An article came out recently in Golf Digest that told the truth about swing changes. In a nutshell, this is the advice from a +2.6 handicap golfer:

“Improvement—real, lasting improvement (for me, at least)—comes from diligently working on the things holding your swing back. If you’ve properly identified the flaws, you should be working on the same things for months, maybe years.”

IOW, a few trips to the range ain’t gonna do it.

And from a 1.8 handicap golfer:

“When you don’t have lots of time and energy to spend, focus on the basics. By those I mean:

“Your ball position is in the right spot for each club.
“Your posture is sharp.
“You’re aiming in the place you’re intending to aim.
“Your grip matches your body and helps keep your clubface relatively square.
“You’re transferring your weight onto your lead foot on the way through.

“You can never get that stuff too good, and you’ll be surprised at how many good downstream effects it’ll have in your golf swing—without having to worry about spending hours at the range.”

“The average golfer’s problem is not so much a lack of ability as it is a lack of knowing what he should do.”
Five Lessons, Ben Hogan, p. 97

“To improve your golf the first stage is not necessarily to change your swing, but to learn to do your best swing more often.”
The Golf Handbook for Women, Vivien Saunders, p. 92

“It is true that if you cannot putt you cannot win, for no hole is won until the ball is down—but good scores are only made possible by good play up to the green.”
On Learning Golf, Percy Boomer, p. 221

“I can outhit many men, much to their embarrassment, for suddenly they are pitting…their strength against mine. That’s foolish. They aren’t competing with my strength; they’re competing with the efficiency of my swing.”
Play Golf the Wright Way, Mickey Wright, p. 33

“The average golfer’s chances of developing good judgement are better than his chances of radically transforming his golf swing.”
The Elements of Scoring, Raymond Floyd, p. 73

“Check out the country club scene and you’ll find that the guys beating everyone’s brains out are mostly the players who happily drive 225 to 230 yards down the middle, knock it on the green more often than not with ample club and well-controlled swings, and, when they don’t, own sharp enough short games to get up and down two of three times.”
My Golden Lessons, Jack Nicklaus, p. 166

“The shortest route to improvement is to get on the green in fewer strokes.”
Hale Irwin, Golf Digest, January 2010, p. 98.

And two from The Recreational golfer:
“The one feeling you should have before every shot is athletic confidence in your ability to hit the shot well. If you’re not feeling that, well, good luck.”

“Play a practice round where any shot can be repeated, but only once. If your mulligan is more like it, your mind wasn’t ready the first time. Work on that. If the mulligan is just as bad, this to a shot you need to practice.”

A few days ago I was on a golf forum and the question was asked, What is the key to becoming better?

Lots of the respondents talked about hitting greens in regulation. GIR for recreational golfers doesn’t mean a whole lot. I pay no attention to it. It focuses on results, and to get better, we need to focus on skills. These skills:

1. Hitting the ball accurately (to where you intend it to go).

2. Getting up and down from off the green, say, five yards and in, as an expectation.

3. Hitting approach putts to tap-in distance.

4. Knowing how to play the game.

Get good at those things and see what happens.

There is a guy named Terry Kohler who writes a (roughly) weekly column for GolfWRX. He calls himself The Wedge Guy, but there is more to him than that.

His articles always have finely-tuned insights to all aspects of the game that you won’t read anywhere else.

He is well-placed in the industry and knows what he is talking about.

I got to snooping around and found a web page that has an apparent archive of his GolfWRX writings. There are so many I haven’t gone on to see if it is a complete collection, and I wouldn’t know if it was, anyway.

But start browsing through them. Between his writings and mine, what else would you need?

Do these things to perform better, play better, and shoot lower scores this year.

Long game: As in life, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Instead of chasing the perfect shot, work on eliminating the bad ones so all that are left are good ones.

Short game: Learn how to get the ball on the green with one shot. Down in four from under 100 yards is a big no-no. From greenside, learn how to chip close enough to get down in two 50% of the time.

Putting: Get real good at approach putting to eliminate three-putt greens.

Playing: Play only shots you can hit with confidence. If you get a bad break, play out of it safely in one shot rather than trying something heroic that leads to taking up two (or more) extra shots. Learn to how to handle differences in lie, wind, and uneven lies. Learn how to read a hole to know how it is supposed to be played—play with a plan.

There are roughly 25 million recreational golfers in the United States. Thus, there are 25 million different golf swings. I try to put things in these posts that can be used by the greatest number of golfers, but I have no illusions that every swing will benefit from a particular post.

Except this one.

I promise you, no matter who you are, if you work on these two things, which can fit into ANY golf swing, you will see greater improvement than by working on any other swing thing.

Long-time readers of this blog already know what I’m going to say, but if you’re one of those and you haven’t worked on them yet …

If you’re new to the blog, read carefully. Magic coming up.

First: Get your tempo right. Swing tempo is the overall speed of the swing—how long it takes the clubhead to get from takeaway back to impact.

➙ Swing the club only as fast as you can to hit the ball consistently on the center of the clubface.

Start the club forward at the same speed with which you took it up.

You might have to slow down your swing a bit to get to the center, but that will be more than made up for because the key to distance and accuracy is (drum roll) hitting the ball on the center of the clubface.

Second: The clubhead must approach impact properly, and there is only one way for that to happen.

➙ Your hands must be ahead of the clubhead at impact. Your hands must lead the clubhead into impact. The hands must pass the ball ahead of the clubhead. However you want to say it.

Every good golfer does this. No bad golfer does it. It’s as simple as that.

See this post on learning how to do this.

Third: Your suspension point must not move.

If you spend a few months learning these three points, and get good at them, it will be like you’re playing a different game.

Ben Hogan said, “The average golfer’s problem is not so much a lack of ability as it is a lack of knowing he [and “she”] should do.”

This is what to do.

The practice ground is where you learn to hit shots, but golf is about knowing which shots to hit. You shoot lower scores by playing more golf, not by hitting more buckets of balls.

Beware of tips you read in magazines. They may tell you to do something you’re already doing, and then you end up overdoing it.

The most important shot for a recreational golfer is the tee shot. You must put the ball in the fairway.

Straight shots begin with setting up with the clubface aimed at your target. This is not as easy as it sounds. Work on this or get a lesson, because if this is not right, nothing that comes after will make it right.

The easiest way to keep doubles and triples off your scorecard is by playing within your skills. If you are standing over the ball with a “funny feeling about this shot,” back off and try something else. False confidence is not your friend.

Rhythm is king. Good rhythm makes mediocre technique work. Lack of rhythm makes proper technique fall apart. When you try a swing tweak and it doesn’t work, odds are you forgot stay in rhythm.

Good shotmakers have a narrower range of dispersion than other golfers. To narrow your range, train yourself always aim at something when you hit a golf ball. That is not only a direction. There must also be a specific spot on the ground you want the ball to hit.

To get to 80, you must first have a decent swing. If your average score is 83, your swing gives you reasonable assurance that you can get the ball up to the green in the regulation number of strokes. From this point switch the majority of your practice time from the range to the practice green.

Flipping through impact, a common fault, is caused by the left arm slowing down through impact so the hands can take over hitting the ball. If you swing a wedge with your left arm only, and let the arm swing freely, you will understand the correct sensation of the club swinging instead of the hands hitting.

When hitting a short shot that has a certain amount of air time, make sure you hit the ball hard enough. You can turn a down in three (or two!) into a down in four by getting too finessy.

I have a 9 handicap. Good, not great, but it is a level most recreational golfers would love to attain. Let me tell you what skills I learned that got me there. They’re skills you can learn, too.

I swing the club with a strict 3:1 rhythm at a tempo that suits my swing.

My hands are ahead of the clubhead through impact.

I play a gentle fade. Most of the time you would have to stand behind me to be aware it.

I have combinations of clubs and swing lengths that let me pitch the ball close from 50-100 yards away.

I have a combination of clubs that let me chip very close from just off the green regardless of the distance.

I developed physical calibration of my approach putting stroke to get the ball close, from 45 feet and under.

My mind believes, whenever I address the ball, that this will be a good shot.

I don’t get upset when I hit a poor shot. I just walk to my ball and start thinking about how to make the best out of the shot I’m facing now.

After a few holes, what my score is stops coming to mind. I don’t know what it is until I write it down after the round is over.

Learning these mental skills is described fully in my book, The Golfing Self.

Of course there is more to good golf than these nine points. But if they are part of your game, par should be a reasonable expectation on all but a few holes of the courses you play.

The November 2015 Golf Digest has a cover article by Tony Finau with the same title as this post. The article reveals his opinion that the fastest way to get better is to get good with your driver and your putter.

Good advice. Even Byron Nelson once said, “If you can drive and you can putt, you can play this game.”

The driver part won’t do you any good, though if you can’t hit the green with your 7-iron. If you can’t hit the green with your 7-iron, you won’t hit many fairways with your driver. Might as well leave it home.

Change your swing so you can hit the green with your seven-iron, say, eight out of ten times. Then you can haul out a driver.

As for putting, the ones to practice are the 30-footers and the 3-footers.

Learn to get the ball close to the hole from a distance. Not doing that is the major cause of three-putt greens.

Then learn to get the ball in the hole from close in. Missing the short putts is the other cause.

Those two things sound obvious, but surprisingly they’re not.

The way to get better at golf is to be real good on the basics. The 7-iron and putting are the basics. Go get ’em.