1. Chipping

I don’t hit a lot of greens. Nine would be a good day for me. That means I have to chip and putt in order to keep my score down.

The short game, BTW, doesn’t lower your score. It keeps it from going up. But that’s a different post.

So when I go to the range I always practice chipping and putting. I’ll take one chip, hit it about six times, then putt out each ball. Par is 14.

What I learned a few days ago, or rather finally realized for good, is that when you chip you should pick a landing spot and try to hit that, letting the ball run out as it will.

That style will give you much more control of where the ball goes.

Now the run-out is important. You can’t just let it happen.

For example, you have to know how much each of your chipping clubs will release. You also have to hit the stroke consistently to get the release you intend.

But the important point is where the ball lands. That is what governs all your other choices.

Thinking in that way will give your chipping a tremendous boost.

2. The Evil Seducer

If you follow this blog, you know that is what I call my driver. Because we want to hit the ball a long way, we alter our swing and end up hitting it shorter and in who knows which direction.

The driver is built to hit the ball a great distance. Stay out of its way and it will!

Here’s a great drill to convince you of that.

Take out your sand wedge and hit a 70-yard, or so, pitch. That should be an effortless shot with this club.

Now take out your driver and put the same swing on the ball. That you’re standing up a little straighter should be the only difference.

Different club, same swing.

Hit one drive and go back to the wedge. Keep alternating, one ball with each club.

After about three or four times through the cycle, I will bet (hope) that the wedge has rubbed off on you, and you are making an easy pass at the ball with your driver and the ball is going straight and long.

Well! Who knew?

If you can learn to swing your driver like this, you might not hit that once-a-month bomber, but you will be putting the ball in the fairway much more often, and with more than enough distance.

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I went to the range last Tuesday and was having a problem with all my clubs. I got reasonably good ball flight, but the shots went all over the place.

I had a bucket of 30 balls, and hit only about four or five each with my driver, 24-degree hybrid, and my 7-iron. I got a lot of missed fairways and missed greens.

So I put down those clubs and hit the rest of the balls with my wedges, to work on those important shots. All went well.

Actually, I stopped hitting wedges when there were three balls left, I took out the long clubs again for one swing each. One drive, a draw to the left side. Hybrid, center of the green. 7-iron? As Gary Player says, I hit it so straight you had to lean to the side to see the pin.

Now you could say that I hit those last three so well because I was finally warmed up. I think it’s because of all those wedges I hit.

Try it yourself and see.

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

The last time I went to the range to hit balls, I thought I should practice a few non-swinging fundamentals before I started to hit golf balls. I used the procedure below, and it worked out so well, I think I’ll do it every time.

1. Tempo and rhythm. It doesn’t matter how good your swing is, if these governors are off, you won’t hit good shots. I believe this pair is the bedrock fundamental of every golf shot. Figure out how to do it right by reading this earlier post on rhythm, then practice them the same way. It will take care of tempo, too.

Make about twenty swings, concentrating on just your tempo and rhythm. Count to yourself if you need to. Step away between each swing and set up again like you’re hitting a ball. Take your time. You want to think about this each time you swing, not rush through it in a groove.

After those twenty swings, you’re not ready to start hitting balls yet until you’ve practiced:

2. Aim. The shot will only go where you aim it, and most of the time you’re aiming to the right of your target.

Get an alignment stick and place it on the ground behind your heels. Put a ball on the ground and line up your shot. Reach behind you with your club and pull the stick toward you until it is against your heels. Step away and look at where the stick is pointing. That’s where you were aimed.

The perfect direction is to the left of the target, but parallel to the line through the ball to the target.

Practice this about twenty times, aiming for a different spot each time. Use different clubs. The different length of shaft puts you in a different posture, which does make a difference in how you perceive the proper aim.

After you’ve swing the club twenty times, practicing tempo and rhythm, and checked your aim twenty times, you can start hitting balls. Before you hit each one, review the feeling of the right tempo and rhythm, and every fourth ball or so, check your aim with the alignment stick.

This is how you build good habits in two things that are critical components of good shot-making.

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

Commentators wonder why, with all this new equipment, the average handicap of recreational golfers hasn’t budged over the past decades. Well, it’s the singer, not the song. The best equipment still has be used by someone who knows how to use it.

If you are in the middle of your working career, you probably don’t have the time to get to the range more than once a week. That’s not enough practice to become the best golfer you could be, but if you practice the right things, you can still play a creditable game.

Here’s how to spend two hours on Saturday morning profitably.

Get about 60 golf balls. Depending on the range that’s one bucket or maybe two. Half of those balls will be used on your swing. The other half will be used to hit pitches from 40-100 yards.

You don’t have to hit every club when you practice your full swing. Hit a short iron, a mid-iron, a hybrid, and your driver. The next time you go out, you can pick a different club out of these categories, but still only four.

Have something in mind when you swing the club. It could be tempo. It could be the transition into the downswing. Let there be something specific that you want to practice.

Take lots of practice swings before you hit a ball. The ball is a test, an indicator of whether you can do what you’re practicing when there is a ball in front of you.

IMPORTANT. If you hit a bad shot, do not give up the thing you were practicing so that you might hit a better shot. Clinkers happen. Don’t change a thing. This takes a lot of mental discipline, and that’s good training, too.

When you get to the driver, do these two thing: hit only five balls, and never more than two in a row. I know this is an important club, but it will seduce you to pulling yourself out of what you have been practicing, in your desire for maximum distance.

Actually, do a third thing. Before you hit your driver, hit three short irons. Then replicate that swing. Do not try to hit the ball a long way. Put your normal swing on the ball and let the club deliver the distance. That’s what it’s designed to do.

With the remaining 30 balls, hit pitches. Pick a target at a known distance and find a combination of club and swing length that gets the ball near that distance.

You can cut this as fine as you want to, but you should strive, over a series of sessions at the range, to at least find combinations that hits the ball to 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 yards. That’s seven shots that none of the other members of your group have.

Next, go to the green. Practice short putts, from five feet and in. Start with two feet and make a bunch of those. Then go to three feet and make a bunch of those. Work out to four feet and five feet, and make a bunch of those. If at any time you miss two in a row, get back down a shorter distance so you can start making putts again.

Now find a flat part of the green about 40 feet long. Drop four balls at equal intervals between 20 feet and 35 feet. Practice until you get them all within two feet of the hole. Then drop them at equal intervals from 25 feet to 40 feet, and do the same.

Move on to greenside chips. Assuming you have calibrated your chipping clubs, pick three different distances and practice with one ball, chipping to that distance and walking up to putt out.

You must learn to think of a chip as a two-shot event. Your chip is only as good as your putt.

Try making up some putting and chipping games as you go, to keep up your interest.

As far as time goes, you can spend about 40 minutes hitting balls on the range, and the rest of the time around the green.

If you do something like this every week, you’ll be able to maintain basic skills.

If you still have some time, go get another 30 balls and work on curving the ball right or left. High or low. Practice hitting from uneven lies if you can. Greenside bunkers. Fairway bunkers. Learn some specialty shots.

Like I say, you won’t get great, but you will develop a solid game by following a practice plan of this kind.

See also One hour at the range.

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

Usually I start off my posts with a leader and then get to the good stuff. Today I’m going straight to the good stuff.

You have to know what you’re doing to polish your swing. Get lessons to learn the fine points that make your swing work. Those are your building blocks. There might be five or six of them. They will have an order of priority that makes sense.

Now you’re at the range with a ball in front of you. Take practice swings, concentrating on getting the first point right. When it is, keep taking practice swings, but concentrate only on the second point. When you’re satisfied, move onto the third point.

All along, you are adding on, not substituting. That is, when you start working on the second point, you’re still doing the first one, too. When you work on the third, you’re still doing the first two, and so on.

After you have progressed through all of your practice points, then you can hit that ball. It might take you a dozen practice swings to finally get to the ball, but they will have been practice swings with a purpose, and the shot you hit should be a pretty good one.

Then go through the same process again. After you have worked your way through hitting ten balls, you might be pretty worn out, but your swing should be in pretty good shape.

This is how you build a repeating golf swing. You practice one thing until it’s right, then add on the next one, building up a swing from scratch every time, doing everything right. This eliminates the random differences between swings that you get when you hit one ball with one swing, over and over again.

This is the golfing equivalent of an instrumentalist practicing scales, over and over, getting them right. Being deliberate about the things you know are right is the right way to practice, and is the fastest way to learning them.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

When you’re learning a foreign language, they’ll tell you that fifteen minutes every day is better that two hours on Sunday. It’s that periodic repetition that keeps the ball in the air which does the trick.

Golf is the same way. If you can practice fifteen minutes a day, you can keep your game in tune even if you can’t play.

Putt across the carpet. Step up to each stroke like it’s a putt on the green–go through your whole routine. Practice three- and four-footers by rolling the ball over a tin can lid. Practice 30-footers in the same way, using a pillow for a backstop. The important thing here is that in making your 30-foot stroke, you hit the ball on the sweet spot and still roll the ball over the lid.

Get a carpet remnant and chip off that with plastic balls into the pillow you used for approach putts. Ball first, ground second. Rotate through all your chipping clubs over a period of days.

Hang a mattress pad or a blanket over a curtain rod in front of one of your windows and hit pitches into it (use plastic balls, please, and hit off a carpet remnant to save wear and tear on your flooring.)

Full swing? You can swing under an 8-foot ceiling with a 7-iron or less, but for a longer, club, step outside. If you have a back yard, you can hit plastic balls into a net or against that mattress pad. If you’re an apartment dweller, well, just swing. Before very swing, go through your entire pre-swing routine.

Just do something, every day.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com