The rain has come and it won’t let up until March, if that. Time for the Winter Tune-up.

What I want to do in the next few weeks is go over a things you could do to improve your golf for the 2013 season. We all say we want to do that. We play around with a few things we read in the golf magazines, and before we know it, it’s time for the new season and we haven’t made the progress we intended.

So, I’m going to lay it all out for you. What to do, and in this order. Every Thursday, you’ll get something new to do and a week to practice it. Hopefully, by the time the series ends, you have built a number of improvements into your game. Let’s get started with the setup.

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If you were going to hang a door, you would ensure that the frame is square, the door is the right size, the hinges are on straight, and that the latch lines up with the strike plate. Any one thing that isn’t quite right and you’ll have a door you have to wrestle with every time you open or close it.

Your golf swing is the same way. When your setup is right, your swing naturally falls out of it. When something is wrong, your body gets carried off in directions that make hitting the ball harder to do well or in the same way consistently.

One of the things I will be doing from time to time in this series is suggesting you get a lesson. There are times you can’t learn from reading what it is you’re supposed to do, and get it right. Now is one of those times.

Sign up for a lesson in the setup: grip, stance, posture, aim. I’m not kidding. Get a lesson for just this. It can take a full half hour, and it is a lot of stuff. You might want to bring a notebook to write down the important points.

When you get home, practice your grip, stance, and posture in a full-length mirror, looking at yourself face-on and down the line. You can buy a mirror on a stand for less than a round of golf.

Take your grip and set up to a ball, step by step, 30 times a day, starting over completely every time — let go of the club, walk away from the ball and start over. If you’re learning new habits, you have to repeat them. Knowing what to do isn’t enough.

Practice your aim on the practice tee, since you really need to have a distant target to aim at. This bit is more important than you know. Any pro will tell you the number one cause of bad shots is poor aim.

None of this is very sexy, and practicing it can get kind of boring. There are, however, so many ways you can ruin a shot before you’ve even moved the club. Eliminate those ways and then you can worry about your swing. Accomplished musicians practice their scales. Golfers practice their setup. Enough said.

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A teaching pro once told me that when he was getting ready to play in a tournament, he did nothing but putt and hit wedges. Lots of wedges. He explained why, but I didn’t really get the point until about two years ago.

For a long time, I didn’t have a very good pitching stroke. Those 50- to 100-yard shots were pretty tough. So I finally decided that whenever I hit a bucket, half the bucket would be devoted to hitting pitches. In just a few months, I got the stroke down and the results were magnificent. Each shot was crisply struck, took off with authority, went straight, arched high, and stopped near where it landed.

Then I put two and two together. Why not build the swing I use for pitching into the swing I use for full shots? This is what the pro was talking about. He was bringing all the right elements of striking the ball—-tempo, releasing the club through impact—-into the full swing. The full swing is just a longer pitch.

I want you to try this. Start working hard on your pitching game with your sand wedge. Get a lesson if you have to. When you’re hitting pitches that fly high, straight, and bite when they hit, you’re ready to learn how to extend that same swing into your full shots.

Now go through the bag one club at a time. Learn to hit your pitching wedge this way. Hit some pitches with your SW, then hit your PW. Keep going back and forth until your SW and PW swings feel the same. Then move on to your 9-iron, and again alternate between your SW and 9-iron. When that’s successful, move on to your 8-iron, same process.

Never move to the next club until you are completely confident with the one you’re working on. This carries confidence over to the next club. Otherwise, you carry over doubt, and the program beaks down. It might take you a week or more to get it right for one club. Keep at it, one club at a time, until you’re hitting your driver with this same, smooth swing. When in doubt, go back to the wedge. In fact, never leave the wedge. That club is your foundation.

Let me assure you that I don’t mean for you to swing your 5-iron or your driver with the identical swing that you use with a sand wedge—-short, small, and without much clubhead speed. As you move up to longer clubs, the swing feeling you carry over from the sand wedge will naturally adjust to swinging a longer-shafted and straighter-faced club as it was designed to be swung, but with the same light feeling that you use with the sand wedge. The result will be a shot that goes straight, and you won’t lose a yard from what you had been getting.

I cannot overstate how easy it is to learn how to hit the ball straight if you use this approach. If you are willing to throw out your old swing and its bad habits, such as lurching into the ball, guiding the club into the ball, swinging with a tempo that is far too fast, etc., you can become the accurate and consistent ball-striker you long to be. Commit to this program and you’ll improve so much it will be like you’re a different golfer.

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One reason why the golf swing is so difficult is that many golfers do not have a good idea from one day to the next just exactly how they swing the club. They often rely on the groove they got into last time at the range, but the move they thought was The Difference can’t be found the next time out. Now what?

You would have to have daily lessons and daily practice to remember every detail in your golf swing and know just what to do to correct yourself when something goes wrong. The best bet for a recreational golfer is to remember how to perform five critical parts of the swing and just work on performing them the same way every time. If so, what happens in between has to be happening the same way, too.

The five parts of the swing to remember are: the takeaway, the end of the backswing, the start of the downswing, impact, and the finish.

Takeaway defines your club path and the plane of your backswing. The end of the backswing is the furthest limit of your being able to feel that the clubhead is still connected to the ball. The start of the downswing can be led in many ways, but never with your hands. Impact is, of course, impact, but it is a dynamic position, one of moving through, not of arriving at, a spot. The finish is where this all leads to. When the finish is right, likely everything that came before it was, too.

You can practice each one of these positions separately. The task is to memorize what each one feels like, installing the feeling into our subconscious awareness so that the movements in between will automatically seek the next position. When you play, you could take a slow practice swing to rehearse hitting all the right feelings.

Good golf is not played by having a great swing. It’s played by making your best swing more often. Learning these five basic positions, given a fundamentally sound grip, stance, posture, and alignment, will take care of that.

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

Unless you live south of the 35th parallel, you aren’t playing a lot of golf right now. That’s good. It means you can take the time to practice three shots which, if you get really good at, are going to cut strokes off your game by the relative fistful.

These shots are the 7-iron approach, the chip from 10-25 yards, and the 30-foot approach putt. If you can hit the first one well, then all you have to do is get the ball past the 150-yard marker and your next shot will put the ball on the green. The second shot covers the chips you hit more often than the greenside chip, and is the shot that I would guess loses you more strokes in your short game than any other. Get 30-foot putts close and you will cut way down on three-putt greens and become a better putter from everywhere else, too.

When you go to the range, take a 7-iron, a sand wedge, and a putter. Practice these three shots only. In a one-hour visit to the range, spend twenty minutes on each one. These are not the only areas where you lose strokes regularly, but they are the easiest places to get lost strokes back with dedicated practice.

Notice that I didn’t say anything about the driver. You do have to get the ball in the fairway or what you do next to the green won’t count for much. So hit a fairway wood or long iron off the tee with your 7-iron swing. Keep the ball in play and make some putts. It’s a simple game.

When I practice, I spend almost half the time with my driver or 7-iron, almost the other half with my putter, and the remainder, not as much as the first two in comparison, on my short game.

I figure it like this. The better my swing is, the fewer times I’ll need to use my short game. And, I’ll always be putting. My short game is good, not great. I just need it to be good enough to give my putting a chance.

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On The Golf Channel’s 7 Nights at the Academy shows that were broadcast last week, Raymond Floyd said the best thing about putting. It went something like, “The Tour is full of wonderful ball-strikers, but a lot of them never win anything because they’re mediocre putters.”

Byron Nelson said, on one of the old Challenge Golf shows,  “If you can drive and you can putt, you can play this game.”

See A Paean to Putting for my thoughts.

If you’re a golfer with a busy life, finding time to practice golf is not easy. When you do get a chance to go to the range, every minute counts. These practice plans will let you practice the golf’s most critical skills in one hour.

Plan 1:
Get to the range and buy a bucket of 40 balls.

From the range:
0:00-0:03  Warm up with three or four pitches of 60-75 yards.

0:03-0:25  Hit full shots, in this sequence: 9,9,7,7,5,5,3,3,D. Repeat twice. Hit longer pitches with any remaining balls. The next time out, hit an 8,8,6,6,4,4,2,2,D sequence. If your range has a practice bunker, you can alternate hitting practice bunker shots instead of hitting the pitches to specific distances.

Notice that this is a lot of time to hit less than 40 balls. Take your time, take lots of practice swings, get set up for each ball like you would on the course. Make each ball be worth something.

On the practice green:
0:25-0:40  Using four balls, hit chips from about six feet off the green to four targets of varying distances. Then go putt out each ball. Repeat at least twice. Try this with a 6-iron and with a sand wedge. The 6-iron would be used for a regular greenside chip, and the sand wedge for chipping over an obstacle between the ball and the green. Practice chipping out of the rough. This is a special skill which you might need a lesson to learn how to do correctly.

0:40-1:00  With just one ball, practice 2-foot putts from different angles around a hole. Repeat with 3-foot putts. Hit approach putts from 40, 30, 20, and 15 feet, just getting the ball close to the hole. Practice a few breaking putts, uphill, downhill, or sidehill, reading the putt first. Invent putting games of your own to make putting practice enjoyable.

Plan 2:

Get to the range and buy a bucket of 40 balls. 

0:00-0:30 Work on these two shots only: your 150-yard club, and the long pitch. The first shot comes from Harvey Penick’s writings. If you get good at getting down in three from 150 yards in, you’ll score very well. Hitting the green from 150 yards in is the best way to do that. Next, hit pitches from 60-90 yards. The point is to find out which wedges give you predictable distances. See this post for pointers on how to control distances in the range.

0:30-1:00 Practice chipping and putting as above. Always spend half your time at the range around the practice green.

Plan 3:

Get a lesson. There has to be something you need to learn how to do or need to improve on.  A half-hour lesson, followed by a half hour of practicing what you were just taught, is one of the best ways to spend an hour at the range. Once a month is not too often.

Golf is the most time-consuming, practice-driven recreational sport there is. If you’ve chosen to play, organizing your practice is the best way to make the time you spend on the course worthwhile.

See also Two hours 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.

There’s no way around it. To get better, or even to maintain skills, a golfer has to practice. What to practice depends on how much time you have available. We’ll start with the essentials, and show you how to find time that you didn’t think you had to get even more practice.

At home:
Putting. This is the easiest stroke to practice. All you need is a putter, a ball, and a smooth carpet. The lid from a 28-oz. can of whole tomatoes makes the perfect target, since it’s just ¼” smaller than the regulation hole.

Practice your setup and your stroke. Put two tees on the ground, cup side down, so they stand up on the carpet. Place them just far enough apart so you can swing your putter through the gap without knocking the down. Now put a ball in the middle of the gap and make your stroke. This drill smooths you out in a hurry.

Chipping. Here again is a stroke you can practice at home in a few spare moments. Hit some balls off the carpet into a backstop like a couch cushion or a pillow. Like putting, the point of your practice is to perfect the stroke. The goal is to hit every ball cleanly, no hitting fat, and keeping your hands relaxed as they bring the club through the ball.

Pitching. You can actually practice this at home, inside. I hook a mattress pad over a window curtain rod and hit plastic balls into the pad. It helps to hit the balls off a carpet remnant so you don’t scuff a hole in your good floor carpet. Like with chipping, you’re practicing the stroke, making clean contact and not concerning yourself with the result of the shot. How could you, anyway? The ball won’t go more than ten feet!

At the range:
If you can get out once a week, here are two practice plans:

One-hour plan

Two-hour plan

If you don’t even have time for that, practice after your round is over. I know that’s socializing time, so pay your respects to your friends at the 19th hole, then buy your bucket and go out to the range. Start by hitting a few of the shots you played well today, so you can solidify that feeling of how to hit them.

Spend most of your time on the shots that gave you problems during the day’s round. Take lots of practice swings before you hit a ball. Hit one only when you feel that your swing for this particular shot is where you want it.

Spend some time hitting pitches. Now you can practice hitting the shot to a target. Go the practice green and chip to a target, and hit some approach putts. All you had a chance to do at home is practice your stroke. Now you can practice the shot.

If you can practice at home daily, just a bit, and get live practice of some kind during the week, that will be all you need to maintain your skills and play golf that you can be proud of.

To step it up a bit, here is a professional practice plan.

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

Many golfers, including touring professionals, complain that they can’t take their range game to the course. They hit the ball just fine on the practice ground, but their efforts are lost by the time they get to the first tee. The reason for this is simple. The formula is backwards. Golfers should be taking their course game to the range.

What I mean is you have to play the same way in both places. The practice tee is the place where you teach yourself to hit good shots on the course, when it counts. You won’t achieve that goal unless you also simulate the playing environment as closely as you can. Now you can’t bring a golf course and all its hazards and distractions to the range, but you can bring your mental responses to them, and train your mind appropriately.

Here’s what usually happens during practice. You hit one ball after another. Pretty simple. Even though you do that to perfect a particular technique you are working on (and there should be one, otherwise why are you out there?), it’s not difficult to hit a string of good shots when you hit them with the feeling of success fresh in your mind.

On the course, where you don’t get to swing but every five minutes or so, your true skills emerge. Part of being disappointed about not taking your range game to the course is that the range game you take to the course might not be as good as you think it is.

The other thing the practice tee does, and this is even more insidious, is devalue the worth of a golf ball hit. There’s no penalty for a bad shot, and you can hit as many more balls as you need to get it right. On the course, you have one chance, one, to hit the shot you want. That’s not much pressure, really, but it’s more than you have in practice. So let’s try three things that get to both issues.

1. Never hit the same shot twice in practice. If you’re practicing a swing technique, switch clubs and aim to a different target with each new ball. Practice the technique by taking as many practice swings as you need, to feel you are performing correctly, but then step up and hit a golf shot, not the merely another ball.

Same goes for around the green. Hit the 25-foot approach putt, but if you leave if four feet short, hit the four-footer instead of bringing the ball back to try again. What you leave yourself on the green in practice is what you’ll leave yourself on the course. Learn to deal with your mistakes. The same goes for chipping. Chip once, putt it out. This will give you real incentive to chip them closer.

2. After you hit a ball, pull over another one and step off the mat, or step behind the ball on a grass tee. Get ready just like you would on the course. Pick a target, figure out what shot you’re going to hit, get your mind ready, go through the rest of your pre-shot routine, and then you can step up to the ball and hit it.

Don’t just hit range balls. Play golf!

3. Every so often, take a break. Stop hitting golf balls and just sit down for a while. Give yourself time to absorb what you have learned so far (practice), and to ask yourself to pull out a skill you haven’t used for a few minutes or more (play).

In short, the only way to learn how to play golf on the course is to find ways to play golf wherever you are.

You might be interested in this one-hour practice plan or this two-hour practice plan.

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