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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There is no reason to play a golf course that is too long for you. Just move up a set of tees. If you are ever in a situation where you have to play from tees that are too long, here is how to do it.

First, realize that you will shoot a score that is higher than you usually do. Accept it and do not concern yourself with your score as you play. Just play golf. Add it up when the round is over.

Second, control the ball. You must get the ball in the fairway off the tee, and keep it there. If a long par four will be a three-shotter for you anyway, make them three easy shots. Let’s say that you don’t want to, or can’t, hit a 437-yard par 4 in two. Back way off and make them three easy shots. You can get there with two 5-irons and a pitching wedge. Leaving your driver home might not be a bad idea.

Third, avoid trouble around the green. Know which is the longest club you feel sure that you can hit the green with. Now add three clubs. If you have to hit that club or more to get the ball on the green, lay up if there is lots of trouble around the green you could hit into.

Fourth, if you know you’re going to use up an extra stroke to get to the green, hit that third stroke from a distance you’re very good at. Let’s say you own the 75-yard pitch. Plan your attack so your second shot ends up 75 yards from the pin.

Fifth, your short game goal is to get the ball on the green. From inside 100 yards, you dare not take two shots to get the ball on the green. Forget the pin; aim for the center of the green. The longest approach putt you might have is 40 feet, and they will likely be much shorter than that.

Finally, since you’re using up extra shots to get the ball on the green, you just have to get down in two putts once you’re there. There are no shortcuts here. You’re giving away strokes in the fairway, you can’t give up any more on the green.

Uppermost, never let the added length lure you into trying to hit the ball farther than you can. Stick to playing your game and be happy with the result.

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There are times when you have to take on a hole, and times when you need to ease off. Knowing which holes are which will save you strokes.

1. Example 1 is a 359-yard par 4 that goes downhill off the tee to the halfway point, then uphill after a right turn to a shallow green. This green is thus meant to be approached with a short iron, but the tee shot is intimidating and makes a driver look like a risky choice, because: a fairway bunker will trap a ball that goes off the tee too far and straight. The proper tee shot is a fade, but if the ball bends too much, trees in the corner of the dogleg will surround the ball leaving no shot but a chip back out to the fairway. And, the gap between the bunker and the trees is none to wide.

I had always laid up off the tee to be safe, but had a mid-iron into the green not designed to hold one. I seldom got a par. Two days ago, I hit my driver anyway just to see what would happen. The ball went into the trees, I chipped out sideways, but the tee shot with my driver had gone far enough that I had an 8-iron to the green. I hit on, and two putts later had an easy bogey.

So I learned that on this hole, a bad tee shot would cost me one stroke, and a good one meant an easy par, whereas hitting short meant bogey, and a double if something went wrong.

2. Four holes later we’re on the tee of a 427-yard par 4, with water on the right, a slight dogleg right, with water in front of the green to its left, beside a generous lay-up area. Unless your drive is pretty long, you will have to hit off a rolling fairway (an uneven lie is a certainty) and over the water to get to the green.

I hit my drive straight, but not as long as it could have been, and I was faced with a shot of about 175 yards over the water on the right, off a downhill lie, to get safely to the bail-out area. The green was out of the question. One of my primary playing rules is: never hit over water if you don’t have to. Since it was going to take two shots to get on the green anyway, I chipped 50 yards down the fairway so I could have a short iron over dry land into the green.

I got on, took two putts for a bogey, and avoided a double or even a triple had I tried to cross the water with my second. Had my drive gone about twenty yards farther, I could have safely taken on the green. But sometimes, you have to do that discretion and valor thing.

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1. I really like 2s. When you put a 2 on your scorecard, everyone knows exactly what happened. A 3 could be anything; 4s and 5s look all right, but a 5 could be a double bogey. A 2 means only one thing. I like 2s a whole bunch.

2. When you’re learning a new shot, it takes a good while practicing it at the range to be able to hit it on command. Only when you get that good at it would you want to use it when you play. The next thing you have to learn is when to use it when you play.

You can easily make the mistake of using it when you shouldn’t, or not using it when you should. I have a great new short shot about which I made each mistake the first few rounds I played after I had it down. But that’s how you learn.

3. Play the shots you believe in regardless of what conventional wisdom says to do. Jack Nicklaus said that Arnold Palmer once told him to putt from the greenside fringe (I was going to say “frog hair,” but I’m not sure everyone would know what that word means), since your worst putt is always better than your best chip.

Not if you know how to chip.

4. Yesterday I skanked my tee shot way to the left, just a few feet still in bounds, skanked my shot back to the fairway, hit a 75-yard pitch to four feet, and sank the putt. Walter Hagen once said, “Three of those and one of these still make par.”

Never give up. One good shot can make up for a lot of bad that has happened before.

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Recreational golfers will shoot lower scores by not taking extra strokes, more than by hitting better shots. There is a big difference.

Extra strokes are one ones you take because you didn’t think things through clearly, and as a result, play a shot that doesn’t get you anywhere. You’re no better off than before, but you’ve rung up one more stroke on your score.

Play shots you know you can hit. You might have seen something on TV that you would like to try, and here is a great place to do it. Or you have tried this shot once or twice in practice so you think, “I’ll try it here.” Then you hit it, and it doesn’t work, and now you get to try something else.

Hit a shot you know you can hit, even if it’s not the ideal shot. That way you’ll get something out of it, instead of nothing. Remember what that set-up was, so you can practice after the round to learn what you should have done, preparing yourself for the next time.

But don’t hit shots that are complete strangers.

Respect your lie. Which brings up this point. A subtle difference in your lie can mean you have to hit a different shot. Maybe around the green you have a chip shot that is pure gold, but if the lie isn’t conducive, don’t hit it. The result could be worse than a compromise shot.

I have this chip that sends the ball right at the pin, bounces twice, and stops. But I have to take the club back very low and keep it low coming into the ball. If the lie is any bit cuppy, so the ball is sitting down, this shot will blade the ball over the green.

So I have to pick another shot, as you should if you don’t think you can get the club on the ball the way you would like to.

Uneven lies crop up all the time, but they’re easy to master.

Don’t get greedy. Take what the course gives you and no more. Say the tees are up one day, and you can bend your drive around the dogleg for once. But there’s a wind in your face which will cancel out the distance advantage. If you try anyway, your ball will likely go into whatever is in the corner and you’ll have to spend a stroke getting out to the spot you would have driven to if you hadn’t been greedy.

What course designers want us to do is get greedy and not do the next item on the list.

Respect trouble. Play away from trouble. Play around trouble. Don’t play over it or nearby it. The course designer will give you an out. You just have to find it.

With water, especially, be careful. Never play over water unless you have to. If you have to, set up your shot so you have a wide berth if you miss. You can lay up so you don’t hit in, and still have plenty of room to clear the hazard with your next shot.

Forced carry off the tee that you can’t quite cover? Use your tee shot to chip down the tee box to a spot from where you can get over. Use up one stroke to save two. (And maybe consider you’re playing from the wrong set of tees.)

Much of the fun of golf is that it is a thinking man’s game. A thinking woman’s game, too. When you play it like that, you shoot lower scores without being one whit better at hitting the ball. Now how good is that?

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See this post updated at Arrive

There is an ongoing series of posts titled, What I learned at the range. This post begins a series titled, What I learned at the course. It will be a number of playing tips that I’m bringing home that helped me play better, and might help you, too.

Remember, you can’t read about at tip to make it work. You have to try it and see for yourself.

1. An epiphany: It is not me hitting the ball. I am not involved in any way. The club swings; the ball goes. My ego, my self-involvement, does not play any part in the shot. For two seconds, stop being my everyday self and become an embodiment of a golf swing. See where I’m going with this?

2. Take more club. The pros say amateurs underclub themselves from the fairway all the time. The pros are right. Second hole, 115 yards from the pin. Pitching wedge, right? But that’s at the end of the line for my pitching wedge, and the green is a bit up the hill from where the ball is. I took out a 9-iron, made an easy swing, and got hole-high.

3. On the putting green, the more you think about easing the ball up to the hole, instead of hitting it up there, the closer you will get your approach putts.

4. Relax. You don’t have to play perfect golf to score. Two so-so shots and two good shots are enough to make a par.

5. Laser rangefinders rule. Mobile phone apps suck. Last week my drive and the drive of another guy in my group ended up about three feet from each other. We were hitting into a deep green with the pin in the back. I shot the pin at 159 and got there. His app said 134 to the center, plus or minis five yards, and he was short of the green, and he’s a good player who hit a good shot.

Moral: dump your app and get a rangefinder. I use a Leupold GX-1.

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