Do you play one golf course all the time? Try going to different courses. You’ll get more fun out of golf, and you’ll become a better player.

Here’s what happens when you play the same course over and over. You get into something of a rut. You don’t have to think too much, because you know just what strokes to play on a particular hole to get your 4. The only challenge is to see if you can do it.

Even though you play a good course, it does not require all the shots you need to be a complete golfer. You never get the chance to learn something new.

And when you do go to a new course, you probably have to hit shots and use clubs you have little experience with, and you often hit the wrong shot because you haven’t learned how to read a hole.

A subtle danger is that you might be under-handicapped by playing only one course. Since you know it so well, you play it so well. A few years ago, a local amateur shot a 62 on his home course. I looked up his scores in the GHIN website and found that all twenty of his handicap scores were on the that same course. I wonder how well his handicap of 3 would travel.

I play on five different courses, each one of which demands different shotmaking from the fairway and around the greens. Playing well on one makes me a better player on the others, to boot.

I throw in a new course every so often, to keep my course-reading muscles flexed, and thus I feel I can go anywhere and play a creditable round of golf right off.

The golfer who has learned to adapt his or her skills to any course and still play his average game is getting the most out of this great sport. I would hope that’s the kind of golfer you want to be.

The most important golf shots for a recreational golfer are, in order:

1. Iron to the green from under 150 yards
2. Greenside chips
3. Tee shot
4. 3- to 4-foot putts
5. Pitching from 60-90 yards

If you’re good at these shots, you’ll score pretty well.

Comments:
1. Being able to hit the green reliably from inside this distance is the origin of good scoring. More than any other, this shot determines what your score will be. You will shoot much lower scores if the shot after this one is a putt rather than a chip.

2. You should be able to get up and down at least half the time when your ball is only one or two yards off the green. This skill is probably number two in importance as a back-up to your irons, since no one hits the green every time, even from close in.

3. Driver eventually, but use your fairway wood if the driver is too hard to control. You must get the ball in the fairway to have a chance to get a good score. If not, you’re playing damage control for the duration of the hole.

4. Approach putts are important, too, because leaving them short is the primary cause of three-putt greens. But these little putts are a chance to close out the hole. Missing two or three of these per rounds hurts your score needlessly.

5. This is a mini-version of the iron into the green, but with something added: you must be able to pitch accurately to a known distance. On the green is good, but you can do better than that. If you’re 78 yards from the pin, for example, you should know how to get the ball within five yards of it.

When I go to the range, I take my driver, 6-iron, sand wedge, and putter. Sometimes I’ll substitute and 8-iron and a gap wedge. But with just four clubs, I can practice all these five shots.

Distance in golf is cool. Distance is fun. But at the recreational level, where we get to play from whichever set of tees we want to, accuracy is King. To show you why, consider the ability to hit just two particular shots, over and over.

They are the tee shot into the fairway, and the 5-iron from the fairway. If you can hit these shots straight, you can hit the green in regulation on five out of six par-4 holes on your golf course. That also means you can hit the green on every par five in regulation. That means you can hit the green on at least two of four par 3s.

Guess what you would score if you did that?

The tee shot into the fairway needs to be hit with the longest club that you can put into the fairway three times out of four. Even the professionals don’t do better than that. But if you can do that too, you’re playing the hole on offense instead of playing catch-up.

The second shot, the 5-iron from the fairway, is more demanding. That will take a bit of practice. Start with your 9-iron and gradually work up.

All this is predicated on playing from the set of tees that are appropriate for the length you have. Multiply your average drive, in yards, by 25. That’s the length of course you should be playing.

I know, hitting the ball straight is probably the biggest problem a recreational golfer has to solve. Easier said than done. One way to do it is to dial back and stop trying to hit the ball a long way. Play well within yourself. It doesn’t matter how far you hit your 5-iron, for example. It does matter that you hit it straight.

If there are other problems in your swing that cause the ball to veer left or right, get them fixed with lessons and practice.

Golf does not ask that much of you. The game is not really that difficult. Build it around making clean, accurate contact with the ball, rather than powerful contact. Make a mantra of, “Easy swing, straight is good.” With that attitude, and these two basic shots, you can play very good golf.

When you need a free par, the par-5 holes are just what you’re looking for. Think of them as extra-long par-4 holes on which you’re playing for bogey, and you’ll be just fine.

The typical length for a par-5 hole is 485 yards from the white tees, and 415 yards from red tees. This really isn’t very far if you have three shots to cover that distance. The key to getting those pars is keeping the ball in the fairway.

From the white tees, leave your driver in the bag. Hit 200 yards or so off the tee with a hybrid iron or fairway wood. Your second shot with the same club will leave you within 100 yards of the green. From there, it’s a pitch-and-putt par-3 hole. Couldn’t be simpler.

The same strategy will work for shorter hitters playing from the red tees: fairway wood off the tee, fairway wood off the fairway, pitch to the green, putt, putt = par.

Just because the hole is long is no excuse for hitting a driver off the tee, unless you hit your driver very well. You get four chances every round to get an easy par. Don’t blow the opportunity.

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I am not shy about taking golf lessons. I don’t over-do it, but I have one when I need one. I read things on the Internet (I can already hear you saying, “Uh, oh.”) and give them try if they make sense on the face of it. But enough is enough. Enough might even be too much.

I have been playing golf for over 50 years. In that time, I’ve gotten a pretty good idea of how I want to swing a golf club. But I was pushing shots, mainly drives, so I had a lesson to fix it.

Also, I lost distance because of my back surgeries two years ago, and I wanted some of it back. I saw a video on the fact that touring pros take one second to go from takeaway to impact. That’s pretty fast, so I spent a few weeks building up the tempo of my swing because I thought it might help.

We had a big snowstorm, so I couldn’t play for a while, but today I was finally able to go out and try out my new (!) swing over nine holes. Oh, brother!

In the first five holes I had one good shot. I was six over par after five and even that was because I was chipping and putting like a champion. This is not how I play golf, so I decided on th sixth tee to quit all that nonsense.

The position the pro had put me in was technically correct, but from that position at the top of my backswing, I couldn’t find the ball again. Know what I mean? As for the one-second swing, it didn’t add speed, it subtracted speed because all the speed was in my body. I had no time let my swing accelerate the clubhead.

So on the sixth tee, I decided to play golf the way I wanted to, to swing the club the way I wanted to. The result? I hit the next four greens in regulation and walked off the course with four straight pars. That’s a bit more like it.

When you buy clothes, you’re buying clothes that fit a generic model. Many times you have to have them tailored to fit you. Golf instruction is the same. The pro can get you close, but the instruction has to be tailored, and you are the tailor.

There comes a point when you have to take all of the advice you have sought out, and the lessons you have taken, and re-package them into something that fits you — how you move, how you think, how you feel that the golf you play is your golf, and that it works (there’s no point in being possessive of something that doesn’t work).

Golf instruction points you in a general direction. From there, find the exact direction on your own. It’s the only way you’ll play your best.

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You really need to know how far you hit your irons so that you can start zeroing in on the pin. Hole-high beats short or long all day. There are several posts in this blog about ways to determine this question. It’s such an important issue, I keep coming back to it. Here’s my latest hot idea that I had fun with one day.

Go to the course by yourself. Tee off, and when you get to your ball, decide which club you would use. Take out that club, and one more, such as if you decided a 7-iron would do, take out your 6, too. Hit a shot with both clubs and see which one does better for you. The longer club might not be the better one, but you’ll know, because you tried it, at least from this distance.

Write down those results, and do the same on holes that follow. Feel free to drop the ball at different distances from the flag on different holes, if you have to, to get a broad sample of club combinations to try out.

Pay special attention to par 3s. You might find you hit the ball a different distance with a given club when the ball is on a tee rather than on the ground.

Take advantage of elevated and depressed greens, too. Most golfers know they have to make an adjustment, but how much is something they never figure out.

If you do this enough times, from distances where you can compare all possible neighboring club pairs, you will get a good idea of what club to use and when. Having a firm grasp of your iron distances is how you start hitting them close, which is the real key to shooting low scores.

My earlier posts on this subject are found at:

How far do you hit your irons?

Golfers: How to know how far your clubs carry

Johnny Miller’s article, “10 Rules for Sticking Your Irons,” speaks to this subject, too.

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1. Hit the shot as if you didn’t care. I mean just take your swing, without any idea of where the ball is supposed to go, or what trouble might be lurking if you make a mistake. Make a carefree stroke at the ball is about the best I can describe it. The calmness that approach creates allows your body to flow into the swing without tension causing deflections from its proper course. This applies to putting, too.

2. Hit short shots with an easy, flowing swing. Putting tension in the swing, jabbing at the ball, trying to hit it sharply, all these things are what cause mishits. So does not paying attention to item 1, above.

3. When chipping onto the green, focus on the landing spot. Pick the club that will release from there to the pin, but your target is the landing spot, not the pin.

4. There is nowhere that the idea of having your hands lead the clubhead into the ball will pay off more than with your driver. It seems you are taking all the power away when you do this, but what you are taking away is the powerful feeling of the right hand hitting, which is actually a power drain, and which pushes the clubface out of alignment.

5. Do you use the alignment mark on your ball when you putt? If you line it up with your starting line (and don’t take all day to do that), you will sink more makable putts than you have been, and miss far fewer of those shorties.

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There are many reasons for playing golf. If your number one reason is to have fun, try this playing style. Use a limited set of clubs, and play fast. I’ll explain what I mean.

The rules of golf allow you to carry fourteen clubs. You don’t need that many, though. You can get by just fine with only seven. In fact, Francis Ouimet won the 1913 U.S. Open with that many clubs in his bag.

With a smaller set of clubs, two things happen. You stop getting stressed over getting just the right club in your hands, because except for on the tee and on the green, you hardly ever do. Instead, you take out the club that is close enough and create your own shot. Without too much practice, you will surprise yourself at how good your instincts are, and have a lot more fun because you figured it out on your own. You’re that much more of a golfer.

My set of seven is: driver, 19-degree hybrid, 24-degree hybrid, 7-iron, 9-iron, 56-degree wedge, and putter. With those clubs, I can manufacture almost any shot I need. I shot an 81 one day on a course I had never seen before using this seven-club set. It was easy, and it was fun.

Here’s another benefit. Seven clubs don’t weigh very much. This is a really light bag to carry. Carrying is more fun than carting, believe me.

Now what do I mean by play fast? I don’t mean that you race around the course. I mean you play efficiently, and without delay. On the tee, your driver is ready, you tee up the ball, aim yourself, address the ball, and hit it, just about that fast. If you’re the last player to hit, you pick up your bag and clubhead cover and start down the fairway. You can put the cover on your driver and put the club in the bag as you walk.

From the fairway, you do the same thing. Quickly assess the situation, distance, lie, wind, choose your shot, take your club out of the bag, address the ball, take one look, and swing, again, just about that fast.

On the green, you read the putt, quickly, relying on your first impression, since it’s almost always correct, step up to the ball, take a look, and putt. That fast.

All this sounds like you’re in a big rush. You’re not. You’re just not taking time doing things that have nothing to with hitting your shot. It takes you about five seconds to figure out your shot. Why take 15 or 20? Once you address the ball, why stand there? Get into your stance and hit!

You will find, too, that hitting quickly doesn’t give you enough time to start getting worried about the things you worry about. You do your thinking, hit your shot and it’s over before you had a chance to get nervous. Have you ever played an entire round without getting nervous or caught up in the shots you hit, and instead, just hit them? If you want golf to be relaxing, this is how to do it.

What about your score? It will take a few rounds to get used to playing with fewer clubs, creating shots and playing with distances. When you do, you will probably wonder why you carried so many clubs before.

As for playing fast, I guarantee you will improve, especially on the green. This style makes you play more intuitively. That means not second-guessing yourself all the time and going with what you know is the right thing to do. That calms your mind, which leads to your body hitting your best shots more often, which means lower scores.

Play light, play fast. Give it a try yourself. You might never go back.

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There is a definite order of skills to develop to be able to break 80 on a semi-regular basis.   The most important one is getting the ball up to the green in a hurry.   Learn to hit fairways and get the ball on the green or close to it with your irons.   Short game and putting are no help if you waste strokes getting to the green.

It should take you no more than 38 strokes per round to get the ball hole-high in regulation.

Next, learn to chip.   I know, you might think putting should be next.   But if your average leave with your chip shots is about six feet, you won’t get many up-and-downs.   There need to be a few stone cold tap-ins every round, and a chip-in every other round or so.

Still no putting, not yet.   It’s pitching.   Learn to get the ball on the green in one shot from under 100 yards.   You might be surprised, if you keep track, at how often you don’t do this if you’re a 15 or higher.   

Finally, putting, specifically approach putting.   Three-putt greens are caused most often by leaving your approach putt short.   So practice approach putting a lot.   From forty feet in should be two-putt territory.

[See my post on Triangulated Approach Putting.]

The other critical putts are the 3- and 4-footers.   Inside that, you’re 90 percent.   Outside that to six feet, you’re fifty percent.   But those mid-range shorties are the key to closing the deal on the green.   

Here’s a short way of saying all that.   In order:

– Drive 235 yards, in the fairway.
– Down in three from 150 yards in.
– Pitch on, always.
– Chip to under three feet.
– Approach putts to under two feet.
– Ninety percent within four feet.

In terms of scoring, look at it this way:

– Par all the par 5s.
– Par two of the par 3s.
– Par five of the par 4s.

That gives you a 79.   You still have to do some playing, but if you look at it that way, it isn’t so hard.

This excerpt from my latest book, The Golfing Self, explains how to plan the way you play a golf hole.

“Think of playing a hole of golf as a team project. At work, you might be on a team of four or five people, organized to plan and complete a project of some kind. Every member of the team has a role which is coordinated with the roles of the other team members, such that their efforts will return a satisfying product. The team in golf consists of yourself and the strokes you plan on playing from where you are, to the hole. All of you are in this together, each playing their role. The relationships between the work of each team member and its desired effect on the outcome of the project, getting the ball in the hole as quickly as possible, are known from the start.

“What you would not do at work is get a general idea of what you wanted to have done, ask someone to do this part of it, and when they’re finished, see what’s left and ask someone else to do another part of it, and so forth, never coordinating the tasks or the team members as a unified group. Playing golf in this way means you hit a shot off the tee, see where it ends up, hit another shot, see where it ends up, and keep doing this until you finally hole out. This is what I call “hit and hope” golf: hitting a series of unconnected shots and expecting good results. It’s not the way to shoot low scores.

“Before you tee off, make a plan for getting the ball in the hole. Expand the Gathering and Deciding phases beyond your tee shot to include every shot you intend to take on this hole. Plan it out in the following fashion. See yourself on the green hitting your approach putt (if you can see the pin from the tee). Next think of the spot in the fairway from where you would want to hit the ball to the green. From the tee, decide what’s the best way to get the ball to that spot in the fairway. We’ll call this the scoring sequence for the hole.

“Now all your team members have been assembled and each one has a job to do. You can move on to the Preparing phase for the shot you’re hitting now. Every shot you’ll be hitting is now part of a planned sequence of the shots that are most likely get the ball into the hole as soon as possible.

“As noted golf coaches Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott say, every shot must have a purpose. That purpose can only be known in light of the shots that follow it. “I’m hitting this shot to here, because next I can hit it to there, from where I can hit it over there, and into the hole.” Feel that each shot is the start of a sequence of shots that gets the ball into the hole, and you have thought through what that sequence is before you hit the shot you have right now. Every shot you plan to hit from here on is, again, part of a project for which you have gathered team members, decided what their roles will be, and of which you are the team leader.

“After you tee off and get to where your tee shot ended up, create a new scoring sequence, from the hole back to the ball. If you’re now playing from somewhere close to where you intended in the original sequence, the new sequence could be a continuation of the original one. Your gathering would be done to take into account any variables that were not apparent from where you first hit the ball.

“Of course, if the ball ended up far away from where you wanted it to, the original scoring sequence must be discarded and a completely new one developed. Adapting on the fly like this is not as simple as it sounds, mainly because it is not always easy to adjust to a new perspective at the same time you’re trying to figure out what to do about it. A moving mind keeps you detached from what might have been, and able to focus clearly on what to do next. It’s easy to make good decisions when every shot works out like we wanted. Better golfers do not let stray shots affect their ability to analyze their options.”

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