I think the main reason I continue to play golf is that it is, for me, a giant puzzle to solve. There has to be a way to build a swing that hits the ball straight every time. All I have to do is experiment with this or that, and I’ve got it. I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy any more, but I do believe in this.

My current fix involves strengthening my grip a bit, and a new (for me) way of getting my weight to my left side while staying behind the ball.* Now I’ve hit lots of practice balls in my back yard and these two, I like to call them “adjustments,” are working well. But I don’t want to go out and play until I’m sure they’re going to work.

Enter the executive course. There’s one near my house that is just over 1,000 yards long. I hit these clubs off the tee: wedge, wedge, 5-iron, 9-iron, 6-iron, wedge, 2-hybrid, wedge, driver. That’s five full swings, enough to see if what I’m trying out really works.

Now while this course is not a driving range, I try to play when it isn’t busy so I can hit a few balls off each tee if I need to. There’s something about hitting a ball to a live green that you just can’t duplicate at a driving range. Especially when on two of the holes the out-of-bounds fence is only five yards off the left side of a small green.

So if I can hit the ball well here, I know I can take it to the big course. Actually, hitting the ball well isn’t as important as finding out that the adjustments won’t lead to disaster. I’ve had a few of those outings on the executive course, and I’m glad I went there first.

I’m going out this morning to give these two new things a try. Every time I do this, I go out thinking, “This time, I’ve got it!” And sometimes I do. I’ll let you know. In the meantime,

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

*Swing in super-slow motion. In the early stages of your downswing, shift your weight to the left while you keep your head right where it is. It’s hard to figure out how to do this when you swing at a normal speed, but when the swing is slowed down enough, you can easily see how to do it.

A few years ago, The Golf Channel spent the winter broadcasting the old TV golf shows. You have to have a few rounds under your belt to remember Challenge Golf, Big Three Golf, All-Star Golf, and the Wonderful World of Golf (the original show). I recorded quite a few of them.

When I was growing up, I watched these shows all the time. All the biggest stars were on them, and why not? Prize money was $3,000 to the winner and $1,000 to the loser. This was in an era when a tournament win was worth about $5,000. All-Star Golf was a pretty nice day’s work, win or lose.

One of the shows had Byron Nelson on it. He had long before stopped competing, but he still played a mean game of golf and had to be taken seriously when he teed it up.

He made a comment during the match. He said, “If you can drive and you can putt, you can play this game.”

That stuck.

Because he’s right.

Get the ball in the fairway, and you’re on offense. Get the ball in the hole, and you score. It’s that simple.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working only on putting and driving. Not that the other shots aren’t important, but if you can’t hit these two, the other shots shots don’t matter.

As far as driving goes, I’ve just been working with the two adjustments I talked about in my earlier post, Two Swing Things. With putting, I put a little looseness in my wrists, so the stroke isn’t so rigid and mechanical. Also, since a putt is a delicate stroke, and when we do delicate things we use our thumb and forefinger, I spend a few moments looking the putt and getting the feeling of how to hit the ball into the hole, into the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. Works great.

It’s April. Golf season has begun in earnest. If you want to play better this season, start looking for some little things. If they’re the right ones, they make a big difference. And while you’re at it,

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

It has been raining so hard in the Pacific Northwest since Sunday that it’s like Winter said to itself, “Oh, my gosh! I forgot to rain this winter!” and is making up for it. The course I play at is a soggy mess. Some of the depressions in the fairways are so full of water there are ducks paddling about in the temporary lakes. Time to go to the range.

I got a huge bucket of balls. Two huge buckets. You get unlimited golf balls between 9 and 11 a.m. for $8, and there are about 150 balls in one huge bucket. I got two buckets and I hit wedges. Maybe 15 each of drivers, 6-iron, and 8-iron, and about 250 wedges. Boy, did I learn a few things.

I have come around to carrying four wedges — pitching wedge, 52, 56, and 60. My swing lets me get up to the green in a hurry. My handicap reflects my ability to get up and down. Four wedges.

What I worked on today 250 times, rotating between all four wedges, was this:
1. Clean contact, consistent contact.
2. Consistent swing length. I am a member of the “govern your distance with your body turn” school of pitching.
2a. Developing two distinct degrees of body turn that (a) come at natural stopping places so I can feel them easily, and (b) produce significant differences (~20 yards) in the distance the ball goes.
3. Hitting the ball straight.
4. Covering the ball at impact. Let me explain this point.

Golfers who read Hogan’s Five Lessons like to talk about pronation and supination. What those terms mean is: pronation means turning the something down toward the ground, supination means turning it toward the sky. The easy way to remember which is which is the alliteration of supination and sky.

When you hit the ball, you want the palm of your right hand (left hand, for left-handers) to be pronated — turned down. Actually, it isn’t turned down, it’s facing forward, but what you don’t want to do is supinate it — have it facing the sky. That you can easily do. Pronating the right hand at impact traps the ball between the club and the ground giving you a clean, sharp hit with lots of spin. This is how you hit crisp wedges that hit and stop. It’s also how you hit irons with authority in the air and bite when they land, and hitting lots of pitches with a pronated right hand is how you learn to build that move into your swing.

So what I did was take the first steps in learning how to hit accurate pitches to any distance inside 100 yards. At the same time, I was working on a key impact move in my full swing. The 6-irons I hit after all this wedge work were new and tremendous, by the way.

The only way to get good at something is to do lots of it. Not a few times, but lots of times. Rain continues to be forecast, so I’ll likely be hitting wedges at the range Thursday morning, too.  In the meantime,

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

Last week I played and I guess you could say I didn’t play so good. Time to go to the range and work a few things out.

I went Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and quite frankly I forgot what I did on Tuesday except work on my short game after I hit a few buckets.

Thursday, I remember. Our range sells tokens worth 33 balls, and I got three. With the first bucket, I hit my 8-iron, a lot of 5-irons, and a few drivers.

With the second bucket, I hit pitches between 40 and 95 yards.

With the third bucket, I rotated shots in this way:
Driver, 3-iron, 80-90 yard pitch
Driver, 5-iron, 60-80-yard pitch
Driver, 8-iron, 40-60-yard pitch
Repeat.

Every shot got real good. Then I went to the putting green and putted for an hour, emphasizing approach putts.

The next day, yesterday, I played. Shot an 81 from the forward tees (~5,900 yards). Hit lots of good shots, only left three on the course. No double bogeys!

Here’s a tip. Bring a notebook with  you the next time you play. When you notice something that will help you play better, or make a mistake that you want to correct later, write it down as it comes up. Otherwise, you will probably forget.

Here’s what I wrote down yesterday.
1. The green from close in looks foreshortened and difficult to pitch into. It’s really very deep. Fire away.
2. Have a feeling of calm confidence before you hit any shot. Make this a habit.
3. Swing thought — “center hit.”
4. If you think you have to be delicate on a short shot, choose another club or another shot.
5. Take no shot for granted. Give every one your full attention and best effort.
6. If you stand over a putt and think, “I don’t see how this will go in,” it probably won’t.

Can’t wait for Monday to roll around. I hope it isn’t raining too hard.

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

Do you want to find out how good you really are? Find out what shots you really need to practice? Try this next time you go out to the course. Play a one-man scramble.

Take a mulligan, just one, for every shot you hit that is, well, pretty awful. Give yourself one do-over any time you want. After you’ve hit the mulligan, move on, but to keep things honest, your next shot has to be from where that second ball ended up. It’s not hit and choose. It’s hit and commit (sort of).

Now this is a modified scramble. You don’t have to take a mulligan if you don’t want to. In many cases, you wouldn’t. If you take one every time you miss the green, you never get to test your short game. If you take one when you miss the fairway by a hair instead of 10 yards, you never get to try out how you do from the rough.

This exercise is meant to take you through every aspect of your game, and show you what needs a lot of work, what needs a little work, and what is doing fine.

Here’s how to make this scramble work for you. Odds are the mulligan will be the shot you wanted to hit. Reflect clearly on what you did differently to make the second shot turn out well. It might be a technical point you’re forget from time to time. It might be that your mind was wandering.

Whatever these points are, remember them, because adds are they will crop up again and again during your round.  Your job now is to learn to hit that second shot first, more often, when you can’t take mulligans at the drop of a hat.

The way to do that is to go to the range after you have completed your round. With the clear idea of what you did that make things work still fresh, hit balls emphasizing those things, and those things only. Give yourself immediate and quantitative feedback on the things that make you play your best.

That’s extra time at the course, true, but you don’t have to play 18. You can get the information you want in only nine holes.

What about your scoring potential? Keep two scores for the hole–one score counting all mulligans and one score without mulligans. For example, you hit your drive, and approach that wasn’t so hot, another approach, and two putts. Your scores would be five (counting the mulligan) and four (not counting it).

At the end of the round, the difference between the two total scores is how much you could improve by ironing out the wrinkles in your game.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com.

After my latest lesson, the pro asked me to make up a practice plan covering the material we have worked on so far. Here it is.

Full swing
Ten shots with each even-numbered iron, the next session with the odd-numbered irons.
Ten shots with the driver, the next session ten shots with the fairway wood.
Five pitches to 30, 50, and 70 yards, the next session to 40, 60, and 80 yards.
Five shots each: high fade, low fade, high draw, low draw, medium fade, medium draw. The next session, five shots high straight, low straight, uphill lie, downhill lie, ball above feet, ball below feet. Do one pair of sessions with a 7-iron, the next pair with a 5-iron.

Short game
4 chips from one spot (one set) to different holes. Putt out. Continue until all 4 balls get up and down, minimum of three sets.
4 chips from 10, 20, and 30 yards (in different sessions) to different holes. Putt out. Continue until 3 balls get up and down, minimum of three sets.
Toss 5 balls into greenside rough and get 3 up and down. Repeat.
10 shots from greenside bunker, 5 full swings from [fairway] bunker.

Putting
12 3-foot putts in a circle around the hole.
10 putts each to 6, 9, and 12 feet without looking after each putt. Next session from 15, 18, and 21 feet. To learn distance control.
10 lag putts from 30, 40, and 50 feet.
10 8-foot putts in a circle around a hole on a slope. To practice green reading.

All this takes about 3 hours. Three times a week.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

We’re on the last day of my grandson’s group lessons. His swing has improved tremendously, and he likes putting! When we were driving over for the first lesson, he commented that he didn’t like putting, but that was probably because he wasn’t that good at it. Things like aiming the putter and keeping the putter aligned during the stroke were escaping him.

…so I dropped her off at the mall and went to the driving range about a half mile down the road with my pitching wedge and two putters.

I got a bucket of about 60 balls and hit pitches in the 90- to 40-yard range. Not only does that instill sensitivity to those distances, but it instills the proper action though impact.

The last 20 balls were used to work on my swing. I took a half swing, and made four swings that were gradually larger until I got to a full swing. Then I hit the ball, but the important point is, with a pitching motion, just a big one. Extending your pitching swing is a wonderful way to develop a full swing.

After the balls were gone, I went to the putting green and practiced 1-, 2-, and 3-foot putts with a Wilson Billy Casper mallet, and approach putts from 15 to 35 feet with an Acushnet Bullseye.

I put my car keys on the green and putted at them, instead of a hole. That’s especially important with the short ones. I never saw the ball go past an empty hole. That’s not an image I want to put in my mind.

Good session. Find a way to say Yes when your wife asks if you want to go shopping.

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