to me a few days ago when I was watching Tiger Woods hit a few tee shots.
On every tee, His GOATness took two relatively slow, graceful practice swings—swings any one of us could make. I would hurt myself if I swung at the ball like he does, but I am right in there with his practice swing.
Which gave me an idea for my game. Hit the ball with my practice swing.
I know, everyone has heard that a thousand times before, but watching Tiger’s practice swing next to his real swing made me finally comprehend what that advice really means.
His practice swing is slowed way down so he can feel everything. He’s checking all the marks that he pays attention to along the way. What those marks are is not important. That his swing is error-free is important.
Now he is good enough to step on the gas with a ball in front of him and still make an error-free swing. We are not.
I would suggest that before each shot the recreational golfer take a few unhurried, perfect practice swings, and use THAT SAME SWING for hitting the ball.
That will provide the time to hit all the marks that are important for making a successful swing.
You will not rush yourself through your swing and miss some of your marks, or more importantly, force the club out of position by making your body keep up with itself, and fail to.
Many amateurs have a problem getting their weight onto their left side before impact. Swinging slower gives them time to do that.
Many amateurs throw the club at the ball from the top. Swinging slower makes it easier to hold onto their lag and release it naturally at the ball.
Swinging slower makes it easier to swing from start to finish rather than from start to impact.
And so on.
I wrote in my Living Golf Book that your ideal tempo is the fastest you can swing through impact and consistently hit solid shots off the center of the clubface. For many recreational golfers, that isn’t nearly as fast, or as forceful, as they now swing.
Will you lose distance? Maybe, at first, but when you have settled into hitting the center of the clubface, that distance will come back AND you will be much straighter.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
The swing you make before you hit the ball is the same swing to hit the ball with. There should be no, zero, difference between the two. Hopefully it is an unforced swing that leads to your finest shots time after time.
Triangulated Approach Putting (TAP)
[]Note: I have greatly simplified this technique. See The Key to Approach Putting.]
Often I will try something out for a few weeks and if it seems to be a good thing I will write a post about it. This one is different. I discovered it in 2015. I didn’t want to let you know about it until I was sure it was sound.
It is.
The method, which I call Triangulated Approach Putting (TAP), will revolutionize your approach putting.
The commonest reason you three-putt is that you leave your first putt too far from the hole. You get the distance wrong. TAP lets you leave that first putt right beside the hole. It is almost scary how good you will get.
TAP is based on this axiom: For any length of putt, if the length of the putting stroke is the sole distance generator, there is one, and only one, length of stroke that will send the ball that distance.
TAP shows you how to find the length of that stroke. I’ll explain the theory first and then get into the fine points.
In the diagram below, you see a line from the ball to the hole. That is the baseline of a triangle. The spot marked apex is where you stand to find the length of stroke. An imaginary line on the ground from the ball to the apex is the eyeline. The line from the apex to the hole, not being a factor, and is not labeled. Distances are exaggerated for clarity.
The apex is located at a standard spot, half the length of the baseline and offset three paces to the left (to the right for left-handed golfers). These distances are adjustable.
Stand at the apex and set up your stance to face the baseline directly. Turn your head to look at the ball. The eyeline is an imaginary line on the ground that comes straight from the ball to you as you look at it. Swing your putter back and forth while looking at the ball. Make a stroke such that the clubhead intersects the eyeline . That length of stroke will send the ball the exact distance from where it now lies, to the hole.
That’s the theory. Here’s the practice.
(1) The length of the swing must be the sole distance generator. You cannot add any “hit” with your hands. That would be introducing another variable, which we do not want to do.
(2) You must hit the ball on the same spot of the putter’s face every time. The sweet spot is best. Erratic contact in this regard plays havoc with how much energy is imparted to the ball, and thus how far it goes.
(3) The speed of your putting stroke must be constant. Otherwise, you will unknowingly impart more or less energy to the ball, again affecting the distance it travels.
(4) The location of the apex is not fixed.
(a) If greens are slower or you are putting uphill, the apex must be more than halfway to the hole–point (A).
(b) If greens are faster or you are putting downhill, the apex must be less than halfway to the hole–point (B).
(c) Your putter can make a difference. If you are consistently leaving putts too long or too short, stand more or less than three paces from the baseline–closer to make putts go farther, or at more remove to make them travel shorter.
(5) An essential point is remembering the length of the stroke. After all, you have to walk over to the ball to hit the putt, and in that time you might forget. While at the apex, make several strokes that intersect the eyeline and pay attention to how that stroke feels to your body. There might be a slight stretching somewhere in your back, or your arms might brush against you in a certain way. When you get to the ball, recreate that sensation.
(6) Hit the ball with trust. TAP works if you let it.
Regarding the adjustments in (4), the more you practice TAP, the more accurate your adjustments will become.
Use TAP when distance is more important than line. How far from the hole that switch gets made is up to you, but ten feet is not too close.
I have tried this method on different practice greens, on different courses, and after I have adjusted to the conditions it always works.
You could take out all my posts from 2009 to date and nothing would be missing because you can read all of it somewhere else. I have just been adding emphasis or perhaps clarity.
But TAP is new. There is nothing remotely like it to be seen anywhere else. If you want to save strokes on the green starting almost overnight, here’s how. No kidding.
The Handle Moves in Harmony With the Clubhead (video tip)
It’s been few weeks since I posted. Not to worry.
I have a new video on YouTube, which you can see here, an alternate way of looking at the hands leading the clubhead.
The reason this conception works is that it takes your attention off your hands, which are the problem, and onto the handle, which is the solution.
I hope it helps.
The Suspension Point
Should your head move in the golf swing or not? Depends on who you listen to. Many commentators say it has to move, just don’t move it to certain places. Others say with almost religious fervor, Don’t move it!
I think all this talk is about not moving is about the wrong thing. It is the suspension point that does not move.
Reach behind your head and feel at the base of your neck. There is a hard lump there, a big one. That is a vertebra, the last one in the cervical (neck) spine. That is the suspension point. That is what does not move.
Paul Runyan, one of golf’s short game masters, talks about this point in his book, The Short Way to Lower Scoring. He calls it “the axis of the golf swing. The arms swing and the shoulders revolve around it.”
While he says it should not move, he allows that it is difficult to keep it still and thus it may shift minimally.
However, a few years ago at the LPGA’s Safeway Classic in Portland, Oregon, I made it a point to watch the players from behind, that is with their back facing me, to see what this point did when they swung. Much more often than not, it did not move at all. Not the tiniest bit sideways, up, or down.
Runyan goes on to say how pre-setting the position of the suspension point helps you hit different short game shots. I’ll let you get a copy of his book to find out what he says. About the full swing, he doesn’t say much.
But I think this is something you might experiment with, not to make that spot rigidly still, but to use it as the pivot point for your swing. More like, it can move, but you choose for it not to.
I like to check it every now and then to make sure I’m not getting too carried away and letting my body go all over the place.
My Chipping Formula
I have tried every formulaic chipping system you can think of, all the ones in the books and YouTube videos, and none of them worked. Chipping by feel didn’t work so hot, either.
But this year, I finally figured it out. It is incredibly easy, and I’m going to tell you how to do it.
First get a lesson on how to chip. You might think you know how to hit this stroke, but you really don’t. You’re doing something you made up and that’s not good enough. Learn from a pro how to do it the right way.
I had a lesson, and at the start, I told the pro that I wanted to run the ball to the hole instead of fly it, and he said that’s the best way to chip. Then I told him I wanted to learn the shot from scratch — not refining what I know, but learning it from the start.
He didn’t quite get it at first, because when I dropped a ball and picked a target, he said, “OK, what club would you use?” I said, “I don’t know. Put one in my hand.” Now he understood and I had a tremendous half-hour lesson, with six parts of a sure-fire chipping stroke to work on.
I went home and practiced in my back yard, hitting that shot every day until those six parts had fused into one movement that I could repeat like it was second nature. That took about two months.
Then I went to the practice green with my 8-iron through lob wedge (six clubs total) and hit chips with each club using an identical stroke. That’s the key — the stroke is identical with each club.
I hit ten chips with each club and walked off the distance that the good hits centered around. What I came up with is a list of six distances that I can chip to using the same stroke. I wrote those distances on a 4×6 card and put it in my golf bag.
Now, when I have a greenside chip, I walk it off and pick the club according to the chart. I just have to do one thing the same way every time and the club does the rest.
These are my distances:
8-iron 36 yards
9-iron 32 yards
PW 26 yards
GW 22 yards
SW 17 yards
LW 13 yards
If the distance is in between two clubs, I pick the shorter club and hit the ball a bit harder. For example, I would hit a 20-yard chip with my sand wedge.
This system works like a charm. The only thing you have to do is practice your chipping stroke at least three times a week to make sure you maintain it at a particular standard. You can do that in your house off the carpet. Once a year you should go through the calibration procedure to make sure you haven’t made a subtle change in what you’re doing.
Believe me this works. It takes all the guesswork out of chipping. The key is being able to reproduce the same stroke every time. It took me several months of constant practice to get that down. That’s a lot of effort, but good things don’t come easily.
See also: My Chipping Stroke
The Length of Your Backswing
To be in control of your swing, you have to be in control of the clubhead at all times. Take a backswing that is only so long that you can still be aware of where the clubhead is.
It’s like pounding a nail into a board. You’ll take only a short stroke with the hammer so you can hit down on the nail squarely. With a longer stroke you would lose the connection between the hammerhead and the nail. You’d have to “find” the nail again as you swing down and would seldom to it right.
In the same way, you should swing a golf club back only so far that you still feel a connection between the ball and the clubhead. If you swing back farther than that, the ball is essentially lost, and the chance of good contact is diminished.
This might be a shorter backswing than you’re used to, but that’s all right. The clubhead is farther back that it feels like. Don’t worry that this shorter swing will cost you distance. Because you’ll be hitting the ball on the center of the clubface , you won’t lose distance, and might get more.
Shortening your backswing does not mean that restricting your turn. Always turn fully, that is, turn your upper body to the point where your back faces the hole directly. You can restrict your arms, but never restrict your turn.
My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.