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

[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

[Comments added January 2018.]

There’s a chapter by this name in Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book.   He says the three most important clubs are, putter, driver, and wedge, in that order.   Ben Hogan, he reported, said driver, putter, and wedge.   

Penick went on to give the reasons for his order, but we never heard Hogan’s reasons for his.   Here they are, gathered from what I have read of Hogan’s writings.

Hitting a good drive puts you on offense.   It leaves the ball in the part of the fairway where the green, and even the pin, can be attacked.   

You should have a plan at the outset of every hole, and getting the ball off the tee into the right place is the key to carrying out your plan.   

Hogan off the tee wasn’t interested in distance.   He had a spot marked out where he wanted the ball to end up and his goal was to hit it there.   

I’m inclined to think that the driver is the most important club for recreational golfers, too. We won’t make many pars when our tee shot doesn’t find the fairway and at a distance the hole was designed for.

The putter is next, of course.   Hitting your irons close doesn’t count unless you sink that putt.   

Yes, Hogan hit his irons close, but he didn’t make birdies by hitting six-irons to two feet.   In his prime he was regarded and on of the tour’s best from 10 feet in, and he made his share of 12- to 15-footers, too.

We can sum it up so far from another point of view.   I heard Byron Nelson, Hogan’s contemporary, say on a televised golf match from the 1950s, “If you can drive and you can putt, you can play this game.”

[Try carrying two putters.]

And the wedge.   Sometimes we miss a green, or in the case of a par 5, we need a third shot to get on.   

Hogan prided himself on being able to get his wedge shots close.   He felt if you could, there was no way a pin could be hidden from you.   

In fact, he called his pitching wedge his “equalizer”, and Hogan irons do not have a P or a PW in the set.   They all have an E.   

How can this inform your game?   Practice your swing with your wedges.   All the principles of the golf swing that you need to pay attention can be perfected in this swing.

Before you hit your driver in practice, hit a few wedges first, then with the driver with the same swing.   All you have to do is stand up a little straighter.   

Hit very few drivers in practice.   That sounds odd if it’s such an important club, but it’s a seductive club that can ruin your swing.

Practice your putting every chance you get.   Practice your stroke at home every day for ten minutes or so on 3- to 5-foot putts.   Every time you go to the range, practice approach putting from 30 feet to leave the ball inside 18 inches.   

[This is easy to do if you learn the TAP method.]

Wedge?   Find two distances, 30 yard and 60 yards, and practice until you can hit the ball on a dime from each one, and straight at your target.   A few yards to either side isn’t good enough.   

Learn to chip with your wedges, too, but make sure you’re running the ball to the hole, not flying it up there.   Balls that run to the hole have a much better chance to go in.

Get good with these three clubs.   Imagine what golf would be like if you routinely found the fairway off the tee, closed the deal right away on the putting green, and put those short shots one-putt close.   

All the good players you play with?   That’s exactly what they do.

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

Every golfer’s goal is to pass a benchmark score. The three major ones for recreational golfers are 100, 90, and 80.

There are really two problems to solve. One, how to break that benchmark score. Two, how to keep doing it. They both have the same solution.

Move up one set of tees and play a shorter course. If you are close to that benchmark, doing this should get you past it. First problem solved.

Then take a good look at how you did it from up here and compare it with why you can’t do it from back there. Work on eliminating the difference. Second problem solved.

So often you hear touring professionals say that your score is made from 100 yards in, so that’s where you (the amateurs they’re taking to) should spend most of your time practicing. The trouble is, they’re projecting the way they score onto your game. That doesn’t make sense.

The professional game is built around getting the ball in the hole as quickly as possible once it gets to the green. That’s how you make birdies, and save pars if you miss. But the pros are taking for granted that they’re already getting the ball up to the green as quickly as it is possible to do, and we aren’t.

If you count on hitting 12-14 greens per round, then the short game is what will make you stand out. But if you generally hit just three or four greens, how is your short game going to help you break 80? or even 90?

If you want to get your score down, you have to stop wasting shots getting the ball up to and onto the green. Ball-striking, hitting more fairways and more greens, is the key. That means getting swing lessons and diligently practicing what you were taught.

I’m not saying you should neglect your work around the green, but all you need to be for now is to be adequate. The quickest way for you to get into the 70s is to have a swing that reliably hits the ball straight. Once you’re there, you can become a short game and putting wizard if you want to start chasing par. But get that swing straightened out first.

One last way to look at this. Which would led to a lower score? For a touring professional to hit all your full swings shots, or to hit all your short shots and putts?

I thought so.

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

Yesterday I mentioned that I have begun, with smashing success, to hit all my long pitches with my pitching wedge. It feels good. It feels right. I feel in full control.

Yesterday I hit one from 60 yards, and one from 35, and both of them ended up less than three feet away. The second one almost rolled in.

This brings to mind that we have a lot of clubs in the bag we can use to hit a lot of different shots. It should not be said that you have to use this club for that shot, or that shot has to be hit with this club.

You should feel free to hit any shot you want with the club that you want to use. Not the club that everyone else uses, or what the pro says to use.

The reason is that when it comes down to putting the club to the ball, it has to feel to you like the right thing to do. You need to feel at ease with it in the same way that you write with one hand and not the other. It has to feel like your shot.

Let me give you an example. I have a stroke of one particular length and firmness that I use when I chip. Every time, for every chip, the same stroke. For some reason, that’s the way I like to hit those little shots. This stroke turns on the artist in me.

So to chip the ball different distances, I use different clubs. I make little adjustments to fine-tune the distance, but it’s basically the same stroke every time.

To play golf, you need
a tee shot,
an advancement (fairway) shot,
a pitch,
a chip,
a long putt,
and a short putt.

If you can find your way to hit each of these shots, with the clubs you like, your golf will improve immediately, because it will be your golf.

P.S. I sometimes use two putters. One for long putts and another for the shorties.

See also Play a Difficult Course

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

Wherever you are on the golf course, wherever the ball is, there’s only one question you need to ask yourself. One question that will help you shoot the best possible score. That question is, What’s the best shot I can hit from here?

What is the best shot I can hit from here, given my skills and what I have to do to get the ball in the hole as quickly a possible from here. That’s the long version, but that’s the question.

The question is not, What’s the best shot Arnold Palmer could hit from here? The question is also not, What if I hit my 5-iron like I did two months ago one time? It’s, What’s the best shot I can hit from here, right now?

Brad Faxon once said that you should play conservative shots with a cocky attitude. He meant to play shots you know you can hit, with all the assurance you can muster.

If you have 160 yards from the fairway into a well-defended green, and you know you can get the ball there, then hit the shot. If you have 160 yards into that same green, but from the rough, the best shot you can play from there might be a layup to your favorite chipping distance.

Attack the course with the best shots you have, and you’ll get the most out of your skills and have the most fun.

See more at www.bettergolfbook.com